A Brief History
On February 20, 1959, the government of Canada cancelled the Avro Arrow supersonic jet fighter program, creating conjecture and controversy that continues to this day. Within two months of the cancellation, the government ordered all plans, tools, and all five existing prototypes to be destroyed.
Digging Deeper
Designed to fly at Mach 2 and at 53,000 feet, the Arrow would have been cutting edge technology to protect Canada. Avro was the third largest company in Canada, one of the 100 largest in the world, but the Arrow fiasco basically ruined the company, and it went out of business in 1962.
Canada instead bought 66 McDonnell CF-101 Voodoo interceptors from the US, operational until 1984, never seeing any combat.
For economic, political, technological, or even corrupt reasons, at times a fine airplane design is never produced for operational use. Other prime examples would be the Northrop F-20 Tigershark and the Martin-Baker MB.5.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What is your favorite airplane?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Arrowheads. Avro Arrow: The Story of the Avro Arrow from Its Evolution to Its Extinction. Boston Mills Pr, 1980.
Compagna, Palmiro. The Avro Arrow: For the Record. Dundurn Press, 2019.
The featured image in this article, a 3-view 3-axis orthographic projection by Bzuk (talk) of the Avro CF-105 Arrow, is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
