No, the Americans did not stop us from building the Arrow. That’s a silly myth; there’s not a shred of evidence to support it, and actually the U.S. assisted in testing the Arrow’s engine (which exploded and shot parts through the fuselage of a USAF B-47.) Why would the Americans really care?
It’s often said that either (1) The Americans didn’t want us bulding the Arrow because then we could intercept the U-2, or (2) the Americans didn’t want us building the Arrow because they wanted all the world’s best planes, or (3) they didn’gt want us building the Arrow because they didn’t trust us, or maybe (4) because they wanted to sell us their planes. All are nonsense, and betray the inability of Canadians TODAY to understand what things were like in 1959. Canada was not the dithering, casually anti-American nation it is now - Canada was an absolutely staunch anti-Communist power, better dead than Red, the whole nine yards. In 1959, it would have seemed utterly ridiculous to anyone to suggest that Canada building a fighter plane was a threat to the United States, or somehow a threat to the U-2. The threat, the ONLY threat, was the USSR.
It’s also pretty unlikely that A.V. Roe ever walked into John Deifenbaker’s office, seeing as how A.V. Roe was as dead as a doornail when Diefenbaker cancelled the plane. Roe died in 1958, and so far as I know he wasn’t in Canada at the time anyway. A.V. Roe Canada was not the same as the original A.V.Roe company.
- The primary reason the Arrow was cancelled was monetary; it was becoming a horrid white elephant. At the point of cancellation the cost of Arrow development had more than doubled over what was originally budgeted - and the plane STILL wasn’t even close to being ready.
Part of the problem, aside from simple cost overruns, was that Avro and the government had hopelessly bungled the decision over what avionics and radar system the plane would be equipped with, spending millions of dollars without actually producing anything that worked. At the time the plane was cancelled it still did not have a weapons or radar system and its planned weapons bays had never been tested. The Arrow was originally planned to be armed with nuclear missiles, the Sparrow-2 air-to-air burst missile, which was then cancelled by the U.S. Navy.
Development continued in Canada at enormous cost, but eventually the Sparrow-2 and its ASTRA firecontrol system were given up on, and Hughes systems were planned for purchase, which meant another pile of money. Furthermore, the much-bragged-about Orenda Iroquois engine had never even been mounted in the plane; prototypes were using a Pratt and Whitney engine. So what you basically had completed was an airframe and an engine that hadn’t been tested together, without any weapons, radar, or electronics even designed. The RCAF believed, with justification, that the Arrow’s budget would triple or even quadruple before it was ready.
Originally the Arrow had been budgeted at $200 million (for development) By 1959 it was above $400 million, and still a long way from production.
So here’s the shocker: The Military Didn’t Want The Arrow. The RCAF believed it was a white elephant and just wasn’t worth the dough. The Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, Charles Foulkes, was absolutely convinced it was a waste of money.
The plane also had no foreign buyers - the U.S. wanted to buy from its own aircraft industry, and the plane was unsuitable for European needs. It was unlikely the project would be financially viable without foreign buyers; the plan had been, originally, to partially finance the project by selling to NATO allies.
What had originally been forcast as a $200 million project WITH foreign sales was looking like it was going to end up being an $800 million or more project WITHOUT foreign sales. In 1958, the military projected that in addition to the money already spent, at least another $800 million would have to be poured into it. It was becoming a financial boondoggle of historic proportions.
- In addition to the enormous cost overruns, the military WAS of the belief that the Arrow did not fit Canadian military needs.
The criticism that the Arrow was built to shoot down bombers in an era is ICBMs is a valid one. In and of itself, Arctic interception was a valuable ability; CF-18s were intercepting Soviet bombers right up to 1992. But the Arrow was built for nothing else. Look at a picture of it; it’s an ENORMOUS plane, with thin wings unsuitable for carrying ordnance. It could only carry air-to-air missiles in its side weapons pods - it didn’t even carry a gun, a common design decision at the time that turned out to be a dreadful mistake.
The Arrow might have been able to intercept bombers, assuming they ever got it to work, but it wasn’t suitable for any other mission profile. It would have been next to useless in Europe, where it was assumed the next war would be fought against Soviet forces. Canadian officers were understandably worried that their entire air force budget would be expended on a plane that could not even be used in the main theatre of war.
And with ICBMs arriving in the scene, the interception mission was becoming less important. It was still important, but not so much so that the RCAF was willing to spend EVERY PENNY of aircraft capital costs on the Arrow; they were better off buying cheaper planes that could do more, which, unsurprisingly, is precisely what they ended up doing. The fact that Avro refused to listen to the military and tried to cover up things they were doing didn’t help the relationship; by 1958 the military and the company didn’t trust each other any farther than you could throw a fat general.
Some resources for you that will tell you more than web sites:
THE ARROW, James Dow, J. Lorimer press, 1979: the definitive work.
FALL OF AN ARROW, Murray Peden, Canada’s Wings, 1978.
SHUTTING DOWN THE NATIONAL DREAM, Greig Stewart, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1988.
THERE NEVER WAS AN ARROW, E.K. Shaw, Steel Rail Educational, 1981.
As to why the prototypes were busted up… that was pretty common practice at the time. Can’t let any Russkies get a hold of them!