Arado Ar E.580
The E.580 was intended to compete with the Heinkel He 162 Volksjager design - the latter eventually winning out.
By Staff Writer
Once the Volksjager competition came around in 1944, Arado Flugzeugwerke went back to a 1943 design it had had and touched it up some, producing the E.580 design model. This aircraft was to be a single-seat, single-engine jet fighter to help in defense of the Reich and eventually turn the tide of the Allied advance in the war. Designed with simplicity in mind (in both construction methods and pilot operation), the E.580 was Arado's answer for the new RLM proposal. Unfortunately for Arado, the Heinkel He 162 won out - and the E.580 became paper history.
Outwardly, the E.580 shared some similarities to the Heinkel design. As in the Heinkel He 162, the engine of the E.580 series sat atop the fuselage, wings were of a straight-line design (no sweep), all armament was kept in the nose, a tricycle undercarriage was featured (a growing novel concept of new aircraft designs for the time) and the empennage was detailed by the split-vertical fin arrangement. The engine layout of the E.580 - as opposed to the layout found on the He 162 - appeared more integrated into the fuselage design with the rear of the pilot's canopy seemingly disappearing into the jet intake. The engine selected would have been the BMW 003A-1 series turbojet. How this layout would have eventually fared creates some skepticism as the canopy would have no doubt blocked airflow into the intake. Armament was never finalized but proposed weaponry would have been either a pair of MK 108 30mm cannons or MG 151/20 20mm cannons. In either case, these would have been situated in the nose and were potent enough to contend with both fighter and bomber alike.
The Heinkel He 162 eventually won the competition and - by this author's judgment - rightfully so. By all accounts it was the more sound design on paper with the He 162 eventually seeing production in limited numbers. Both design attempts - it should be noted - were early forays into single-engine jet aircraft designs. How the E.580 would have fared in real combat is left up to the imagination.
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