One of my all times Favorite planes has been the Avro Arrow, and there is a sort of conspirancy theory around it.

The Arrow was a Canadian designed Mach 2 Interceptor, it was designed in the middle 50s and several prototypes were made, the info I found was that the plane was superb (not being an Aeronautical Engineer or a Fighter Pilot, I can't attest to it but it did look pretty cool )

The Diefenbaker goverment pulled the plug on the Arrow, and they way it did caused a lot of resentment (or so it seems). When I lived in Canada I heard a quite a few comments on the Canadian goverment doing this because the US Goverment pressed Diefenbaker (encouraged by US Aerospace Companies). Particularly because Avro Canada was forced to cancel the proyect in a rather abrupt manner (and ended closing as well) and the fact that the prototypes were destroyed.

From what I have read it seems more likely that it was more of a goverment that got into something a lot harder that what they thought (designing and making Mach 2 Interceptors is still pretty hard today ) I would like to hear any views on the subject.

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Its like the British TSR2, over the years it has become a 'Super Plane' It was cancelled by Dennis Healey under a labour Govt as they had decided that Bombers were obsolete because of AA Missiles. The real reason was to save money and the natural instinct of all British govts of every political leaning to slash defence funding.

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The Arrow was obsolete from the start. The Canadian army already had a tank.



It looked like a nice plane, but I don't know any details about its cancellation.

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Ah yes, the Arrow. The conspiracy theories run the gamut from the US threatening war, to blackmail by the Soviets. As with all conspiracy theories older then 10 years, it's had a movie made about it, which greatly bolstered the idea that there was strong political pressure on the government to get rid of it.

I, personally, think that it was the voters of the time, who wanted to know why the government was spending millions on a plane that was making little headway, especially since the Cold war fear of nukes in Canada doesn't seem to have been anything like it was in the States. Now, it was a pretty impressive plane, but it's development took a long time, and had quite a few setbacks, leading to, I suspect, the idea that it was a great waste of money.

An interesting offshoot of these theories has people attempting to locate one of the 'saved' prototypes, that was supposedly sneaked away and stashed somewhere (normally under water), so that it wouldn't be destroyed or some such.

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The things that seem to fuel the CT are basically:

a) Abrupt Cancellation of the program

b) Abrupt dismisal of all of the workers involved in construction of the plane

c) Destruction of the prototypes

d) Bankruptcy of Avro Canada

The Avro program did have 2 very significant setbacks:

a) The apparent cancelation of the US Navy Phoenix Missile (I say apparent because years later the US Navy had Phoenix IIs)

b) The cancellation of the Astra Radar System

It was a very expensive program no doubt, It's also noteworthy (although somewhat off topic) the great skill of Avro Engineers, designing and making a Mach 2 interceptor is quite a feat, particularly in the 50s and in a country that had a much smaller Aerospace Industry that the ones in the US or the USSR. If I recall correctly the EU had a handful with the development and deployment of the Eurofighter Typhoon and we are talking a consortium of very mature Aerospace Companies.

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I think what they're actually looking for is a scale aerodynamic model which was fired by rocket to test the shape and wound up in one of the Great Lakes.

Edit: Here's a site with info on the search as well as other info. http://www.avroarrow.org/

The Arrow was a truly lovely airplane but all conspiracies aside, the problems were probably insurmountable. IIRC the original engine was years behind and the Arrow only ever flew with an off-the-shelf on with insufficient thrust to even get it to supersonic. The radar and missle were in much the same boat. Still, it's a crying shame the prototypes were destroyed.

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Quite true, I forgot about the Iroquois I-75 engine,

Oh, BTW I made a mistake on the missile system it was not the Phoenix, it was the Sparrow

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True, they are searching for models, but there is a rumour that one full sized plane escaped (was stolen?) and therefore avoided being scraped. I suppose it's in someones garage now.

IIRC after the launch of Sputnik the Canadian gov. decided that fighter jets were obsolete in defending north america against bombers if the soviets were going to use ICBMs instead.

yup, that was the therory in the UK for a while as I say, the TSR2 and SUpersonic Harrier development was scrapped. As a result the Lightning had to soldier on past its sell by date and F4 Phantoms were procured from the USA and rebuilt to use RR engines

To be honest I think economics were at the root of it.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

They usually are. Money is the root of more than just evil!

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IIRC, the reason given was that the UK had been pursuaded to by F-111s instead (due to some of the development problems that they had had with the TSR2.) Needless to say, the F-111 program went through its own development hell, and we ended off procuring F-4s instead.

The arrwo was cancelled due a combination of the americans pressuring canadians to buy a failed defense sheild then planes that in canada that were dubbed the " widow maker" , and the politics, and personalty conflisct between the head of arvo and defenbaker. The brits and french actually had orders to buy the engines. Because arvo had to close after the arrow most of the engineers had to move on some went to us and designed the mercury and appolo missions and one went one to help the design the concorde.

Lots of cool, beautiful and just plane groovey planes get lost the same way the Arrow did. Not uncommon to chop up everything, you don't want your enemy getting their hands on anything that you've done, just in case.

In any case, it's all old hat now. The F-22 would eat it alive, as would the F-15.

No doubt a lot of cool programs were canceled, after all those things cost a lot of money, and not only cool beautiful groovey planes, also things like the SeaDart got canned. I have read that the reason the prototypes and all got destroyed was because nobody could do much with them (ie. the NRC) and also because there was some evidence that the Soviet Union had an active spy network in Canada.

Well the comparison is hardly fair, the Arrow was a 1950s design, the F-15 was a 1970s design and the F-22 a 1990s design. What made the Arrow interesting was that it was pretty advanced for its time. Heck I love my old TRS-80 it had features which pretty advanced for an 8-Bit computer, yet my Nokia 6230 phone would run circles around it.

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It may be of interest to some that Avro was also trying to build
Flying Saucers!

But without much success.

Yep, we had a thread about the AvroCar a couple of weeks ago, it seems that the design had some pretty bad stability problems, thanks for the Link, it has Pics I don't have in my collection

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Canada´s broken dream

Oh, and I´ve found people talking about a possible ressurection of the project in 2009, to celebrate the 100th year of powered flight in Canada . Try googling intitle:"avro arrow" 2009.

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Well it would not make much sense to revive a project like that because:

a) Canada doesn't need an interceptor for long range bombers right now (or so it seems)

b) They would have to re-design the craft from the screws up

c) Who is going to pay for it?

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Yeah, it looks like a sort of millenarist dream (like the Portuguese dreams of the victorious return of Prince Sebastian - who would help Portugal in its darkest hour...).

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Look at This, and check this, it's more of a patriotic symbolic act, they claim they have found about 45% of an Arrow and lots of the technical Diagrams and Plans, basically they are rebuilding one to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Canadian Powered Flight.

I think it's pretty cool

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