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I once met the pilot and copilot who flew this mission. Fascinating men who were heavily involved in Germany's testing program. Afer the war, one moved to Australia. The other ended up behind the iron curtain.
@@CalibanRising I was a wet-behind-the-ears 17-year-old caded newspaper reporter when I met the two of them as they re-united after more than 40 years. I didn't realise the significance of the event, unfortunatey.
Erich Sommer lived in Adelaide, South Australia in latter years. I met him through business dealings and he told me how he had flown with KG100 and bombed Coventry early in the war. They used the X-Gerat beam bombing device. He talked about flying the 234 over Normandy and the short engine life - supposed to be 6 hours but they were stretching it to 12. The main problem was the failure of the compressor blades which were solid. Sommer said he had seen a Mustang on one flight and escaped by going into a shallow dive. The controls locked up when the plane started buffeting and he recovered by slowly winding the elevator trip up until the plane slowed.
I think Sommer, being a reconnaissance pilot, was also in a Ju 86 that battled in the stratosphere over the UK with modified Mk IX Spitfires. The Spitfires were barely able to intercept but it was enough to dissuade further Germans missions.
The bombing of Coventry is a bit controversial...when double agents gave false intel and deliberately misled the Luftwaffe about targets, along with jamming the beam and navigational aids of the German planes, the "poor innocent civilians" of Coventry were collateral damage. That and the claim that carrots gave RAF pilots excellent vision, so as to conceal their use of radar, helped paint those bombing missions as evil...give a dog a bad name and hang it...neither side had full fledged angels in their cockpits..."There is a war you know"...so both combatants did what they deemed necessary at the time...but what do I know???
Good to hear that he made it to Southern Australia. He was obviously a good pilot and after seeing too much suffering he decided to leave Europe after the war. The story itself is very interesting and I’m not sure if it’s untold up to now. However, excellent research and I’m a fan of the Arado.
The buffetting is called resonance generated by the alignment of the AOA angle of attack when the wings encounter turbulance in a dive or speed that is beyond the design capabilities of the airframe. It usually results in the break up of the aircraft. Simmers was indeed a talented pilot by recovering the aircraft. Interesting that the engines lasted less than the 262 which had a life time of 28 hours, the Arrado must have had much larger thrust capability even more interesting to have met them. Story of a life time.
Great detail showing a (rather graphic) picture of an actual German column with horse-drawn wagons. It's easy to forget that jet planes and military horses overlapped, and large-scale long-distance logistics were steam-powered.
I've always found the clean lines of the AR234 to be elegant and beautiful. For some reason I am even more intrigued by the Arado than the Me262. It just looks classy, like a finished product.
Excellent presentation! Please note you can see a perfect restored A234 at the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian museum at Dulles international Airport.... beautiful bird but great story too!
Well done-- narration and graphics fly smoothly. Especially noteworthy is you maintained a narrative distance from the Arado's development, to concentrate on its first operational actions.
This was a VERY INTERESTING VIDEO. About 25-30years ago I and my 2 brothers had the PRIVILEGE to meet and get their signatures of several TOP AVIATORS of WWII. They were at a affair held at the Sheraton Hotel in Charlotte NC off of I-85. There was the top British ace Johnie Johnson, the bombardier of the the Memphis Bell and General Adolf Galland. I was so IMPRESSED by meeting people who played a SIGNIFICANT role in WWII. 🤔😯👍
When I was a child I bought and made a 1:72 scale model plane of Revell of the Arado 234. A marvelous plane! The modell still sits beautifully in my display cabinet. Respect for the dedication and quality of the video!
This is a great video. Videos about photo recon pique my interest because my grandfather had a small but important part in it. He was sent to the UK to resolve an issue with the photos. About the time when the Lightning was first introduced into the photo recon role, he was there to help figure out a problem with the resolution or something along those lines. I wish we had recorded him explaining what exactly he was tasked with. Listening to him as a kid I didn't realize how important of a job it was that he and his team had. The airmen risked their lives taking those pictures and the troops on the ground depended on the photos too. So they made adjustments to the development process and to the setup of the cameras. They made constant changes tweaking the process until the end of the war. There were so many new developments that came out during that period.
@@CalibanRising Thank you for your reply. There were so many specialist teams like my grandfather's who fixed problems that contributed to the war effort. So many of them are unknown and go unsung. I wish we could learn about more of them.
