Ar 240 over England

[Graham Boak]

I would suspect the date rather than the account. If you mean that the flight was accompanied by another Arado with Sommer, then I doubt it very much. I have only seen references to Goetz flying the one aircraft on this series of missions. It would be difficult to identify another such airframe available at this time. A-03 and V9 were destroyed, and V-10 was still at Arado (as far as I know.....). It seems that either V7 or V8, possibly both, survived to this period, but with DB605s these would have been of lower performance.

By hybrid I mean that it was somewhere between an A series airframe and a C series airframe. It was initially built (begun?) as an A-0 airframe but was modified to take DB603 engines and the outer wing panels of the Ar240C. It retained the shorter wing centresection of the DB601 airframe - the Ar240C/Ar440 drawings show a wider centre-section for bigger propellors. If you look at the photos of it in the Profile you will see an extra wing section outboard of the nacelle carrying a small flap not present on any 240/440 drawings.

References seem to differ on whether A-03 and/or A0-04 initially flew before the big wings were fitted, or not. Given the timescales, I think it safe to assume not.

The crashed aircraft is seen in the back pages of Manfred Griel's Luftwaffe Bombers book. I do not know the precise date - if it is not in Griehl then it is in Dr. Horst Mankow's published works on the aircraft. I have seen the pilot's name: the crash is credited to his inexperience with the somewhat unorthdox handling of the aircraft on approach and landing.