
Avro Arrow blueprints on display after sitting in man's home for decades - goodcanadian
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saved-avro-arrow-blueprints-ordered-destroyed-1.5416554
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namirez
Almost every Canadian knows the sad story of Avro Arrow, yet most people in
the rest of the world, including the US, have never heard of it. There are
people in search of what is left of the program.

[https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/07/18/the-arrow-legend-
mystery...](https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2017/07/18/the-arrow-legend-mystery-
intrigue-search-for-last-artefacts/)

~~~
byron_fast
Even fewer Canadians understand why the U.S. didn't trust Canada with such an
able aircraft. It's destruction was, sadly, the right choice.

~~~
na85
That's a myth. The US government was offered the chance to buy the Arrow and
all its intellectual property but declined.

It was a promising design but it was not the world-beating wonderplane that
its reputation suggests.

~~~
catalogia
For whatever it's worth, on twitter Chuck Yeager has said he wasn't a fan of
the Avro Arrow. He didn't go into details though. He's well into his 90s, so
maybe he doesn't remember the details anymore.

[https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/936416735464366081](https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/936416735464366081)

~~~
yborg
Probably because you couldn't dogfight with it.

~~~
catalogia
Eh, maybe. But neither could the F-104 and he liked that plane. But the F-104
was also an American plane, so maybe that has something to do with it. Then
again, he almost got himself killed in a rocket boosted NF-104.

[https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/643965329115185152](https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/643965329115185152)

[https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/120470368609990656...](https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/1204703686099906560)

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catalogia
If you're ever in Ottawa and have a few hours to burn, I recommend checking
out the _Canada Aviation and Space Museum_. They have the nose of an Avro
Arrow on display, which I understand to be the most substantial surviving
relic of the plane. It's a pretty good aviation museum in general and have
various other interesting planes and relics as well.

~~~
kejaed
Can confirm.

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mechhacker
This period of aviation history was always fascinating to me.

The development timeline was much shorter than new military aircraft today.
Electronics, mechanical engineering, and other technology was rapidly
developing. There were always several new airplanes coming out, which were
much more specialized than today.

Now, the big projects are measured in decades because the aircraft are made
into big general programs that have massive costs and use one platform for
multiple branches of the military, like the F35. The pace is glacial. Many new
engineers move to new employers before the parts they engineered even get
programmed into a CNC. An excellent feedback loop for the designers is
therefore cut off.

It was a different time.

~~~
WalterBright
The Lockheed Skunkworks was famous for getting an airplane project from go-
ahead to rollout in 90 days.

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goodcanadian
More context for those less familiar with the story:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow)

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stevehawk
I think it's great that these were rescued back in their day. It's also pretty
funny because technically, assuming Canadian laws are roughly the same as US
laws, the engineer exfiltrated classified material from a secure location
illegally. Which could partially explain why his kids were never allowed near
them, for fear they may accidentally rat him out when they were young and
wouldn't know better. Which makes it all the more risky.

~~~
goodcanadian
I doubt it was that, so much as simply being "Dad's stuff." I don't really
want my kids in my home office going through my papers either, and I am not
hiding anything secret in here.

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turkeydonkey
With the caveat that I haven't checked his sources, The History Guy did a
video [1] on the Avro Arrow program that goes into a lot of the Canadian
aerospace industry history leading up to the program and its subsequent
cancellation. Before this I had no idea how much of a sore point it was, and
still is, with Canadians (just read the comments on the video if you need some
examples).

[1] [https://youtu.be/F4z5-l7u2Uo](https://youtu.be/F4z5-l7u2Uo)

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mothsonasloth
I didn't realise Avro had a Canadian subsidiary. The Avro Vulcan is my
favourite bomber.

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Aeolun
I’m almost convinced the fact we’re doing everything with the computer now
leads to shittier results.

Looking at those blueprints is amazing.

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WalterBright
Small nit: the embedded video says the wooden mockup was accurate "down to the
rivets". I highly doubt that. The Boeing 757 was the last airliner to get a
wooden mockup, and it was mostly blocks of wood to check for clearances. It
didn't model rivets, there's no point to that.

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modwest
The American economy captured the American government in part, at least, due
to the booming defense industry in the post-war era. (Not to mention becoming
the world’s banker in the same era.)

So maybe it’s good Canada never really got lift-off in that way.

Also this story reminds me of the F-22 story

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phs318u
Reading about the difficulties encountered with forward-flight of the Avrocar
(which presumably is inherent in the Arrow as well), I wonder if modern
computing capabilities could rescue the concept. Is there still any demand for
an airframe capable of easy transition from subsonic to supersonic flight with
VTOL capability?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar)

~~~
def8cefe
There is the new Chinese "Super Great White Shark" prototype.

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/asia/china-new-helicopter-
ufo...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/asia/china-new-helicopter-ufo-intl-
scli-hnk/index.html)

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tpmx
It reminds me quite a lot of the Draken:

[http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tale-of-
two...](http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tale-of-two-
fighters.html)

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WalterBright
I'm partial to the Avro Triplane myself:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_IV_Triplane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_IV_Triplane)

It's a beauty!

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mymythisisthis
It's amazing how things get preserved. Information finds a way.

Also, I think that many of the engineers that worked on the Arrow got hired on
at NASA.

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Cuuugi
There's a certain sad irony that it's being displayed in the museum of the man
who ordered it to be cancelled.

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908B64B197
I've always been skeptical about the Arrow. It's always claimed it was so far
ahead of everything else, yet it never demonstrated it. An airplane is much
more than having a few air-worthy airframes. It's being able to produce them
reliably, service them and have them serve a real purpose on the battlefield.
The Arrow achieved none of these goals.

To me it always sounded like misplaced patriotism surrounded by conspiracy
theory: "Look, our airplane was so far ahead that the program had to be shut
down by the number one superpower because they felt threatened" is ridiculous
when you look at it more closely. From looking at it many years later it
simply sounds like it had no purpose once the landscape shifted to ICBM and
that potential buyers were not completely certain the program could survive on
its own. That and the lax Canadian immigration policies probably scared the
buyers as the company was apparently suspected by many to have already been
infiltrated by communist nations. Judging how the plans got in someone’s
basements, it sound they were not crazy to think that…

The really shameful chapter of Canadian aerospace is the CSeries yet It failed
to get mainstream media coverage. Unlike the Arrow it reached production and
had healthy sales numbers. It was Bombardier's second clean sheet design
(after the Global) to reach market and had the potential to be stretched to
seat counts comparable to smaller 737 and A319.

President Trump levied tariffs on it and that's what prompted a takeover by
Airbus. What did the Trudeau government do meanwhile to protect it -and by
extension Canada's aerospace sector? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I'm confident of one thing, that Airbus has the full support of the European
Governments (especially France) and that Boeing has the full support of the
Canadian and American governments. It's just sad that our own companies can't
have a similar red-carpet treatment. I guess Bombardier was maybe too
Quebecois for Trudeau to touch...

Doesn't matter anyways, from what I heard the engineering has already moved
from Canada to France for the plane's next generation!

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ttymck
Related to neither Apache Avro nor Apache Arrow. Disappointed but fascinated.

~~~
jariel
Apache Avro was probably named after Avro air - as their logos are the same.
Whether it was Avro Canada or the parent, Avro UK, I don't know. Founder is
A.V. Roe, Manchester.