As so often at that stage of the war, a case of too little, too late. If the Ar-234 had been available in May 1944 to make flights over southern England, the outcome of Overlord could have been very different. Thanks for a great presentation!
@@alanwayte432 I fully agree. I don''t think that had Arados been in more widespread use earlier, and even if ME262s had been better used, would the outcome of the war been changed. The momentum by the Allies at that stage was just too great. The Battle of the Bulge was the last, great gasp. It was initially devastating, but we recovered. With that, and with the USSR closing in from the East, there was not turning the tide. What is amazing is that the Germans did hold out for as long as they did. But I'm a schmuck. Wud do I know?
If you like the Arado AR-234 Blitz, please be informed about a new (hardcover) book release; ARADO AR 234 BLITZ: The World's First Jet Bomber (Design & Development/Bomber & Reconnaissance Operations / Night Fighters & Projects). It is released early December, the publisher is Classic Publications (well known for their aircraft books about WWII birds), written by (the famous) J. Richard Smith and Eddie J. Creek and costs +/- 44 pound.
As a rail enthusiast I was a bit perplexed at 7.56 to suddenly see footage of a British heritage railway. Had my computer suddenly switched to a different RU-vid video? No. The commentary continued. Ah, it turned out that the British heritage railway is masquerading as the French railways of 1944. I loved the shot of the two British steam engines. And the signal box. I wonder which heritage railway it is.
Excellent presentation and researched information! I actually took photos of these photographs displayed in the Pegasus Museum in Ranville during a 'once in a lifetime' 17 day tour of the D Day locations [Merville Battery to Sainte-Mère-Église] some years ago now.
@@frutt5k in general, the German military wasn’t too advanced compared to the other nations they fought, but some of the special vehicles they had and the tech they made behind the scenes were brilliant.
Nice video about this under-represented German jet. There's lots to find about Me-262 but very little about this one. The amazing thing is so many German "secret weapons" could have been ready in the early years of the war - Heinkel first flew a jet in 1939 - but Hitler and the Germans already had so many self imposed handicaps it didn't matter. Around 1941 Hitler ordered the cancellation of all new aircraft programs that could not be completed in a year. Then he launched Barbarossa, which might be the finest example of the madness of rule by one man of the 20th century.
Well a very interesting story about an outstanding airplane. Could imagine that after the war the allies catched quite a portion from this technologie for the post war development of their avionautic industry. Great Video!
An extremely interesting video. Thanks. I did know the Germans were using Arado's for reconnaissance but that was sometime ago and not in such detail. I do know that one had flown down the River Humber, which I believe was after this event and may have been the four engined version. Why this flight took place is unknown and there was no follow up. The late Eric Brown was due to test fly one of these bomber and had a lucky escape. He had run the engines up ready for takeoff when one suddenly exploded with parts crashing into the fuselage. You can imagine what would have happened a few minutes later if it had just taken off.
Are you sure?? I’m virtually certain he said that was a me262 and it has been sabotaged by ground staff. I think you need to read his book again and check
@@cornellkirk8946 No, it was definatelly an Arado. Of course there was very little he did not test fly. As well as sabotage the ground crews destroyed much of the paperwork so the number of hour on each engine were not known. After some 25 hours the engine had to be rebuilt.
Loved this story. Does anyone know if the photos that were taken by the Germans of the Normandy bridgehead are available anywhere in print or on the internet? Would love to see what this video hints at: how much the Germans actually knew what was happening and when.
