The Avro Arrow

following the Second World War Canada developed a leading aerospace industry under the leadership of Avro Canada the company collected some of the brightest minds in aerospace and worked on some projects that even today still seem fantastic some even argue that Canada was on a trajectory to place a man on the moon and then came Black Friday the demise of the Avro Canada Sea f-105 arrow changed the trajectory of Canadian aerospace in the world's aerospace technology and still leaves to this day Canadians wondering what might have been it is history that deserves to be remembered many factors came together to build a robust Canadian aerospace industry that produced the Avro Arrow although there was aircraft manufacturing in Canada during the Great War notably a plant in Toronto producing the famous JN for Jenny for the Curtiss corporation the origins of Avro Canada are really derived from the Second World War and start with a company more known for railroad rolling stock than Wings national still car was established in 1912 with initial factory in Hamilton Ontario to build railroad rolling stock the factory hit production just in time to serve a railroad boom in Canada and orders an investment return exceeded all expectations new investors purchased the company and incorporated it in 1919 as national steel car Corporation Limited the company did well until the depression went ahead to start diversifying operations to stay open as early as 1935 the British government saw war clouds on the horizon among the many preparations was an effort to be able to ramp up aircraft production called the shadow scheme the idea was to bring aviation expertise to automobile manufacturing both to be able to rapidly increase production in the event of war in to disperse production to make it less vulnerable in case factories were bombed the British government contracted with automobile companies to create shadow plants that would shadow their normal automotive operations but where expertise would be transferred such that the plants could turn quickly from automobile to aircraft production the government funded the construction of the additional factories with loans and grants similar programs were started in Canada Australia New Zealand and Africa this not only increased the production potential but by dispersing production throughout the empire that made the production less vulnerable to attack as part of the scheme national steel car started receiving contracts for aircraft production the company subcontracted parts for a number of aircraft including the Hawker hurricane the Avro Anson and the handley page Hampton in 1938 they put a manufacturing plant for their new aircraft division in Bolton unhear tario building the Westland Lysander rugged liaison aircraft after Britain entered the war in 1939 production was to increase the Maltin plant was initially planned to manufacture the b-26 Marauder twin-engine bomber designed by the American Grinnell Martin company but in 1941 the company instead received a contract to build the Avro Lancaster 10 heavy bomber the Avro Lancaster was a four engine heavy bomber requiring complex manufacturing that included more than 500,000 manufacturing operations to construct a plane the sheer complexity of the design resulted in concerns about national steel cars ability to manage such projects the Moulton plant was therefore expropriated by the government and set up as a government-owned crown'd corporation called Victory aircraft national steel car continued contribute to the war effort producing shells gun parts and army truck bodies the Avro company had been founded in 1910 by Elliot Verdun row an early aircraft pioneer the company was incorporated under his name as the AV ro aircraft company which was later renamed simply Avro aircraft the company built a number of planes notably the Avro 504 what are the most produced biplane aircraft of the first world war in 1935 the company was acquired by Hawker Siddeley but continued to manufacture under the Avro name Avro built a number of important aircraft for the Second World War but none more important than the Avro Lancaster which became the principal heavy bomber used by the Royal Air Force the Royal Canadian Air Force and Commonwealth forces victory aircraft built the Lancaster mark 10 which differ from the other models and that it used american-made instruments and electrics and the Merlin engines were built under licence by the u.s. Packard company victory aircraft built 430 of the more than 7,000 Lancaster bombers that were eventually pretty in addition victory manufactured 3197 Avro and sense which were mostly used as multi crew trainer aircraft towards the end of the Second World War there was discussion in the Canadian government about the importance of maintaining an indigenous Canadian aerospace industry but in 1945 the government negotiated the sale of victory aircraft to uk-based Hawker Siddeley Hawker Siddeley then made the new Canadian facility the Canadian branch of their uk-based subsidiary av rowing company naming the new entity AV ro Canada limited the Moulton facility largely served and repaired World War 2 era aircraft that were still in service including the hawker sea fury in the North American b-25 Mitchell but the company also invested in research and development looking to be on the cutting edge of the jet age designing a jet engine jet fighter aircraft and yet passenger aircraft one of the first projects with the design of Canada's first jet fighter aircraft the Avro Canada C f100 Canuck the Canuck the only Canadian design fighter aircraft to ever reach normal production was an interesting aircraft but its largest impacts on the Canadian aerospace industry were not in the plane itself the Kinect ran into series production delays including the crash one of the prototypes killing the pilot as a result resources were shifted away from the Avro Canada c1o to the c 102 prototype first flew August 10th 1949 making it only the second passenger jet airliner in the world in fact we're not for runway repairs at the Malton Airport the c 102 might have beaten the de Havilland comet into the air in April 1950 the jetliner carried the world's first jet airmail from Toronto to New York City in just 58 minutes half the previous record the crew was welcomed with a ticker tape parade through the streets of Manhattan the c 102 even had a buyer and Howard Hughes at Transworld airlines but Avro lacked the manufacturing space and bandwidth and was focused on the C f100 the cancellation of the C 1 or 2 stopped the nation Canadian commercial airliner industry in its tracks secondly the C f100 production delays led to a deal between the Canadian government and Avro Canada to bring Crawford Gordon Jr who have been instrumental in organizing industrial resources during the war over from the Department of Defense to become a virile candidates general manager in 1951 under Gordon Avro Canada diversified acquired numerous companies quickly growing until in 1956 became Canada's third largest corporation employing over 50,000 employees and 44 companies representing multiple