Sixty Years On, We Still Dream of the Arrow
67 comments
·April 23, 2025yabones
The reality is that as great of an interceptor as it was (and possibly the best dedicated interceptor jet ever made), by the time it was ready it was already obsolete. With the introduction of ICBMs, there was simply no need to have jets purpose built for shooting down TU-95's over the Arctic when the new threat was impossible to shoot down.
cf100clunk
And yet the reality is that within a very short time after cancelling the Arrow the need for an interceptor was not, as you say, obsolete. That requirement meant that the Canadian government bought ex-USAF CF101-B Voodoo jets to replace the truly obsolescent CF-100 that the Arrow was meant to do. The development of interceptor aircraft similar to the Arrow continued on in various countries for decades.
lupusreal
Canada bought over a hundred Voodoo interceptors from America and kept them in service until the 80s. Missiles making interceptors obsolete is very simplistic, not in line with reality. Even today, intercepting Tu-95s, now armed with long range cruise missiles, is relevant to NATOs defense. Canada's not least of all considering Russia's ambition to own the Artic Ocean.
hermitcrab
"To protect our turf, and the Americans to the south, Canada decided to build a high-flying supersonic interceptor to meet and knock down invading Soviet bombers."
Different times. Canadians are now possibly now more worried about the US than Russia.
oldpersonintx
[dead]
init7
Foxbat/MiG 25 was another classic aircraft -
For pure speed, they notched 1,852 mph. They could climb to 98,425 feet in four minutes and 3.86 seconds and ultimately reached an absolute altitude record of 123,520 feet.
ge96
now that's a 0-60 time damn
edit: it's cheating but the Starfighter with a JATO had an insane climb rate too
NikkiA
If you really want to cheat with the starfighter, you need to be using the ZEL version of it.
willvarfar
If you could choose, pick a Lightning instead :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Lightning#Cli...
cf100clunk
Back to the OP topic, the Arrow's thrust to weight ratio meant that it was theoretically the first aircraft capable of accelerating directly upwards in an arc immediately after reaching the end of the runway. Hot stuff.
MarkusWandel
An equally sad, but much less mentioned story is the Avro Jetliner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_C102_Jetliner
The sole surviving XB70, another super cool plane that was obsolete by the time it was ready, is a valued museum piece. These planes should have been.
rkagerer
They also built a flying saucer:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
I recall hearing about how the US Air Force was investigating reports of UFO's, and was surprised to find a 'real' one closer to home.
Highly unstable more than a few feet off the ground, it never proved viable. Unfortunately nobody at the time realized they might have been onto something if they'd pivoted to inventing the hovercraft.
MarkusWandel
But that was an experimental toy, whereas the Jetliner was fully debugged and production ready and had an eager market.
evnp
Great read, fascinating piece of Canadian history.
For anyone on mobile (android/chrome at least) select "Desktop Site" under browser settings to see five historical images. They don't show up for me at all in the default mobile view.
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the_af
Why were all prototypes and blueprints destroyed so thoroughly? Why not keep one for a museum? And why the blueprints?
I'm sure there are security reasons, but it still seems so wasteful.
bambax
Yes.
> Prime Minister John Diefenbaker [ordered] all the completed planes (five plus a nearly finished sixth) to be chopped up and destroyed, along with all plans and blueprints so that the plane could never fly again.
Stopping the program was understandable, but the destruction is mysterious and the article doesn't say a word about why. Strange.
hylaride
Killing it was the right call for the wrong reasons. But because it was the wrong reasons, it meant that no attention was paid on investing the tech into a new plane or resources.
Diefenbaker being "suckered" by the Americans is not what really happened (the CBC mini-series on the Arrow has some really cringey scenes about that angle, as well as portraying conservative party ineptitude and American arrogance). The more you read into Diefenbaker, the more he comes across as vain and susceptible to overreacting to slights (perceived or real), in over his head on the international stage, and ignorant of cold war realities (despite it being his government that had Canada form NORAD with the US).