@@TeddyBear-ii4yc He says 58 in the first sentence of the video. But you never know with these dyslexic new dads with their traitorous spell checkers. 😁
@@exharkhun5605 57 -58? That's still near 2 months after D Day. That's my point... while some may say "better late than never", I wonder if "for want of a nail the horse was lost" is more apt? Substitute 'recon photo' for 'nail'! 🙂
@@TeddyBear-ii4yc Absolutely. It's way past all the British and Canadian operations near Caen and it's a week after operation Cobra starts. But a quick look on wikipedia mentions 12-21 August 1944 for the battle of the Falaise pocket so it may have helped with so many German soldiers escaping. That's 1 thing I find fascinating. The other thing that interests me is that a part of the Normandy narrative is that the German high command is indecisive and was waiting for a "real invasion" somewhere else. But if they had no idea what was actually happening that changes the narrative a bit. (not that I want to exonerate the nazi generals and hitler, far from that, I'd be typing this in German if my country weren't liberated by the allies back then)
@@thelastroman7791 It does not change the facts 10 million were slaughtered in their Camps. Transport trains went through countless towns and the people could not smell the stench that came from them ?Case in Point The Allied troops liberated a camp, they could smell it from miles away the people in the town almost next to it claimed they did not know what was happening. Well a few days later all of them were marched to the camp and had to carry the dead bodies Then they bloody knew. Capt Eric Brown a German admirer before the war and even ambivalent during it was so disgusted by their actions at Belsen he turned away from them. Capt Charles Upham VC /bar never had a German item in his house post war
@@jacktattis I’m well aware of everything you just mentioned, I’m not so foolish that I’d somehow deny the Holocaust. My views on this matter are a bit more nuanced regarding this topic and can be seen as a bit more complex than the average observer, to say the least.
Excellent video. The Me 262 jet engines were limited to between 10 and 35 hours of total use because of restrictions on the strategic materials needed for longer-lasting turbines. How did the Ar 234 operate for weeks on end? Did they somehow get preferential access to nickle of cobalt? Or did they use a different technology than the Me 262?
The early Junkers Jumo 004 engines used proper (and expensive) heat resisting metal alloy, later Junkers Jumo 004 engines was build usig (cheap) "sheet steel" So I gess the Arado Ar 234 did use the early Junkers Jumo 004 engines. Few Me-262 pilot survive 5 combat misson and "used up" the engines, so there was no "need" to make the turbin blade more lasting. If the pilot did survive 5 combat misson, he was a ace (or close to be one) and can be given a new set of engines, alternative the orginal engines did have a deep maintenance/re-buld work .
If you read more carefully, it says the engines only lasted 6 hours but they managed to get 12 hours out of them, they would then have to swap them out, like helicopter engines in Vietnam. I heard Eric "winkle" Brown, the first allied test pilot to fly one talk about it, except the engine blew up on the runway, he blamed the ground crew for giving him an over-houred engine or sabotage. The high Nickel alloys that the British had were still secret, the Meteor was not allowed to fly over the channel.
The metals is a red herring. The problem with these early jet engines was controlling them not to exceed the temperatures under the operating conditions. Flying high in cold air at a constant speed helped. Thus recon better than combat. Taxing and all rapid settings was dangerous. Of course the problems were much bigger with axial engines than centrifugal ones. The British had both engine types but only flew centrifugal until the inherent problems were fixed. Today, you have electronic management controls with measurements and control variables.
Outstanding video. Great photos, context driven background information and period photographs. Your pacing, voice intonation and pitch were very good as well. You have a new sub and I look forward to more content.
Later in 1944, the Arado 234 was based at Biblis Airfield in southern Hesse. In order to be able to take off the planes better, the central reservation of the Reichsautobahn was concreted.
Respect to men such as Sommer and others that despite odds faced immense challenges bravely and professionally displaying tremendous self sacrifice and sense of duty.
My father was a pilot at the 2nd NJG 3 in Denmark. He told me about the activities during July and August 1944. I'll make it short, the idiots were all in the RLM and the OKL. And there were no qualified personalities in the Luftwaffe command, the best example was Herman Goering, who had no idea about modern air warfare and radio measurement technology. That we didn't have long-range four-engine bombers but attacked a country like Russia speaks for the stupidity of the top leadership. A He 177 had to have dive combat capability, what a crap. We had the best engineers but it was all like pearls before swine...
