Arado E.555 - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Arado E.555 was a bomber

Bomber

A bomber is a military aircraft designed to attack ground and sea targets, by dropping bombs on them, or – in recent years – by launching cruise missiles at them.-Classifications of bombers:...

proposed by the German

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

Arado

Arado Flugzeugwerke

Arado Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturer, originally established as the Warnemünde factory of the Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen firm, that produced military hydroplanes during the First World War.-History:...

company in response to the Amerika Bomber

Amerika Bomber

The Amerika-Bomber project was an initiative of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium, the Nazi Germany Air Ministry, to obtain a long-range strategic bomber for the Luftwaffe that would be capable of striking the continental United States from Germany, a range of about 5,800 km...

project.

Project request

This was an initiative of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium
Reich Air Ministry
thumb|300px|The Ministry of Aviation, December 1938The Ministry of Aviation was a government department during the period of Nazi Germany...

(Germany Air Ministry), RLM, to obtain a long-range bomber for the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

that would be capable of striking the continental United States from Germany. Requests for designs were made to the major German aircraft manufacturers early in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, long before the US had entered the war.

Variants

There were a few variants of the Arado E.555, the most striking being the E.555-1. This was a six-jet

Jet engine

A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet to generate thrust by jet propulsion and in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets...

, angular flying wing

Flying wing

A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft which has no definite fuselage, with most of the crew, payload and equipment being housed inside the main wing structure....

design, with remotely-operated turrets, and capable of carrying a large payload. All of these projects were deemed too expensive and ambitious and were abandoned.

Arado E.555 I

Six engine

Arado E.555 II

Four-engine flying wing bomber

Arado E.555 III

Two-engine flying wing bomber

Arado E.555 IV