It did set the stage for Canada's mercurial relationship with the United States, as Canada tended to over-react and over-compensate our opinions in both directions since then. This still continues to this day.
antonvs
Politics. Diefenbaker had a conservative majority. Destroying everything made it much more difficult for a future Liberal government to restart the program.
vlvdus
Why would a future Liberal goverment restart it if the past one wanted to shut it down but didn't have the guts (or at least that's my understanding of the article)?
mjevans
Ban / "Burn the books" does seem to fall on the 'conservative' side of the spectrum every time I can recall.
lenerdenator
Besides security reasons?
the_af
Which security reasons does the article state for not keeping at least one prototype (in a museum, without security-ensitive parts) and the blueprints?
As far as I can tell they only kept part of the nose/cockpit.
Honestly asking, I might have missed it.
lupusreal
Humiliation ritual.
like_any_other
I would guess it was due to behind the scenes meddling from an 'ally', that was itself probably encouraged by its war industry.
cf100clunk
My dad was an avionics and air-to-air weaponry guy in the RCAF in the 1950s-60s (you might understand my HN nick) and was training up on the Arrow's suite, which was being designed from scratch by RCA Canada in Montreal as Project ASTRA. It was a direct competitor to U.S. systems made primarily by Hughes, and the missiles were a direct competitor to those from what is now Raytheon. One of Avro's desperate options prior to cancellation was the idea of scrapping ASTRA for a 100% U.S. avionics and missile suite.
pjc50
Yes. It's a "scorched earth" approach to prevent the project being revived.
Something similar happened to the RAF Nimrod: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12294766 , although I think the safety case was much stronger there after one caught fire in the air.
It's very Trumpian. Perhaps the steelman argument might be "if we leave this thing in limbo, people will continue to advocate spending more money on it". Sometimes institutions or individuals in them will have a pet project that they keep pushing beyond economic sense, and the only way to get them to stop is to shoot their pet.
KineticLensman
There was no need to run a scorched-earth policy to prevent the Nimrod project from being revived. The plane that caught fire, killing 14 people, in mid air was a flying deathtrap. It had leaky internal fuel pipes that ran past a different (extremely hot) pipe that allowed exhausts from one engine to be used in restarting the other engine after an intentional in-flight shutdown (they used to shut down one engine to loiter more fuel efficiently when they reached their mission's surveillance area). The leaky fuel pipes were the aftermath IIRC of an air-to-air refuelling system that was retrofitted to allow long range flights down to the Falklands islands. The devastating official post-crash report (the Haddon-Cave review) is at [0]. It was one of the classic 'normal accidents' situations - they got away with multiple routine internal fuel leaks up until the day when they didn't.
Separately, the planes were all very old, and had been constructed over several years so were all slightly different. Projects that tried to do fleet upgrades usually went massively over-budget because each airframe had to be treated as a special case, even for things that you would expect to be standardised like the basic fuselage and wing dimensions.
[Edit] The Haddon-Cave review was exceptional in that it actually named and shamed those in the MOD and industry who helped develop the bodged safety case. People in the MOD and industry lost their jobs after the crash.
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
pinewurst
The British did the same a few years later with the even more capable TSR2.
OJFord
Except Wikipedia has (21st century) photos of at least two tail numbers in museums.
the_af
It seems it was similar, yes. But according to Wikipedia,
> Two airframes eventually survived: the complete XR220 at the Royal Air Force Museum Midlands [...]
So the destruction of the project's artifacts was less thorough.
acyou
Same reason that Cortez burned his boats, once you start down a path you don't want people second guessing you.
cmrdporcupine
I'm sure the answer is probably fairly mundane, but it's birthed a whole lineage of nationalist semi-conspirational explanations (US colonial masters chewed Diefenbaker out, demanded the total cessation and destruction of the project, etc.)
I suspect it makes absolutely zero sense for Canada of the 50s to be designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets, but the mythos is strong.
And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
The US: having it both ways ("be our subservient raw resource provider and nothing else" and "oh, but it costs so much to defend you") since forever.
preommr
> And the vibe of the whole thing is very topical, of course, with the US basically demanding we spend more money subsidizing their defense industry by buying their overpriced armaments from them while at the same time key people in the administration openly musing about the elimination of our sovereignty.
