
Hunting for a Canadian Legend: The Avro Arrow Jet Fighter - dnetesn
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/world/canada/avro-arrow-jet-.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
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aren55555
After the Avro Arrow project was cancelled a number of the employees involved
joined NASA to assist in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. It's a shame
that the same kind of "brain drain" occurs to this day. Canada produces a lot
of talented people and many of them head South.

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eloff
Not just Canada, the United States has been very successful in attracting top
talent from all over the world. A large part of its success is due to that -
the USA does not produce nearly enough STEM graduates domestically. A huge
number of people come every year to study in US universities, still considered
the best in the world in many cases, and many stay afterwards. I think that
the USA could be considered to be an empire in decline once it can no longer
attract the top talent worldwide, and once those people graduate and go back
to their own countries instead of staying in the US.

In the Canada case specifically, the pay gap for software engineers between
the USA and Canada is about 2-3x if you're at the top of your field. The real
mystery to me is why Canada has any software engineers at all. I'm a Canadian
SE living in Canada currently and I wouldn't dream of working for any
companies located here, including e.g. Amazon or IBM.

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danudey
> The real mystery to me is why Canada has any software engineers at all.

For all kinds of political and social reasons, I would never move to the US.
Key examples:

\- The disaster that is the US health care system \- Even more endemic
systemic racism than Canada has \- Even left-wing politicians are to the right
of what I prefer in Canada

All that, plus I'm not in this for the money. I make a comfortable living and
live in a gorgeous city, and there aren't any cities in the US I would want to
live in.

I'm happy in Canada. I'd probably also be happy in Europe or even Asia, but I
can't picture being happy in the US.

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dogruck
Yes, but the top, hard driving, talent would make the trade and move to the
US. Your prerogative is to kick back and chill up north. I'm not hatin -- just
pointing out that you're not really a counter example to the point at hand.

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fraqed
Maybe that's why Canadians are considered so nice, because all the "hard
driving" types have left the country and gone, mostly, to the US.

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dogruck
A reasonable theory. Agreed.

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guiomie
If you want to know more about the Arrow, I really enjoyed the movie "The
Arrow", not some big budget movie, but really interesting.

Being Canadian I must of heard countless time how this aircraft was like none
other and ahead of it's time ... Not sure how true it really is.

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gerdesj
cf TSR2

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filereaper
If anyone's up for it, CBC made an entire drama movie for it and its demise.
[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PMnlnqRex4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PMnlnqRex4)

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KGIII
Three hours well spent, thanks. I'm not sure how historically accurate it is,
but it was fun to watch. I didn't get my Canadian citizenship until a half
dozen years ago, but it's neat to see that story. I knew of the plane, and a
few others, but not the details.

In a demonstration of my pride to be a Canadian citizen, I will eat ketchup
chips and apologize profusely when I go back across the border into Canada,
eh.

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nils-m-holm
My father wrote (or edited, I don't remember) an article about state of the
art aircraft in 1958. Among others it covered the Avro Arrow, stating, among
other fun trivia, that more than 450 engineers worked on the design and it was
built from more than 38,000 parts, including 17,500 meters of cable.

Unfortunately he switched jobs shortly after that and worked for a fine
literature publishing house until retirement. I thought his earlier job was
way cooler. :) We still visited the local airfield every other weekend.

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Mikeb85
As interesting as the Avro Arrow was, it's capabilities have been exaggerated,
and there were a decent number of Mach 2 capable jets of the same era. More
interesting is the downfall of Avro and the effect it had on Canada's
engineers and brain drain...

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valuearb
The Convair F-106 Delta Dart from the same era was likely faster (Mach 2.3 vs.
Arrow's fastest test at Mach 2). And the Delta Dart was no great interceptor,
they only built a few hundred. This was the era where Air Power doctrine had
to painfully accept that high speed high altitude was becoming too vulnerable
to SAMs.

The fastest war plane of the era was the North American Aviation XB-70
Valkyrie, which was an enormous bomber which cruised at Mach 3+ and 70,000
feet for nearly 4,000 miles. Neither the Arrow or Dagger could touch it, but
SAMs could so it was canceled after a very successful test flight program.

The world changed to low altitude penetration, a role which would have cut the
B70s range substantially because it's design actually far more efficient at
Mach 3/70,000 feet than it was at Mach 0.95 at 1,000 feet.

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pinewurst
I would disagree that the F-106 wasn't a great interceptor as it apparently
was (and was a pleasure to fly).

The issue is that by the time it made it to production, the major threat had
become the ICBM rather than the bomber. USAF Air Defense Command in general
was defunded but ABM never took its place.

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valuearb
Well my greater point was that high speed high altitude intercepters were
becoming obsolete while the Arrow was being built. As much a pleasure as the
Delta Dart may have been to fly, it wasn't produced in great numbers because
it wasn't designed for the new threats.

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Animats
The Avro Arrow was an impressive aircraft. There were a large number of cool,
but not useful aircraft developed in the 1950s, as jet aircraft were being
figured out.

Avro is remembered mostly for building a flying saucer, the AvroCar. It never
got out of ground effect, being both unstable and underpowered. But it looked
really cool. It can be seen at the USAF museum in Dayton, Ohio.[1]

[1] [http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-
Exhibits/Fact-...](http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-
Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195801/avro-canada-vz-9av-avrocar/)

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pjc50
I'd have thought of the Avro Lancaster or Vulcan instead. The Vulcan in
particular was part of the "V bomber" effort in which the UK government
commissioned 3 totally different supersonic nuclear bombers in the hope that
one of them would work and be delivered on time.

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cstross
Ahem: the V-bombers were all subsonic (at least in service — the prototype
Handley-Page Victor went supersonic on at least one occasion and was
controllable in transsonic flight; the production Victors had various external
extras bolted on which made supersonic flight impractical).

The requirement issued for these bombers in the late 1940s, was for a mission
to carry ten tons of Atom bomb from the UK to Moscow at high subsonic speed
and able to penetrate Moscow's air defenses. They were pretty successful;
Vulcans carried out the longest bombing mission in aviation history prior to
Operation Desert Storm (the 8000-mile Black Buck raids during the Falklands
Conflict) and the last Victor tankers were retired in 1993. And we're looking
at designs that flew little more than a decade after the piston-engined
Lancasters and Halifaxes of RAF Bomber Command.

All three V-bomber types — the Valiant, Vulcan, and Victor — saw service
carrying Britain's nuclear weapons from the 1950s to the early 1970s. (They
were replaced in the deterrent role by Polaris submarines.)

More here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_bomber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_bomber)

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SOLAR_FIELDS
Is the Apache Avro file format named after this plane? I couldn't find any
official documentation that states as much, but the logo hints at it.

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grzm
After the British company, not specifically this aircraft:

[https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/AVRO/Index](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/AVRO/Index)

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

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SOLAR_FIELDS
Thanks, after seeing the logos of both it is readily apparent.

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perilunar
"Early models were cut apart and their blueprints destroyed along with the
machines used to make the aircraft."

That's just perverse: why would you destroy the blueprints? Couldn't they just
file them away in an archive or library somewhere? The cost to store them
would be minimal.

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WalterBright
I'm partial to the Avro Triplane myself.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCZOcObmd0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCZOcObmd0Y)

Probably the most beautiful pre-WW1 airplane.

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jalayir
Wow looks a bit like the venerable MiG-25 foxbat

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vaadu
And the A5 Vigilante.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_A-5_Vigilante](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_A-5_Vigilante)

US and Canadian intelligence had evidence that the KGB had a man on the inside
of AVRO who was providing ARROW plans to the Soviets.

[http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-spy-named-gideon-
boo...](http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-spy-named-gideon-book-tells-
story-of-russian-illegal-sent-to-canada-and-betrayed)

