The CF-100 Canuck: Canada’s Only Mass-Produced Fighter Jet

World War II was a time of major change in aerial combat from new fighter designs to the Advent of long-range strategic bombers to a new era of Naval dependency on the aircraft carrier but none of those changes were quite so revolutionary as the jet engine almost in the blink of an eye that one new piece of technology had forced prop planes to the verge of obsolescence and even though the clunkiest early jet models could be dealt with it was plain as day for all sides to see this wouldn't be the case for very long after the war different countries took different approaches to dealing with the jet fighter problem the United States and the Soviet Union respectively set to work designing Next Generation jet aircraft quickly with the hopes of competing and mastering that technology before the next war broke out Britain assuming that the next War wouldn't come for another decade dragged its feet and sat complacent with its Gloucester meteor in a process that eventually LED them perhaps a little bit too late to building a proper Fighter the Hawker Hunter but unlike the Brits the Royal Canadian Air Force wasn't mucking about when it came to the jet age and even before the wars end the rcaf had issued a call for a fighter jet of their own what Canada was looking for at the time was a twin jet aircraft equipped with radar and a fire control system meant to serve as an all-weather Interceptor that could survive in the harsh cold of the Canadian North Country their push for a jet plane was based on a number of educated assumptions from the Canadians perspective firstly that having their own military aviation industry where they could handle production lines and engineering design indigenously would be a major National Asset as time went on secondly they'd already taken the gamble that jet power was the way into the future and they had a turbo jet program running since July 1944 and although they didn't know it before the war's end the arms racing and escalation of the United States and Soviet Union would quickly put Canada in a bit of a nuclear pickle look at the world map and it's easy to see cause for concern after all the Soviet Union and Alaska were very nearly touching tips across the Bayern Strait and if anything went down in Alaska it was Canada sharing a border and a sea with them but look at the world on a globe and the problem becomes even more clear go over the Arctic and Canada was the only thing standing between the US and the Soviet Union in the late 1940s the worst case scenario might have been strategic bombers flying uncontested through Canadian airspace but if a forward-thinking military strategist took a close look at the potential of Nazi Germany's V2 rocket program to make later intercontinental ballistic missiles then they might realize that in time strategic bombers could be the least of Canada's problems let me quickly interrupt today's video to take a moment to thank one of our fantastic sponsors one of my favorite sponsors sheath 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chief engineer John Jack Frost Avro Canada embarked on the so-called xc100 project wherein they were to produce two flight prototypes and a test airframe Frost's team were experienced Engineers pulling in expertise from De Havilland Hawker City in Gloucester and they had the full and forceful backing of Canada's military-industrial complex which by the years immediately following World War II was quite robust quickly the xc100 became the cf-100 the name it would retain for the rest of its history and the team are always set to work tackling the same problems that the rest of the world it was also trying to figure out the abro team initially mocked up their design with a straight Wing as was common with the American Lockheed p80 fighter in the British cluster meteor this was an early source of debate for the team with frost himself off advocating for a switch to the swept Wing designs that would later characterize high-speed jet aircraft but the team had been early to create their design markup perhaps a bit overzealous and by the time the debate really got underway about Wing design it was too late to switch back from the straight design that they'd already shown Frost must have been a good negotiator though as he was able to get the team to agree to move the plane's engines from aware they had initially sat toward the back of the Wings and instead bring them forward and lower them a bit the next question was that at the engines because the cf-100 was going to be a two-seater fuselage it would need enough thrust in its two engines to really give it some kick despite the added weight and the British made Rolls-Royce Avon ra3 well that was the engine for the job it came complete with 6 500 pound force of thrust more than enough to get the plane off the ground but before long the Canadian government was coming in clutch with an alternative of their own and indigenously produced turbojet also made by Avro known as the orender the engine provided a good bit more thrust than the prior one and it was integrated into the early pre-production Fighters [Music] the cf-100 Mark 1 at limited series that only included the plane's two prototypes made its first flight on January the 19th 1950 flown by test pilot Bill Waterton and powered by the weaker Rolls-Royce engines the flight was a success the cf-100 stayed up for 40 minutes reached maximum amount due to 500 feet and hit 250 miles per hour it would have gone faster but the landing gear didn't retract during the flight despite that error the plane otherwise received passing grades and Avro green litter longer series of tests days after the first flight the cf-100 hit almost 500 miles per hour in a second test but tragedy struck the program some six months later when the second prototype performed its own first flight but crashed in an accident the test pilot behind the controls Bruce Warren was killed in the crash due to a suspected organ failure while at high altitude and as a result the cf-100 program was placed on hold although several Engineers were dismissed from the project and the entire program was delayed months Avro was eventually a able to get back on track after isolating the critical structural error that had caused the crash once this was dealt with the Canadian government and the RTF were able to resume test flights and the results were impressive the cf-100 had a hell of a climb rate and it was able to set a travel speed record between the cities of Montreal and Toronto by this time Canada had already placed its order for 10 more pre-production aircraft known as The Mark II But Rising tensions in Korea soon made it clear that Canada might be at War again sooner than it had previously expected so the government put in another order 112 aircraft 70 of which would ultimately be built under a design classified as Mark III these were the first true production line cf-100s all fitted out with arenda jet engines which by then had proven themselves to be long-lasting and well-made as Avro was trying to rush into production problems began cropping up with a Mark II line of planes because of a faulty joint where the aircraft's winged was supposed to meet its engine to sell this was most definitely not the sort of structural failure one would hope for when flying a jet plane so production was halted for as long as it had to be in order to fix the issue that ended up being a full eight months but by the end of those months the plane Center section had been strengthened enough and the faulty joint had been modified enough that it could take to the air once again the Mark II line of cf-100s entered the rcaf in May 1952 during the height of the Korean War the mark II's have been designated as trainer models in advance of a full Air Force conversion and the training process brought up a range of other small issues that could be addressed before production kicked off those improvements from The Mark II trainings were able to inform the Mark III production line making the Mark III safer but it also helped them perform better at high speeds the Mark III first flew on October 11th 1952 and entered service with the rcaf a few months later it was given the nickname Canuck by the government but earned a somewhat less auspicious name from its pilots who dubbed did the clunk due to the sound the landing gear made when it retracted also popular was Lead Sled a reference to the plane's weight and the significant resistance offered by its controls this wasn't the only thing about the Canuck that the pilots took issue with either the mark III's were known to have poor heating although originally the RCF attempted to blame this on the pilots not using proper Footwear and to be fair they weren't but this became a moot point when one of them invited an RCF Observer onto a flight to see for himself and an hour later the poor assessor had to be lifted out of the cockpit because he was too freezing cold to even move the heating was fixed and this didn't slow down production the Mark 4 liner planes into production in 1953. the Mark V the final and best version of the plane began flying in the RCF in 1955. foreign foreign Mark V took to the sky it did so at a total length of 54 feet 2 inches or 16 and a half meters with a wingspan of 57 feet 2 inches that's 17 and a half meters when sitting empty it weighed just over 11 and a half tons although it could throw on another six and a half tons before hitting its maximum takeoff weight after a long series of engine upgrades the mark 5 ended up being powered by two a render series 11 turbojet engines producing 7 300 pound force of thrust each for that much kick the plane hit a top speed of 552 miles per hour 888 kilometers per hour with a range of 2000 miles or 3200 kilometers it was more than able to cover the vast Tundra and sparsely inhabited regions of Northern Canada the kanokatta serve a ceiling of 45 000 feet 40 000 meters and it could climb to that height in just over five minutes the Armament of the plane did depend on the model the Mark V carried two wingtip pods with 29 70 millimeter aerial Rockets each ideal for bringing down long-range bombers and no gun while the mark IV could carry the same rocket but also included eight and a half inch machine guns with 200 rounds each in what was a truly ridiculous ventral gun pack the earlier Mark III aircraft just had the gun back with no Rockets a few of the mark 5 planes could also carry aim seven Sparrow at air missiles although a missile armed Mark 6 version Oh was never built the planes could technically carry several bombs but in reality they were never asked to fill an attack roll the plane was equipped with radar and was hardly endurable enough to survive its all-weather day or night intercept a role in even the harsh conditions of Northern Canada they could take off on short remote runways with an excellent rate of climb making it the perfect field Interceptor it also featured an advanced fire control system and it was noted for how easy it was to fly as well as the cockpit's ability to carry some personal items for the crew which we can only assume meant maple syrup shots for everybody it's Canada after all foreign 692 copies of the Canuck would be built the vast majority of which would see Frontline servers with the rcaf the plane served in nine Canadian squadrons five of which watched over the Homeland and four of which flew to Europe during the 1950s to assist NATO although the Canuck was very much a Canadian fighter 53 of the planes were sold to Belgium to serve in the Air Force there both in Europe and in North America Canucks formed a valuable part of NATO and NORAD North American Aerospace Defense command where they waited in Frontline squadrons and were kept on guard for Interceptor service in fact during this time the Canuck was the only all-weather fighter NATO had in its service in Europe it was also the only plane of NATO's air fleet that could fly in zero visibility