THE AVRO CF-105 ARROW - WAS IT REALLY THAT GOOD?!?

[FLYBOYJ]

Agree totaly....

Did anyone see the movie about the Arrow? It had Dan Akroyd in it. Much of it was hogwash

 

[Nonskimmer]

It was a typical CBC production. Crap.
However I did like the full-scale mock-up of the plane they made for the movie.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Yep - pretty cool!

I think the F-106 did just as well as the Arrow would of done except it didn't have many of the Arrows advanced features......

 

[Nonskimmer]

That could well be true. Not one of these Arrow "experts" that exist today really knows much about what they're gabbing on about anyway. Typical, I must say.

From the Air Force point of view, as much as many of them looked forward to trying the Arrow, all they really needed was a capable interceptor. The thing that really got me was that the government of the day actually thought for a time that they could replace fighter/interceptors entirely with those BOMARC missiles. The cheapest way out as always.
So as you can see, idiotic defence ideas are nothing new in Canada.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Sad, but the CF-101s served well, not as well as an Arrow or a F-106, but they did well.....

I once heard that Truedau wanted F-4s. You ever hear that?

 

[Nonskimmer]

I had heard that the CAF looked briefly at acquiring Phantoms, but I don't know how much input Trudeau would have had in it. If it was his plan, you can be sure they'd have been cheap surplus USAF examples. Trudeau had balls, but he wasn't big on national defence. Strange. But then that's typical for Canadian prime ministers (the national defence bit).

The Voodoos were an adequate interceptor for many years, but they'd have done well to eventually outfit them with Sidewinder/Sparrow combinations like the Phantom. They carried nothing but Falcons and those nuclear tipped Genies right up to the end.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I heard from some guys at Canadair, the CAF were looking at F-4s and a strike roll was mentioned - that's when it was decided to buy F-5s....

Thrifty or cheap!!!

 

[Nonskimmer]

Ah, that could be. The F-5's weren't a bad little plane at all. I'm not really sure how they measured up in the strike role though. As far as I know, none of them were ever involved in combat. Some of the CF-18's have flown strike sorties in the past, but as I recall the CF-5's were already removed from active service by then. I'd imagine they wouldn't have been a bad choice for the job when all was said and done. They wouldn't carry as much as the F-4, but they were pretty versatile little planes.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Agree - as I mentioned before, the F-5s I seen in Botswana were beautiful, sad to see them given up so soon.

What I thought was the silliest thing of them all was the destructin of all the Arrows. What did that prove?!?

 

[Nonskimmer]

I'm not really sure. No one is, or if someone is they're not talking. Some say it was "standard procedure" in those days, whatever that's supposed to mean. They completely destroyed the prototypes, blueprints, everything. Yet as far as I know, the old Avro Canada records survive in government archives. At least some of them anyway. It's entirely possible that the blueprints are filed away somewhere too.

Now I sound like a conspiracy theorist.
It's possible though. What real value they'd prove to be today is anyone's guess though.

I like how at the end of that movie about the Arrow the sixth prototype with the new engines is secretly flown off to some secret location god knows where.
I think that might be stretching things just a tad, eh?

 

[evangilder]

Maybe, but wasn't one spotted at area 51?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Fun stuff!

 

[Nonskimmer]

All that movie did in the end was give a booster shot to the old Arrow conspiracy theory, because that's exactly the angle that they approached it from. I thought it was a good idea for a film, but it was very poorly written.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Agree - it would of served history better if it wasn't "Hollywoodized."

 

[evangilder]

That's true with a lot of movies though, unfortunately.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I was once told by one of the AVRO engineers i knew who worked at lockheed say that AVRO and the DND were worried about the leaking of technology at the end of the Arrow program. Hell, most of it just filled out Lockheed job applications!

 

[Nonskimmer]

Exactly. There wasn't much point in worrying about technology leaks when virtually every employee who ever worked on the thing, who you've just fired, has almost immediately found work with another aerospace company. Duh.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Ya know, they had the 6 built, I think I would of just intergrated them into one squadron and used them until they were lost, either through attrition or parts!

 

[Nonskimmer]

I don't think it would've really been worth their while to do that. They would have needed completion to be effective warplanes, and they were running into snags with the fire-control and weapons systems anyway. Prototypes six and seven hadn't even had engines installed yet. They were waiting for the new Iroquois.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Here's a good one.....

http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=21

The idea behind this little-known conspiracy theory is that the Diefenbaker government engineered the cancellation of the Arrow as a pay-off to then-premier of Quebec Maurice Duplessis for services rendered during the the 1958 election. Duplessis went to great personal expense to weaken the Liberals in Quebec, paving the way for a conservative landslide. He selected 50 ridings where he felt the Liberals could be defeated, picked Union National candidates, and invested $15,000 per riding. The Conservatives won 50 seats in Quebec. One of the new members was Raymond O'Hurley, who, it is interesting to note, became the new Minister of Defence Production.

The payoff for Duplessis would have been the transfer of the Canadian aircraft manufacturing base from Toronto to Montreal. In 1959 it was decided to replace the F86 Sabre and CF100 in Europe with the supersonic Lockheed 104 Lightning that could be used for interception, tactical bombing and reconnaissance, to be built under license in Canada. The contract to build the engine went to Orenda, but the contract to build the aircraft went to Canadair in Montreal, though allegedly the word on the street was that Avro was the low bidder. This theory needs more silly putty before it holds water.