Here is a story for you might wish to cover! Aged 14 in 1974, I was sent to stay in a farmhouse to the east of Caen in Normandy, to learn the language. I took with me my metal-detector. The owner was a young girl in July 1944, and the farmhouse was full of German officers. ...... The building was long and thin, and the gardens to the north were 3 narrow strips, each bordered by a 6 or 7 foot high stone wall, with an orchard to the east. One afternoon, they became aware of very low flying aircraft, and I mean VERY low. ...... Cannon rounds punched into the west end wall, a FW 190 blew up, and within 10 metres of the farmhouse, cartwheeled across the strips of garden, ending up in the orchard. ...... All across the strips of garden, I found British brass 20 mm shell cases with my metal detector - the planes were right on the deck, and the British plane was very close behind. Although all large parts of the FW 190 were long gone, I recovered a large kitbag of small parts from the FW 190, including cockpit dials, and even live cannon rounds. ...... Hard to imagine getting those through Customs nowadays! I knew someone who collected deactivated ammo in a big way, so they went to him. / I have looked many times on Google Earth to find that farmhouse, with no luck. I remember enough for it to be found, if someone such as yourself were to make the call. It really is a stunning story of WW2 that deserves to be told! The names of the pilots deserve to be known. Just imagine how close that British aircraft was for the cannon shell cases to follow the track of the FW 190 as it cartwheeled across that garden. One could still see the infilled holes in the west wall! Best wishes, Zen
Interesting story. If you had access to the right records I'm sure someone could track it down. If you'd like, you can send me an email with the details you remember. caliban@calibanrising.com
Great video, makes a change from some of the poorly researched WW2 aviation dross coming from some RU-vidrs recently. BTW I can thoroughly recommend Erich Sommer's book "Luftwaffe Eagle".
This was a big plane with the same unreliable engines as in the Me-262, which also could hardly take-off. Engine failure on first flight. Recon mission helped the engines as they were at higher colder condition with the throttle not being moved much. They were not that high or fast either. Surprise on their side for sure.
They may have been the enemy, but they certainly made military aviation history with their new jet powered recce Arado's. And very very lucky indeed not to have been even noticed in all that time. Amazing! To think the Luftwaffe had a good piston engined recce plane to begin with, didn't they? Which I think was the specially adapted/pressurised Junkers Ju86. (Until the RAF got the better of them).
That pressurized version of the Ju-86 was the U-2 of its day. Fw-200, Ju-88, Do-17 etc. were all used as recce aircraft; add all the flying boats and fighter conversions and you actually get quite a lot.
@@ottovonbismarck2443 No doubt about it, the Luftwaffe had a variety of recce planes. Just that the Ju86 recce version, sticks out for its said superior altitude which for a while at least, made it impervious to allied interception.
@@commandingjudgedredd1841 I'd have to look it up, but IIRC there was a variant of the Spitfire which was purpose-built especially to deal with that problem and occasionally they were successful in intercepting the Ju.
I saw in a film, that a German pilot (Erich Sommer?) had a periscope mounted on the Arado, to be able to look behind him, when going slow during landings (The only time allied fighters could follow an Arado, or other German jets!) and it looks like the plane shown, also have one on top. But an American officer, collecting German advanced weapons after the war, was told by a proud German crew, that they could change an engine, even in the field, on a Messerschmidt 262 in half an hour! So the short lifespan was only a problem if they had no spares.
The Arado 234s were interesting aircraft, but like most of the German airforce effort late in the war, it arrived too late to be decisive. The photo reconisance units could only deliver bad news as the allies advanced. Mind you once the Arado 234s if it was known to the allies the speed of the early gloster meteors matched and even exceeded the Arado 234. It would have been a one-sided interception with the allies using portable radar defence systems to track the German photoreconisance jets over the allied front lines. Imagine the 4 x 20mm cannon on the meteor tearing up the Arado into pieces with a rear attack with the pilot in the Arado 234 with an almost blind spot to the rear. He wouldn't have known what had hit him.
The PR of southern Britain during the invasion build up was poor to non-existent that was a major failing. A single sweep of photos, taking several weeks to develop and assess is also less than satisfactory, it soon becomes out of date on a rapidly changing battlefront. The allies used repeated visits so a developing time line of enemy activity could be perceived. The video also highlights the pressure the Germans were under to forcibly grow and use technology before it was fit for purpose. Interesting video though, I didn't know these jets had been used like this.
I think you were betrayed by your spell checker. The title should probably say Overlord instead of Overload. In fact, the reverse seems to be true too, if there ever was an operation Overload, which doesn't sound to unlikely, it will be the most secretive operation in history because Google directs any mention of it to Overlord. 🙂
A carefully balanced presentation, and well presented. Luckily for the Allies, the German high command, even when presented with the photographic evidence, often completely ignored reality, and continued to manoeuvre as previously ordered. One of Hitler's senior advisor's, would not accept that Paris had changed hands, and because Hitler had ordered it's destruction, said that if any allied troops got near, all they would find is a pile of rubble. He refused to tell Hitler. All of that brave, and skillful flying, was a waste of fuel!