industries and the company with growing confidence and expertise in aerospace undertook its most ambitious project yet even though the CF 100 was not yet in full production ever was already working on a much more advanced replacement the Avro CF 105 Aero the development of the CF 105 was a realization that the Soviet Union was already working on jet bomber aircraft that would make the CF 100 obsolete the need was recognized for an all-weather supersonic jet interceptor the Avro Arrow with his result of a series of design studies that examine improvements on the C f100 the CF 105 addressed the issue of wave drag at supersonic speeds by using a delta wing which allowed greater fuel and payload capacity than a swept wing the wing design and more powerful engines would have allowed a supersonic aircraft with a potential max speed of Mach 2 with the ability to be armed with air-to-air missiles a substantial improvement over the C f100 the plane was one of the most advanced design concepts in the world and incorporated a number of innovations including one of the first stability augmentation systems an aggressive production schedule was required to counter the development of Soviet jet bombers an Avro decided to take a risk on production model where the assembly line was produced before the prototypes and adjusted as testing refined the process this meant that the plane could move from testing to production much more quickly but had a greater front-end capital risk the plane was first rolled out October 4th 1957 and after initial testing was impressive the prototypes displayed excellent handling and achieved a Mach 1.90 in steady level flight in 1981 aviation author and expert Bill Gunston described the Avro Arrow as in almost every way the most advanced of all the fighters of the 1950s that was as impressive and successful as any aircraft in history and on February 20th 59 with only five prototypes for the Avro Arrow produced the Government of Canada officially cancelled the program there many explanations for the demise of the Avro Arrow if the date of the rollout October 4th 1957 sounded familiar that's because that was also the day that the Soviets launched Sputnik the first artificial Earth satellite not only did the launch steal the Thunder from the sea f-105s rollout it represented a tectonic shift in strategic thinking the fear now was ballistic missiles not bomber aircraft and even so much as bomber aircraft were concerned the answer seemed to be ground-to-air missiles rather than high-speed interceptors to be fair the arrow program was expensive competing with other priorities both the Army and the Navy opposed the programs that shifted so much resources to the Air Force in parliamentary elections in June of 1957 the Progressive Conservative Party led by John Diefenbaker won more seats than the Liberal government of Lois and Laura Dieffenbach er was a conservative who had run against rampant liberal spending was not supportive of the program in August 1957 can it officially sound the North American air defense agreement or NORAD agreement and the u.s. made the semi-automatic ground environment or sage available to Canada along with the bomarc ground to air missile the government determined that could not afford both sage bomarc and the arrow and the arrow had failed to garner an international sale to help defray cost when the government announced the cancellation they said it was result of a careful analysis of threats whatever the combination of politics changes in strategic threats and development costs the cancellation was devastating to Avro Canada the general consensus was that the leadership was completely unprepared and the day of the cancellation has been called the Black Friday for Canadian aviation the Aeronautics branch had put all its efforts into the program and the process of building the assembly on first meant all its capital was committed Hawker Siddeley closed every aircraft and immediately the 15,000 people working at the Moulton plant lost their jobs and that number again lost their jobs in the supply chain the company tried to reassign the engineers from the project to other parts of the company but aeronautical engineers didn't want to design cars many left the country for the US the United Kingdom causing a dispersal a massive brain drain of the Canadian aerospace expertise the other assets of the ones massive company were slowly divested the Avro Arrow was not just cancelled it was eradicated within two months of cancelling the programme the prototypes all the tooling and design specifics were ordered to be destroyed because of security concerns only the nose of one of the prototypes was preserved although there had been persistent rumours that one of the five prototypes was hidden away and there have been scale models and reproductions that have been produced and displayed in addition to the arrow the Avro had a special projects group that innovated designs the work of the SPG continued past the demise of Avro aircraft notably working on the avrocar Flying Saucer idea until 1961 if the idea of a Canadian space program seems far-fetched today it was very real Jim Chamberlain chief of design for the Sea f-105 led a team of some 25 Averell engineers that joined NASA after the cancellation of the arrow Tim Berlin was head of engineering for Project Mercury chief designer and as a source project manager for the Germany spacecraft and a troubleshooter on the Apollo program his contributions were central to the u.s. manned spaceflight program and represent the significance of the brain pool that was lost after the cancellation of the arrow in 2013 Rob Cohen CEO of the Canadian Air and Space Museum speculated to global news that if the company had been left alone to continue the development process Canada would have had a man on the moon the story of the Avro Canada Sea f-105 arrow represents the challenges of the Cold War when perceived threats and rapidly shifting technologies competed with government attempts to put a cap on spiraling defense spending and other priorities cancellation of the arrow has to be seen within the context of the day the the focus on high speed interceptors shifted away right is what promised to be perhaps the best high speed interceptor ever built was about to make its debut but the aerospace industry and the history really of the world might have been different if Canada did not suffer the brain drain that came with the cancellation of the Avro Arrow and so the history of the Sea f-105 is not just in the history of what happened but in the loss history of what might have been I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guys where it's snippets have forgotten history in between ten and fifteen minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guide on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes don't forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 378,855

Rating: 4.9619279 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, canada, avro, avro arrow, aviation, aerospace industry, history guy

Id: F4z5-l7u2Uo

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019