Avro Arrows Rescue

[Ken The Kanuck]

I hope they pull these up and we finally get an enquiry into why the program was cancelled.

KTK

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/avro-arrow-recovery-lake-ontario-1.4207116

[Oyaji]

Thanks Ken. An interesting bit of aviation history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow

[JB White]

In 1959, the Arrow program was suddenly cancelled for a still-unknown reason.

According to the linked article it was Soviet espionage. They also mentioned politics and runaway spending, so I would think a combination of reasons cancelled it.

[Griff Murphey]

My understanding is that the Arrow was economically not viable. The US wasn't buying any and our exports of fighters and the UK ones dominated the international market. Add to that it used the Canadian Orenda turbojet and not a US one which kind of negated any kind of cooperative marketing with the US.

It was a great plane by all accounts and its cancellation was a blow to Canada's aerospace industry and their national pride. What is in the lake are not actual 1:1 scale aircraft but models that were launched by rockets for aerodynamic tests. All that is left of the Arrows is one nose section including cockpit.

[Mark in Ottawa]

According to a lecture that I attended, although Prime Minister Diefenbaker took all the flak for cancelling the aircraft, the recommendation to do so came from the military. According to the lecturer, the cost of the program was so high that no other capital programs were going to be able to be carried out for years for either the navy or the army. I can understand that, but the decision to destroy all of the completed aircraft and try to make the program completely disappear was unforgivable (and indeed was never forgiven). I was about 13 years old when it was cancelled and had posters of the plane on my bedroom wall.

Years later I was the resident construction engineer at Toronto International Airport (Now Pearson Airport) and worked a few hundred yards from the factory. I could walk out my office door and see where the famous picture of the planes being cut up was taken.

For years there was a myth that one of the planes was flown off and hidden somewhere in a barn. A nice story but unfortunately not true

[RED]

I think that had it been put into service it would have been one of the all time great airplanes. I am not sure which came first the USAF's F-102 Dagger Dart or the Avro but the Arrow was hands down the better design. Two engines and a 2 man crew are in itself an advantage. But that was at a time when supersonic performance technology was taking huge strides and the nuclear threat was being shifted to ICBMs and submarine launched missiles making the high altitude bomber interceptor unnecessary.

[Griff Murphey]

One kind of left-handed tribute to the Arrow was that the US plastic model company Aurora released a model of it which today is a very rare collectors item. They also, previously, did the straight wing Avro CF-100 "Bruce the Moose" which I think I built at least three of.

[DRAGONFLYDF]

There are no Arrows in the lake, what they are looking for are the scale test models.

[snakehunter]

My understanding is that the Arrow was economically not viable. The US wasn't buying any and our exports of fighters and the UK ones dominated the international market. Add to that it used the Canadian Orenda turbojet and not a US one which kind of negated any kind of cooperative marketing with the US.

It was a great plane by all accounts and its cancellation was a blow to Canada's aerospace industry and their national pride. What is in the lake are not actual 1:1 scale aircraft but models that were launched by rockets for aerodynamic tests. All that is left of the Arrows is one nose section including cockpit.

The US probably didn't want it because they had (or soon would have) the F 106, which had better performance in the same role.

[Ken The Kanuck]

Today's news

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/avro-arrow-models-lake-ontario-1.4225591

KTK