Arado Ar TEW 16/43-23

The single-seat, jet-powered Arado Ar TEW 16/43-23 design was penciled sometime in 1943. Categorized as a fighter, the type might have been an impressive addition to the ranks of the Luftwaffe where jet-powered aircraft were beginning to take a larger priority over their piston-powered brethren. Regardless, the potential of the Ar TEW 16/43-23 was never realized for the Arado firm pressed forward with their other revolutionary single-seat, jet-powered bomber design - the Ar 234 "Blitz" (or "Lightning").

The aircraft featured a pair of underwing Heinkel He S 011 series turbojets in streamlined nacelles. The main wing assemblies were fitted about the midway point of the fuselage and were also high-mounted to allow for clearance of the engines. Each wing system sported a good deal of leading edge sweep as well as soft sweep along the trailing edge, both eventually tapering off at rounded wingtips. The empennage was made up of a single vertical tail fin to which a pair of horizontal planes were affixed. The tail surfaces also made use of sweep and capped with rounded ends. The pressurized cockpit was held well-forward in the design to which the pilot would have sat under a large two-piece canopy and behind a short nose-cone assembly. The raised fuselage spine would almost certainly have curtailed any visibility to the critical rear areas. The tricycle undercarriage was completely retractable and made up of two single-wheeled main landing gear legs recessing into the wings just inboard of each engine and a single-wheeled nose landing gear leg recessing forward into the nose cone. The nose wheel would have rotated 90 degrees to lay flat. The long streamlined fuselage was designed to house the three large internal fuel tanks necessary to feed the early generation of thirsty turbojet engines.

Armament was relatively modest and all systems were logically contained under the fuselage nose. This would have been comprised of a pair of MG 213/20 20mm cannons complimented by a single MG 151/15 15mm machine gun. Beyond that, no other forms of ordnance carrying were noted.

Performance was purely speculative and included an estimated stop speed of 572 miles per hour as well as a service ceiling of 39,370 feet. Dimensions were made up of a 34.9 foot wingspan, a 40.1 foot length and an 8.9 foot height.

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Last Revision: 10/28/2009