THIS WAS A GREAT IDEA,,,high flying planes spying on the enemy taking pictures of troops etc. but problems made this concept difficult. Weather, June was mucky conditions and couldn't see much to photograph, radio positions the enemy and about whats going on down below was impossible to see unless flying closer to the ground which could result being shot down by small arms fire. AND, whatever photos you took were hours old and battle field conditions have changed.
...for simmilar reasons the SR-71 was retired... 🙁 ...a great fast and high flying reconnaisence-plane, nearly invulnerable to any attack... 👍👍👍 ...but too expecive to operate...! ☹☹☹
if it tried to fly over normandy on or in the first days after d day it would have been shot down. the first flight was nearly 2 months after the invasion began and the allies didn't have the same cap over Normandy they did in the first weeks where they shot down or chased off everything.
My dad was in germany near the end of the war in the uk army, he was in an anti aircraft battalion. He said they saw a couple of ? Me262? Which were so fast they had zero chance of shooting at them their equipment (which was anyway mostly used for high level barrages) simply wasnt up to the job. But they just flew over and did nothing in terms of attacks as far as he knew
Photos should have been much better than those taken by piston engined aircraft, no vibrations and should have yielded excellent results especially with excellent German optics.
Very interesting video but I do wish people would throttle back on "could have changed the course of the war" speculations that have no basis in fact. Lack of reconnaissance was pretty low on the list of German problems in the summer of 1944. Even once the Allies had landed the Germans didn't know if this was the main landing and a few recon flights were not going to tell them. It wouldn't have changed much anyway as the defence of Normandy was largely static. The Germans were ground down rather than out manoeuvred. The video is interesting enough not to need any flaky "war changing" hype. If the war had dragged on for a year the much improved Meteor Mark IV would have had the Ardo for breakfast and the Germans didn't have the materials to improve the Jumo 004. In fact the engine performance deteriorated as the war progressed probably because of bad fuel.
I think they could have provided an excellent coverage of the collapse of the German position. Control of the air had long since been lost and with it the land battle against a greatly superior force.
The Arado represents brilliance pushed by desperation. It also shows the then arrogant views of British and American military, not taking the jet seriously(due to cost overruns likely).
A first for Gaman aviation, if they had more of them and a decent amount of weapons load they could have attached the beachheads with maybe some success at first.
i think there is an important distinction to make here: the ME-262 and the AR-234 used the same engine. the 262 was in development and had its first flight around the end of the battle of france, after which Goering removed the priority for the 262's development, believing that the war in the west was all but won and the need for a jet fighter was therefore more redundant than a priority. I think that had this decision not been made, we would have seen the 262 enter service by early 1943 and the 234 would have entered service earlier as well and then we would have seen a much different war, just in terms of aircraft development. if the allies had been presented with significant numbers of jet fighters and bombers earlier in the war, i think that we would have seen earlier development of the meteor as a response, and it would have been pressed into service doing combat air patrol over the western front to counter the high speed jets the germans were putting up. as a side note, had the 234 been operational earlier and in greater numbers, i think we would have seen the addition of defensive armament to the aircraft as the allies countered its speed capabilities and it is an interesting thought exercise to consider how that would have impacted its performance. depending on the number of guns, amount of ammo and type and shape of the turrets, its entirely possible that its cruising speed would have dropped to within the range that the fastest fighters of the day might have been able to catch it in level flight at maximum speed. but thats just a thought exercise. cheers.
@@CalibanRising Even more so than against the Western allies, the Nazis considered themselves superior to the Slavic people in the east. The idea that they would have needed jet planes against the Soviets probably sounded laughable to them. As for the attack on the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) the plan was to crush the Soviets before winter (which is why later they found themselves deep in the USSR during the winter but without any winter equipment. Oops). So in light of this expectation of a short war both on the western and eastern fronts, focusing effort on producing existing production ready aircraft instead of doing R&D on fancy futuristic concepts like jet power probably sounded like a wise decision. Of course later on as they realized the war was dragging on and they were actually in trouble and could have used all these futuristic weapons, it was too late.
