arrow RL201

[mike mckinley]

hi folks

well, the 16th was my birthday, and some good friends decided that a celebration was in order....after three bottles of wine, smoked salmon, and some good cigars i have the following to report. the other day i had a discussion with one of these people about the avro arrow....as it turns out, her father in law worked for orenda, who built the engines for the arrow. at the party tonight she handed me an envelope and in it was an 8 x 10 b&w glossy from the day they rolled out the first one rl201. avro gave these out to employee's in attendance that day....a great picture tied to a great piece of canadian history that never got the chance to "spread its wings" my thanks to them both!! mike


now it's hangover time

For starters, a VERY HAPPY BIRTH DAY although I am belated by 38 minutes for it by my clock ... and WOW ... what a great birthday present to receive!!!

All the best for your 21st year and many many more ...

Karmen

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Congrats on your birthday, Mike

The present must have made your day!

Hanno

[Jon Skagfeld]

Originally posted by mike mckinley
hi folks

well, the 16th was my birthday, and some good friends decided that a celebration was in order....after three bottles of wine, smoked salmon, and some good cigars i have the following to report. the other day i had a discussion with one of these people about the avro arrow....as it turns out, her father in law worked for orenda, who built the engines for the arrow. at the party tonight she handed me an envelope and in it was an 8 x 10 b&w glossy from the day they rolled out the first one rl201. avro gave these out to employee's in attendance that day....a great picture tied to a great piece of canadian history that never got the chance to "spread its wings" my thanks to them both!! mike


now it's hangover time

Mike, et al, that photo is from p40 of a book titled "Arrow", Boston Mills Press.

It was taken 4 Oct 57 at Malton airport. I was there; a sixteen year old totally in awe of the proceedings. Unfortunately, the Russians put Sputnik into space that same day, and that made the Arrow news somewhat secondary.

I still have a commorative plastic lapel pin of the Arrow, an item given out by the thousands for those in attendance.

RL 201 first flew 25 Mar 58, Jan Zurakowski Pilot in Command (PIC).

I am an amateur Arrow historian and have about a dozen books relating to it on my bookshelf.

Through a certain amount of research, I'm fairly certain (in my own mind) just why the Arrow project was killed.

[RHClarke]

Congrats on your successful aging program. May you have many more productive years of CMP restorations.

Too bad about the Arrow. Interestingly, the Arrow Project was a case study in the old CF Officer Professional Development Program (fondly called OpieDopie). It seems that the only good that came out of this whole affair was NASA's recruitment of Canadian engineers...

The fate of the hydrofoil Bras'dor (The Flying 400) comes to mind as well.

Canadian, eh? Pity.

[mike mckinley]

thanks to all for the birthday kudos......i have resurfaced from the after party haze and am holding steady at 33. jon...i didn't realize that you were interested in the arrow project. i have done a lot of reading on the subject as well. i was really interested with the efforts of the arrow alliance with their recovering as much original material as possible, with the goal of flying one across canada in 2009. it seemed that they had made great progress, then dissappeared, and their website has been down for quite a while. somebody told me that they had been evicted from the building they were using for storage and research. anyhow, sometime i would like to sit down over a bottle of ?? and have a discussion about the project. mike

[Jon Skagfeld]

Originally posted by mike mckinley
thanks to all for the birthday kudos......i have resurfaced from the after party haze and am holding steady at 33. jon...i didn't realize that you were interested in the arrow project. i have done a lot of reading on the subject as well. i was really interested with the efforts of the arrow alliance with their recovering as much original material as possible, with the goal of flying one across canada in 2009. it seemed that they had made great progress, then dissappeared, and their website has been down for quite a while. somebody told me that they had been evicted from the building they were using for storage and research. anyhow, sometime i would like to sit down over a bottle of ?? and have a discussion about the project. mike

Mike: if you're returning to Chatsworth for CC6, we can certainly roll some brown bottles around whilst discussing the Arrow. As you know, I live a short distance from the CC6 venue. You're welcome to browse around my library should you wish to do so.

Regards to you and Tanya

[sapper740]

Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld
Through a certain amount of research, I'm fairly certain (in my own mind) just why the Arrow project was killed.