Surprised this doesn't get mentioned more.
If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
It's easy for America to complain about other countries not spending as much when it's the one that owns the market we all shop at.
multiplegeorges
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
We're about to find out if we want to. This is a major point in Carney's defence plan.
lenerdenator
> If Canada wanted to, we could easily scale military spending by investing it in homegrown projects instead of spending it at the altar of the mililtary industrial complex.
That doesn't mean no longer spending money at the altar of the military-industrial complex, it just means having your own altar. Which you're free to do, by the way. You don't have to buy our stuff.
Canadians seem to consistently ignore the effects that a strong military-industrial complex has had on the US (and UK, to a lesser extent), particularly on foreign policy. When major components of the TSX Composite need sales, they're going to start lobbying MPs to get them. It's not a coincidence that a lot of the defense industry is based in Northern Virginia.
As far as the sovereignty... I don't think you have to worry about that.
cf100clunk
> designing and building its own fighter-bomber jets
The Avro Arrow was only proposed as an interceptor but neither a fighter nor bomber. There were spitball ideas of future bomber adaptations but they were never part of the project.
the_af
Keep in mind I'm not asking why the project was canceled, but why even the blueprints were destroyed! It seems overkill, or even spite.
speed_spread
It was a long range bomber interceptor and it made sense until ICBMs happened. Canadian territory is vast and mostly barren in a way that no other NATO country is, having specialized equipment to defend it can make a big difference.
cf100clunk
It was an interceptor. Ideas for conversion to a bomber role were only ideas.
the_af
I understand the cancelation, I'm actually asking about the memory-holing of the project (destroying blueprints, not even keeping an airframe for a museum, etc).
UncleSlacky
See also the TSR-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2
NikkiA
The TSR-2 was doomed by progress, by the time it made it to prototype stage britains nuclear bombs had shrunk to the point that they didn't need, nor benefitted from, a giant interdictor.
In the end the tiny jaguar could carry 4 WE177s just fine.
cf100clunk
Avro Canada pitched the Arrow to the British as either a frontline RAF interceptor or as a placeholder for the TSR-2 until it could be brought into service.
NikkiA
Arrow was a high altitude intercepter, TSR was a low level nuclear interdictor. I can't see any way that there was ANY mission cross over.
sandworm101
No mention of the spies. No mention of how the overall design of the arrow is eerrily similar to the later mig-25, a unique design in soviet aviation. There is a reason the foxbat and foxhound dont look like any other soviet aircraft, but do look very similar to the arrow and f-15. Arrow was cancelled because america saw what was happening.
For those who dont see it: the arrow has a rectangular "box" body, so do the mig25/31 and f-15. Most multiengine fighters have cigar shapes (f18, f111) or "tunnels" such as the su-27/35/34/57, f-14 and even the sr-71. The box shape was new in the arrow but can arguably be seen today in the US 22 and 35.
Article with a good pic showing the design consideration is still a thing today: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/102446/why-does...
kleiba
OT: I hate that I cannot scroll the pictures on the left the way I want to.
lupusreal
Diefenbaker canceled the arrow saying that interceptors were no longer needed (Canada subsequently bought interceptors from America, because they did in fact remain relevant.). At the same time he was digging out a massive bunker outside of Ottawa so that the Canadian government could survive the rest of Canada being vaporized. Some real Doctor Strangelove shit IMHO.
The so called "Deifenbunker" is now a museum open to the public. Pretty interesting, being in it feels like being in a ship.
RegnisGnaw
We bought fighter jets with secondary role of interceptor. The Arrow was a dedicated interceptor which was pointless.
cf100clunk
The RCAF used its CF-101B Voodoo jets only in NORAD interceptor roles and never in fighter scenarios, at which they were unsuitable.
speed_spread
Pointless? It made perfect sense back when the main vector of nuclear delivery was heavy long range bombers.
Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) produced a 4 episode TV mini series dramatizing the birth and death of the Avro Arrow plane (can be found on YouTube)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arrow_(miniseries)