Canadian Inventions – Avro Arrow

The Avro Arrow was a military fighter jet designed and manufactured by Avro Canada in the mid 1950s. The Arrow was among the first military jets to break the sound barrier and pioneered several new technologies, including the first ‘fly-by-wire’ control system that replaced mechanical controls with an electrical system. Despite expressions of interest from foreign governments (a rare occurrence at the time), development of the Arrow was terminated by the Canadian government in the late 1950s. The project’s cancellation effectively put an end to Avro Canada’s aviation business, resulting in the redundancy of over 14,000 Avro Canada employees and causing a similar number of job losses from Avro’s suppliers. At the time the project was cancelled, Avro was preparing a revised Arrow design for an attempt at the world speed and altitude records. In 1952 the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) began investigating a replacement for their new subsonic interceptor, the CF-100 Canuck. Despite not being scheduled to enter service until the following year, the Canuck was already considered an ineffective defence against a new long range, supersonic bomber being developed by the Soviet Union (the Myasishchev M-4 Molot or ‘Bison’). After deciding the interceptors being developed in the US and Britain were unsuitable, the RCAF approached Avro Canada to design a twin engine interceptor that could be flown by two pilots. The RCAF specifications required that the Arrow be capable of reaching an altitude of 50,000 ft and a speed of Mach 1.5 within 5 minutes of starting the engines, cruise at Mach 1.5 and 70,000 ft, and execute turns of up to 2g without losing speed or altitude. To accommodate the production schedule proposed by the RCAF, Avro decided to eliminate prototype development in favour of intensive design testing (a development schedule known as the Cook-Craigie plan). Under this model, the final production line and first aircraft would be created without any flight testing. The Cook-Craigie plan reduced the time required to bring an aircraft into service - but it also placed increased emphasis on the accuracy of the initial design, risking costly alteration of the production line if the aircraft required modification. To mitigate this risk, Avro instituted an extensive testing program. The tests included launching 11 separate models of the aircraft frame, mounted to Nike missiles, into Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean at speeds up to Mach 1.7, in order to evaluate the predicted aerodynamic performance. Although the Arrow was not the first delta wing aircraft, the design was by no means common and the tests went a long way to reliving many doubts about the its suitability for supersonic flight. The first Arrow was competed in October 1957, on the same day the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite. It was successfully tested in March of the following year, breaking the sound barrier in its third flight and reaching a top speed of Mach 1.98 without pushing its performance limits. Four additional aircraft were produced over the course of the next 18 months as the stabilization system and other controls were fine-tuned. About the same time that the first Arrow rolled off the production line, there was a change of federal Government. The new Conservative government had campaigned on reducing federal spending and argued that the BOMARC land-to-air missile system being developed by the US would make the Arrow unnecessary. The cancellation of the Arrow development program was announced in February 1959 after a production run of only five aircraft. In 1961, the RCAF obtained 66 McDonnell Voodoo aircraft (a design they originally rejected in favour of the Arrow) from the US. It was subsequently revealed that negotiations for the Voodoo began before the Arrow was cancelled. At the time of the Arrow’s cancellation, Avro was the third largest business enterprise in Canada, having diversified into rolling stock, steel and coal production and electronics. However, the sudden cancellation of the Arrow resulted in a massive downsizing. Many of the engineers that had been involved with the Arrow were forced to resettle in the US or the UK, a “brain drain” from Canada that was best characterized by the fact that a team of 32 Avro engineers left Canada to join NASA’s Space Task Group. Summary by: Richard Murphy