The Arado Ar-234 series of aircraft was able to garner a few aviation firsts. It was the first purposely designed and operated jet bomber and it was the first four engine jet to fly. The Arado company was pretty much state owned, unlike others such as Heinkel and Dornier. As such, they did not have to deal with a board of directors nor any stock holders. This allowed them somewhat more freedom.

Arado was well known for a series of successful trainer aircraft as well as their Ar-196 float plane. They also built the designs of other companies as part of the war effort so it was not a small concern. They were tasked with building a jet powered bomber. The head designer had no real interest in the subject so foisted it off on another. After the usual design and development work, the first prototype was ready to go in 1943. In order to save weight that the rather anemically powered jet engines were to carry, it was designed to be operated from a take off trolley, landing on skids beneath the fuselage and under each engine nacelle.

This method operated well on the ground, but using it caused other issues. Initially it was to be released at about 1,000 feet and fall back on a parachute. Many were destroyed and so the height was lowered. Even at low altitude, most dollies did not survive their initial use. Eventually, the aircraft released the dolly while it was still on the ground. This worked, but it was not the answer. The answer was a later design that sacrificed one of the fuselage fuel tanks for landing gear. The aircraft was lengthened and widened to allow this and is the version of which most of us are familiar.

Engines on early jets were a real issue. The aircraft was designed around the BMW 003, but these engines were notoriously unreliable and so most aircraft were powered by Junkers 004. Eventually the BMW plant got a big influx of funds and this allowed reliability of its engines to dramatically increase. All the production four engine Ar-234Cs were powered by these. However, most of the war missions were flown by Ar-234Bs and their two Jumo 004s.

This is Kagero's second volume on this aircraft and one of their 3D productions. That pretty much means  that half the book will be a myriad of superbly done CAD drawings of various parts of the aircraft. This edition provides what was not covered in volume 1 and also gives us a number of overall images. This includes the four engine 234C-3, of which several were delivered to KG 76, but never used operationally.

The first quarter of the book covers the operational use of the aircraft with its intended units, the bomber and recce squadrons. The recce units were the only ones to briefly use the prototypes with their skid landing gear and they were pleased to get the ones with the wider fuselage and more normal gear. These units were quite successful as they flew at speeds that made them virtually immune. The other uses were the bomber units. This basically means KG 76. I was actually quite surprised to read that these planes performed a lot more missions that I'd thought. Their success was minimized as much by the low numbers of planes in each raid as it was by the heavy defense. The next section, before the 3D images consists of sections from the tech manual that covers the various systems. Kagero is known for its plans and in this volume, we get plans for the four engine 234C-3 in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32. The larger two scales are provided in additional large fold outs slipped into the book.

I know that some might wonder why all the historical bits and plans could not have been included into a single volume without the 3D artwork. It could have easily been done, but then Kagero's more recent marketing has relied on the 3D aspect of these publications and I don't see this changing in the near future. Regardless of how you feel about this feature, it is a well done book that is interesting and will be quite useful to enthusiasts and modelers alike.