@@CalibanRising well I think there’s two ways to tie the war in the east into this. First, if we take events as they happened historically and simply remove the decision to slow the 262’s development, then I think we would see it’s introduction to combat by mid 1942. Had they done that then it’s really kind of dealer’s choice of where to employ it. On the one hand the allied bombing raids are still building to their full operational potential, and thus the allies lack the air superiority to demand its use in the west. On the other hand, using it on the western front in significant numbers would free up more 109’s and 190’s to be sent to the eastern front which might have been the smarter choice since they already had the capability to carry bombs (this is all also assuming the 262 doesn’t get delayed by hitler’s demand that it be redesigned to carry bombs, i.e. the early models don’t have that capability). On the other hand, you can deploy the early 262’s in limited quantities during operation Barbarossa, and hopefully modify them in the field to carry bombs once air supremacy is achieved. In limited numbers though, I don’t think they would have as much of an impact in the east as they might in the west due to a few factors: first, the luftwaffe as it was at the start of operation Barbarossa decimated the vvs. At that early stage, the Germans saw great success against the obsolete fighters and bombers the soviets had at the time and with the speed differential between the German fighters and the soviets, German pilots didn’t have much time to line up their shots. In that regard I think the speed of the 262 would have been detrimental to their overall combat effectiveness simply owing to the issues with their engines. Throttle movements had to be slow and steady or they could risk damaging them, and the engines took a long time to spool up when adding power. The second factor to consider is are the 262’s deployed with or without the capability to carry bombs. Assuming the arado is in the pipeline and is expected to become operational by the end of 1942, you could theoretically use the 262’s in a ground attack role by making strafing attacks with its 30mm cannon. In that role it might be more effective by strafing trains, aaa positions and convoys, maybe even artillery positions. The great equalizer though would be getting hit by ground fire, and the 109’s and 190’s are better suited for that environment in my opinion, but it’s hard to say how that would have played out. As for the soviets developing their own jets earlier, I don’t think they would have. They were on the back foot early on and any jets they would have gotten likely would have come from the western Allies through the lend lease program. What I do think the reality would have been is most likely the 262’s would have gotten used on the western front allowing for more 109’s and 190’s to be sent to the east which could have tipped the scales further in Germany’s favor. Assuming the arado comes into service by mid 1943, it might have been able to make an impact in the east, perhaps affecting the battle of Stalingrad by flying interdiction missions, and it possibly could affect the outcome of the battle of Kursk, but both of those scenarios require it to be available in large numbers and I think that’s being really generous with Germany’s manufacturing capacity by that stage of the war.
the AR 324 did have defensive guns firing out of 6'0 clock. The Preiscope was the aiming periscope for them. There was one Mustang P51D shot down over Aachen or Cologne by this configuration. There are some reports from German and US side about this air victory. By the way, the AR 234 was far away from a "normal" bomber. It size is more about the P39 and is very agile, not like a Me-410, Ju-88 or something like a B-17, etc.
One of these did a reconnaissance mission over East Anglia the day before the end of the war in Europe. What the benefit of this was, I do not know. Perhaps it was just operational inertia.
Wouldn't these planes, even if at 34K feet altitude, have shown up on allied radar? Or perhaps the radar used by ground forces was the type used tactically, such as might be found on advance fighter strips or by use of AA batteries concerned more with conventional GAF planes such as fighters or the then current crop of bombers such as JU88s and ME410s. None of these planes would likely have been flying that high under those conditions (they would not have been after US bombers that far to the west). Even so, I am left wondering if they were ever picked up on any allied radar and dismissed as not being a threat, or not being sure whose aircraft they even were. Just very curious. This is a nicely done mini-doc, but I have yet to see any documentary ever done that gets all the details right. That, I have found, is impossible.
I think this is a very interesting question. I'm no expert on 1940s radar, so I can only guess that they weren't detected or their speed made them appear differently on the scope to conventional aircraft. I'll have to research the extent of radar in 1944 in the Normandy area.