There were several reasons the Arrow was cancelled. The "Oliver Stones" out there will tell you the U.S. put pressure on the Canadian Government to cancel it. That is simply not the case. The Arrow cancellation was due to internal Canadian politics, increasing development costs, and lack of foresight of the future battlefield.
The All Weather Requirements Team from AFHQ was formed in 1952 and in April of 1953 the RCAF released it's specs for a new supersonic fighter. AVRO came up with a delta planform and received the go ahead from Ottawa in July 1953. The party in power at that time were the Liberals under Louis St. Laurent who had backed the program, albeit with reservations. The Conservatives who were less friendly to the Arrow program won a landslide victory in 1958. Diefenbaker personally thought that manned interceptors "would go the way of the Pterodactyl." All this culminated in "Black Friday" when Diefenbaker rose in the House of Commons on Feb. 20, 1959 and announced the cancellation of the Arrow. His reasons for the cancellation were manyfold. The Russians had fewer long range bombers than thought and ICBMs were about to be supplemented by sub-launched missiles which would negate the need for manned interceptors. Costs were also spiralling out of control which brings us to:
Development costs. The CF 105 Arrow was a quantum leap forward in aerospace technology at the time. Consider the new problems encountered in metallurgy, airframe design, engine design, fire control and weapon systems. Canada, albeit with the help of the UK and the US was shouldering most of the costs for not just the aircraft, but also the "Iriqouis" engines from Orenda and the "Velvet Glove", a semi-active radar homing air to air missile. The US was helping with the developement costs of the Velvet Glove, but dropped their financial backing to concentrate on the Sparrow, which it was thought was going to be a superior air to air missile. Here is where the conspiracy theorists started blaming the US and that rumour has only grown over the decades.
The cancellation was the culmination of many things, and Canada's greatest mistake. The technology surge enjoyed by the US after our scientists went looking for work elsewhere was only rivalled by the technology the Nazi rocket scientists brought to the US after WW II. History has shown Ottawa's short sightedness in their decision as Canada has purchased several weapons systems such as the Bomarc and the CF 101, CF 104, CF 5, and the CF 118, none of which could have done the job of the Arrow.

[Jon Skagfeld]

Derek:


Amen, bro! You nailed it down very well!

Now, perhaps we can stop :dh: , eh?

[sapper740]

Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld
Derek:


Amen, bro! You nailed it down very well!

Now, perhaps we can stop :dh: , eh?

Jon, the Arrow, much like the Lusitania, the grassy knoll, the bombing of Coventry, the Hindenburg et al will forever live on as unsolved conspiracies and to suggest that we dispense with these historical enigmas will only make you part of the conspiracy to cover up the truth. What are you hiding Jon? Hmmm?

[Darrell Zinck]

Hi Mike

Very nice gift. Happy belated Birthday to you.

I thiught you might like this pic I took in Barry's Bay Ontario where the town has commemorated Jan Zurakowski by mounting a big model in the centre of town.

I stood under it and there happened to be an airliner passing overhead to give the pic a nice realistic feel.

regards
Darrell

[Jon Skagfeld]

Originally posted by sapper740
Jon, the Arrow, much like the Lusitania, the grassy knoll, the bombing of Coventry, the Hindenburg et al will forever live on as unsolved conspiracies and to suggest that we dispense with these historical enigmas will only make you part of the conspiracy to cover up the truth. What are you hiding Jon? Hmmm?

He he he...not hiding anything, just have formulated my own theory about the Arrow's demise.

Let me insert a little snippet of little known information.

It was not Diefenbaker who "rose in the Commons and announced the termination of the Arrow project". Diefenbaker called for only a cessation of production whilst further cost overruns were examined.

It was the grossly alcoholic Crawford Gordon who, in a fit of pique and spite, ordered the Avro production lines closed down, thereby putting some 20,000 workers and sub contractors out of work.

It fell to the RCAF, through DDP, to issue the scrapping edicts for the airframes.

BTW, June Callwood, a Canadian iconic literary figure died yesterday.

She lived in Malton at the time and always claimed that she heard an Arrow "get away" at o' dark thirty and fly to the east.

[sapper740]

Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld

BTW, June Callwood, a Canadian iconic literary figure died yesterday.

She lived in Malton at the time and always claimed that she heard an Arrow "get away" at o' dark thirty and fly to the east.

Hmmm. Y'know, there was book titled, "The Last Flight of the Arrow", ostensibly fiction, about one Arrow that was stashed away at one of our remote, austere Forward Operating Bases in the Arctic. It was used to shoot down a rogue Russian bomber or some such thing (my memory is starting to fail me!). Perhaps there was a smidgeon of truth in that book. Hmmm? Another piece of the puzzle perhaps? Perhaps a reason for UFO reports in the High Arctic? I think we need to get this info to Oliver right quick!