I am a huge aviation junky, and about as Canadian as possible but I just do not understand the big deal about the Avro Arrow. It is a perennial Canadian inferiority rallying point around greatness that could have been, but what was so great about it other than being homegrown? Canadian inferiority complex is so fucking tiresome.
It was to be a plane to fill a niche of particular interest to Canada at the time, but it seems to me that time was not going to last long with the age of ICBM’s around the corner. Was it really so special technically? There is a very long list of technically marvelous, before their time aircraft that never saw the light of day, most of them pipe dreams for various reasons, the Arrow fits in this group nicely.
The politics of its cancellation is somewhat murky, is that it?
You’re right, the airplane was obsolescent and way overpriced before it even flew. The cancellation of the program, considering only its merits, was long overdue.
There seem to me to have been two tragedies involved - the immediate, no-notice firings of almost everyone involved in the program was one, even though the pain to most of them and their families was made up for by their hirings in the US aerospace industry. The bigger tragedy for Canada, and the origin of the myth (for lack of a better word) was IMHO the fact that there was nothing to replace it - there was never a coherent government or industrial strategy to build and maintain a domestic military aircraft industry there, no next program to go to once the Arrow began to need cancellation, nothing even newer and sweeter to put the Arrow program in its proper context.
It was a high speed, high altitude, nuclear rocket carrying interceptor. The last and most technically advanced of that sort of aircraft. and unfortunately, obsolete, even the RCAF had it’s doubts at the end.
Very relevant topic…the F-35 fighter is shaping up to be a major US disaster. The plane is so expensive, and it doesn’t perform well. Yet the financial impact (were it to be cancelled) would prevent any coalition of congressmen from even trying. Its symptomatic of the “defense industry”-its more about power, pork, and saving jobs, more than anything actually concerned with the actual utility of the thing.
I think the big deal is mostly around the fact that Britain and Canada were cancelling a lot of aircraft projects at the time in favor of purportedly cheaper American aircraft, which all turned out to have massive cost overruns that would have justified completing the domestic project in the first place. The TSR-2 has a similar story.
It didn’t carry “nuclear rockets”, whatever those are. It was supposed to carry conventional air-to-air missiles (the USN’s Sparrow) or bombs.
One of the comments on this great video about the Saunders-Roe SR.177 got me going on this.
Near the end of it they go on about the the F-105 export program and how Lockheed eventually got in trouble for bribing German and British Officials involved in the project. The F-105 being an excellent example of what you mention Really Not All That Bright, a nearly as expensive and ill - suited replacement.
So from all the great replies I get that the economic issue of supporting domestic aviation industry seems to be the main factor of these sort of projects, more significant that the homegrown super cool high performance jet patriotism angle. In that respect it is interesting to compare this to the more recent development of Bombardier in Canada, eating most of the remaining aviation industry here with huge government support in order to go up against Embraer/Brazil in the regional jet market. A smaller version of the Boeing/Airbus rivalry.
I guess the next question would have to be directed towards the economists as to whether the economic benefits of such astronomical Government investment is as significant as the politics.
It’s not about economic benefit, really. It’s about self-sufficiency, which is really a security issue.
Today, Canada is America’s Hat, mostly content to allow the umbrella of US strategic might to protect it. Tomorrow, the US might be overrun with zombies/Chinese/Klansmen/whoever and unwilling or unable to protect Canada (or even itself). What do you do then, when the other countries you could buy military equipment from are the ones you need to protect yourself from?
Nitpick: That was the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. The F-105 Thunderchief (or ‘Thud’, or ‘Lead Sled’) was built by Republic, and was only used by the U.S. Air Force.
I graduated from UBC in Engineering in 1961, two years after the Arrow cancellation. There was still a shortage of meaningful jobs in electronics in Canada at that time so I hired into The Boeing Company. Over my years with Boeing I worked with a number of “Arrow engineers” plus one of the test pilots, Peter Cope. Many of the innovations developed for the Arrow were incorporated into the 727 and later aircraft. Some like the revolutionary hydraulic system were very significant.
History has shown in retrospect that the Arrow could have evolved into a leading military aircraft. Just as important, the Iroquois jet engine was well ahead of its time and could easily have propelled Orenda into a prominent role in both military and civil markets, a multi billion dollar industry. New technology always requires more investment than the immediate market appears to warrant but the long-term results often far exceed the pioneers’ dreams.
I’ve often wondered if part of the mythology that’s grown up around the Arrow cancellation was that it was the Diefenbaker gov’t that pulled the plug, thereby sending the eastern-based aviation industry into a tailspin: “Those dumb westerners!” sort of attitude.
There is the perception that the Canadian government killed it because the US demanded they do so in order to sell them US planes. Additionally, its cancellation killed up to 30,000 jobs and Avro Canada itself. Thus it serves as an example of Canada’s government kowtowing to the US, which is a blow to national pride.
Surely you jest, although they were going to put up with the USA nuking Russian bombers over Canadian airspace.
What did the USA sell them instead, not YF-12As.
A friend of mine who was in the military at the time told me: basically, everything was late and over budget, just like the US products. The Iroquois engine, IIRC, was severely late and over budget, so substitute engines from elsehwere were installed in the prototype. “It doesn’t perform as advertised because we are using inferior engines.”
Dief and his government were not as beholden to the existing economic and corporate elite as the Liberals were, so he took the initiative to cancel the program.
the same argument applied then as now with Canada buying the F35’s - do we really really need that? With that price tag? (I suppose the argument today is we could do better cover more territory and far cheaper with drones).
IIRC the mission was to intercept Russian bombers coming over the arctic. In that respect, Dief and the missile advocates were years ahead of their time. Within 10 years, the majority of the focus on all-out war was missiles; for that, any aircraft would be irrelevant. For defending our borders - how much do we need to spend? If a country that can afford enough equivalent fighters decides to invade, either (a) it’s the USA so we can’t match them, or (b) the USA will jump in to help.