and its airframe had a tendency to endure some twice Thrice or even 10 times as many flight hours as it had been expected to do and making them among the hardiest aircraft of the entire Cold War despite its many nicknames the Canuck was generally well liked by pilots who might have preferred non-canadian-made day Fighters like the saber but nonetheless they understood and they respected what their beloved clunk was capable of they certainly had their complaints including a cockpit design in which some very important controls were pushed out to the periphery instead of being kept in front of the pilots while controls they didn't particularly care about were right there front and center most prominently the plane's Compass was orientated directly behind the control column basically hiding it from the Pilot's view unless they spent the whole flight leaning to one side even worse the Navigator's seat was only Built to accommodate someone who's about five feet tall but required arms to reach the controls that would be quite a bit longer than a person of that height also the ejection seats had a tendency to fire for no reason and completely without warning which sounds utterly terrifying but nonetheless the clunks pilots remained characteristically polite about its capabilities while perhaps privately pioneering for something maybe a little less quirky early in the Canucks career it was something of a record breaker in 1952 test pilot Jan zarakowski used the mark IV prototype to break the sound barrier despite significant concerns that the plane couldn't be controlled past Mach 0.85 zurichowski with all the it why not attitude of a true test pilot took the plane into a full power dive and hit Mach 1.08 keeping control of the aircraft the entire time the sonic boom was enough to shatter the windows at abro's design office but the flight did more than that it marked the Canuck as the first straight Wing non-rocket aircraft to break the sound barrier but alongside the records it held there's one clear issue with the Canuck that must be addressed it never once saw battle although it was considered in the early 1950s for use with the United States Air Force it was eventually dropped in favor of the English electric Canberra due to the canik's shorter range and a lighter payloads and other than Belgium no other export customers were willing to themselves in for a purchase during its years in service Canadian aircraft had no reason to enter direct conflict a piece of unequivocal good news where the Canucks Pilots were concerned but one that still leaves a major open question around just how this aircraft would have fared in battle tragically the only lives the Canuck evertook were those of its operators and civilians a crash in Quebec in 1953 killed not only the plane's crew but seven people on the ground including five children oh and their homes were hit in the 1956 Convent crash in Orleans gulterio Akana killed 13 civilians while impacting the ground and when two Canucks flying in formation crashed in France three Airmen and two civilians lost their lives the Canuck was by no means the only accident-prone fighter at this time and it didn't gain an particularly outsized reputation for these accidents but they inflicted severe pain nonetheless and they're impossible to ignore over time Avro would propose and discuss several variants with varying degrees of success Mark 6 and Mark 7 planes were designed featuring no wings and better engines but those were discarded on account of not really aligning with where the RCF was headed a photo reconnaissance version of the plane was also proposed but never built but handful of them did eventually receive a conversion to electronic warfare roles a swept Wing short-term successor craft called the cf-103 was never built and a much more advanced design the cf-105 arrow got so far as to have five pre-production models built but the program was canceled abruptly and quite controversially before it ever got off the ground lastly it's worth noting that the Mark V was very nearly built with afterburners which oh would have enabled far-fast travel but this was dropped for cost-cutting reasons unfortunately as with all good things the Canucks service did eventually come to an end what did it in was the same thing that didn't most of the early interceptors of the Cold War the Advent of SuperSonic strategic bombers such as the Soviet tupolev 22 that could clearly outrun the Canuck even in its best day in 1963 the Canuck conceded its role on the front lines and passed responsibility onto the voodoo an american-built plane designated the cf-101 in Canadian service after this time quite a few of the Canucks were sent to the scrapyard While others were used as Trainers for electronic countermeasures roles and there they served for another 18 years until the final left active service in December 1981. in retrospect the Canuck was never a Visionary aircraft and ever truly wowed its pilots and it never had to go to war but for all of its quirks for all that we could say about its role as a deterrent rather than a combatant it's still crucial to recognize what the Canuck was an entire nation's entrance into the jet age and all things considered an entry they pulled off pretty damn well for all its nearly three decades in service the Canuck did precisely what it was meant to do it gave Canada NATO NORAD capabilities they otherwise wouldn't have had and yes the good old clunk got the job done in its own quirky way but it got the job done every time making Canada's first and only indigenously produced fighter aircraft are resounding success in the end [Music] [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 225,507

Keywords: canadian aerospace industry, royal canadian air force, 1st canadian air division, canadian, canadair, canada, fighter, canuck, cannuck, aerospace, educational, edutainment, military history, cf-100, aircraft, air force

Id: tfIlby4w2jY

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2023