Hi folks,
I did not see a thread on this yet, but found the news to be pretty interesting.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/a ... -1.4280537

Interesting, so there are some examples left. Restore one, the plane deserves it.

Sadly, I think it is a scale model only about 3 meters long.

airnorth wrote:

Sadly, I think it is a scale model only about 3 meters long.

Yes, they found two of the "free flight" model. Not an actual or full size Avro Arrow.

Tugg

Dutchy wrote:

Interesting, so there are some examples left. Restore one, the plane deserves it.

If you take the mythology of it aside it wasn't that exceptional of a plane. I can't think of much reason to want one over an F-4 for example.

Flipping zebra mussels

bigjku wrote:

Dutchy wrote:

Interesting, so there are some examples left. Restore one, the plane deserves it.

If you take the mythology of it aside it wasn't that exceptional of a plane. I can't think of much reason to want one over an F-4 for example.

It was cancelled for good reason, which is something that was glossed over in the lore and mythology. To have continued developing the Arrow, along with the other need bits of military modernization that was needed at the time (the Navy needed new ships, the Army needed new tanks and trucks, etc) would have been cost prohibitive at the time, for the available defence budget.

Had any government allowed the CF-105 project to continue, it would have disarmed Canada. The project was opposed by, inter alia, the Treasury, the Naval Staff, the General Staff and the majority of the Air Staff - for good reasons.

With the launch of Sputnik, governments around the world were re-assessing their fighter jet needs and requirements. Canada especially could not afford to continue with a project that may or may not be even useful in a few years. The entirety of the Avro Arrow imbroglio was financial: building and flying the Arrow would have destroyed the Canadian Forces unless unconscionably huge increases were made to the defence budget – in the teeth of a major recession!

It was a good airplane, probably even a very good airplane but not one that could be sold to anyone else. It would have been a HUGE white elephant. The government made the politically and militarily correct decision. Canada no longer needed the Arrow; Canada could not afford the Arrow; the Arrow met the fate it deserved: the scrap heap.

The funding that was supposed to go to the CF-105 was instead diverted to recapitalize the Army and Navy, as both services needed new equipment. The Navy got the new destroyers it needed. The Army got their new tanks and trucks.

Now was the government of the day a mite brutal in ending the project? Yes, but there was overriding concerns regarding the Soviets getting their grubby mittens on the plans (which proved in the end to be true; the Soviets had penetrated into the project, and both Canadian and American intelligence agencies knew there was a mole inside the program). Could the government have gone in a different direction and kept that expertise? Yes, but what?

Diefenbaker was the first PM to have to face up to declining Canadian support for military spending which coincided with huge increases in the rate of defence product related inflation – which meant that new/replacement weapon systems cost more and more and more, increasing faster than capabilities (and, consequently, lower quantities required). He cancelled the Arrow at the insistence of his senior bureaucrats, admirals, generals and the majority of his air marshals.

The aircraft was good but not great and there was no market, beyond Canada, for it – it was on track to destroy the military by sucking all the money away from all other projects. He introduced an 'austerity programme' across government which had the primary aim of finding money for the military's budget. The Pearson/Hellyer integration/unification debacle was initiated because they, too, wanted to find ways to give military what the admirals, generals and air marshals said they needed from within the current budget because Canadians would not support increased defence spending – new social programmes were top of the national priority list, a list created by those who survived the Great Depression and fought World War II.

Personally, I feel that if Canada and the US had chosen to cooperate on the F-108 Rapier project instead of going their own separate ways, it would have produced one of the most amazing high-speed interceptors ever deployed. Instead, the US Navy got the A-5 Vigilante and the USAF almost the YF-12 and the Canadians got nothing much useful for their work. Would have been a faster, longer legged, and probably more reliable than the Mig 25.