@@CalibanRising The US and Britain had, by the Normandy invasion, very advanced radar that was of the microwave type--something the Germans never figured out. That was developed and industrialized through a huge effort spearheaded by Alfred Loomis, and scaled up at the MIT "rad lab". From 1942 until early 1944, the effort to fully exploit microwave radar technology was so successful that we had sets of all kinds in all kinds of applications--such as was employed in semi-autonomous AA batteries that incorporated a central control trailer housing a radar unit and analog computer. But as I mentioned, I suspect that most of the radar in use on the continent was of the tactical variety. Although, maybe these AA batteries would have been able to track "bandits" as high as 34,000 feet. I just don't know what the total radar battlefield strategy and utilization looked like in the summer of '44. This is why I am guessing that most of the radar in use would have been smaller sets that could detect aircraft in a more tactical scenario--which is to say they would see aircraft at medium to low altitudes. They would not have been expecting Luftwaffe aircraft to be flying so high, but I have no idea if that is the case. If you think about it, that is a reasonable assumption since it's mostly strategic bombers of the day that would have been flying that high. Even then, our bombers were typically flying at around 25 to 28K feet. Who would have been expecting such high flying Kraut aircraft? And maybe they were seen, but it was assumed they were our planes. Or perhaps the AA batteries could not possibly shoot that high anyway. And even if there were air controllers who were tracking them, perhaps they knew that it was unlikely they could get a sortie up to that height in time to take a crack at them. Allied fighters of the time would surely have been able to climb that high, but their performance probably would have suffered. I just don't know. Maybe allied planners knew of the development of the Arado through the spy network, but perhaps too little was known to understand their potential. Everything I am writing is speculation here. I'm very curious to know that answer. I knew from reading years ago that the Arado was a photo-recon plane, but I knew few details such as those revealed in this mini-doc. I never stop being fascinated by this war and what I am still learning about it.
It's interesting how intensely some people enjoy fantasizing about some German weapon or another changing the outcome of WWII. Whether it's this recon plane, the Tiger tank, the StG 44, there's always someone saying "if only Germany had build more of [whatever], things might have turned out different." Personally, I don't think so. By 1944, the allies had won air supremacy. (Incidentally, to accomplish this, U.S. pilots had to seek out Germans - often multi-aces - over France and meticulously kill them. The Arado pilots flew brief, unopposed recon missions over friendly territory. I'm not saying they weren't brave, but by World War II standards I'd hardly call that "epic.") At any rate, having destroyed the Luftwaffe, the allies could operate at any time without regard to time of day or weather. The Germans could only operate at night or with cloud cover. The allies enjoyed robust, unassailable supply lines free of harassment. German supplies were built by slaves and had to traverse miles of territory where everybody hated them. So if Germany had deployed the Arado recon plane a little earlier would we all be speaking German? Not sure why you find that idea so attractive, but no, we wouldn't. Eisenhower would have read the same speech. Conceivably on a different date, but the Germans were never going to win.
I don't think anyone sane would prefer a Nazi victory in WWII. The fascination with German Wunderwaffen is, I think, more to do with that, on paper at least, some of them were ahead of their time. Of course all of them were (luckily!) too little too late. To the extent there was any one single thing equipment-wise in all of WWII that made a difference, it was the US industrial war machine that produced an absolutely staggering number of ships, planes, guns, and everything imaginable.
Re technicalities of photography. Flying that much faster must have meant faster shutter speeds and wider aperture to get images as crisp as slower aircraft?
I think that the Ar 324 was much more well-suited for photo-reconnaissance missions than for any sort of bombing mission. But in any case it came too late.
After the rocket assisted take-off and jettisoning the undercarriage it could probably drop a hand grenade or two from 30000 ft. That is if the pilot looked after the engines.
@@powerjets3512you do realise the ‘rato’ rocket assist was copied by the allies post war don’t you right into the next decades. They weren’t there because the Arado couldn’t take off without them, they were there to take off on short runways.
@drstrangelove4998 you do realise that because the engines had such bad weight to power ratios that they needed extremely long runways. What I said was correct. What I am trying to explain is the limits of the engines. You needed 2 engines for the Me-262 and 4 would have been needed for a bomber. The comments are not mocking but factual, but then that somebody persuaded the Nazis leadership to build it was an achievement.
@@drstrangelove4998 Because of the engines poor power to weight ratio it could not take off from short runways (even without wheels), just as the Me-262 needed forever to get in the air with 2 engines. Perhaps you should watch hardthrashers video on the Me-262. The same corruption etc problems occurred with the jet engines. Perhaps the Ar 324 designer had been promised other numbers, anyway the real achievement was to sell this "bomber" to the Nazis. It would have needed at least 4 jet engines for any meaningful payload. For photo recon the Me-262 would have been good enough. It shocks me that the myths of the Wunder weapons are so ingrained (or the belief that everything was copied from the Germans). Wish for a technical discussion about the engines. The scathing remarks might be justified perhaps?
