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March 25, 1958 was a date - while largely forgotten - which will live as one of the great milestones of aviation.
The event was the first flight of an aircraft - a Canadian interceptor - decades ahead of its time.

The Avro Arrow was a magnificent achievement - a sleek, powerful fighter capable of mach 2; a range of 11,000km, able to operate from a 6,000ft. runway.

The twin-engine, 2-man crewed delta-winged fighter was scrapped for political reasons on Black Friday, Feb. 20, 1959; a disaster Canadian aviation, for all its achievements, never really recovered from - most of its best and brightest minds moving to the States and Britain.











There is currently a project underway to build a new Arrow; a flying replica to keep this important bit of Canadian history alive. We can only pray the project stays alive.
Hope you like the pics!

The Avro Arrow, an interesting thing. What info do you have on this build project?

nice shots it certainly is a magnificent jet

A flying version of the arrow...please post some links.  I know of a non flying one being made at The Toronto Aerospace Museum but not a flying one....That would be truely amazing.

Regarding the build project; I don't have a lot of info; save this. From the information I got at the last Arrow formal dinner; they're in advance design stages.

As for the aircraft being the finest, well; I'm biased.
It was certainly the most advanced of its time; the Apollo of the day.

In 1980, my Dad, Richard Organ, along with Ron Page, Don Watson and Les Wilkinson set out to make a book on the plane. It was released by the Boston Mills Press in 1982, and is still going strong today. It's the best selling coffee-table book ever printed in Canada.
You can find it here.
I helped with it as much as a 12-year-old can; proofreading, sorting photos, etc. I even did the pasteup and enlargement on one of the pages - pg. 94. (The one with the roundel.) OK; I didn't have a clue what I was doing; Dad was standing behind me saying 'turn this...push this...." etc.. I got in the way more than helped really; but it was a lot of fun.

Every year; Dad and I try to get out to the Canadian Museum of Aviation in Ottawa to take pictures; we take the annex tour; where visitors get to see all the extra bits; including some bits of the Arrows.
Heh heh - it's the same conversation every year; and Dad loves it; it goes like this:
Tour guide: "And these are the wingtips from RL-201, the first Arrow to fly..."
Dad: "Nope - those are from RL-203."
Guide: "Uhhhh......."
Dad: "You can tell from the modifications to the wing notches right there."
Guide: "If you're interested in the aircraft; we have a great book in the gift shop..."
Dad: "I know. I wrote it." (Dad is not, it must be noted, cursed with an excess of modesty. )
Audience goes "Ooooo!"; the gift shop sells a whole whack more books; Dad has a ball signing and giving an imprompteu talk; while I sit back and laugh my head off.

I have known many men who worked the Arrow Project......one of my dearest friends told me many times of the months and months of endless changes to the "wingbox", before they were finally satisfied it would stand up to the rigours of the flight requirements that this advanced fighter/interceptor would demand.

This is a never ending pain (the cancellation) for anyone who actually had the good fortune to set eyes upon this fabulous bird......I saw it as a kid, and will never forget !

I guess the only consolation is in the knowledge that the team which was put together by Chamberlain and Floyd et al., was dispersed into the US aerospace industry and very instrumental in putting Neil and Buzz on the moon back in '69..........

Hay Staiduk, I've got your Dad's book right here along with many others. My Grandad worked at Avro Canada when they were building it. He didn't work on it but he did see them under construction and was present at the rollout of RL-201.

My father was in training on the ASTRA fire control system in the RCAF on Black Friday. He saw a good number of test flights and Iroquois engine tests.

He was one of those that swore that RL 206 was in Trenton after Black Friday. Said he saw a large delta wing plane (it was dark) and heard a sound only made by paired Iroquois engines. He always thought it strange that 206 was "broken up" on the line and not outside with the finished planes. He once told me that in all the films they show 206 less complete than she really was...and that the engineering mockup has disappeared from the factory floor.

He wondered, was the mockup painted as 206 before the workers came in to cut the planes up? If so, where is CF-105 MkII RL 206?

I'll admit...it's a nice thought.

Also, I too have the book.

My father was in training on the ASTRA fire control system in the RCAF on Black Friday. He saw a good number of test flights and Iroquois engine tests.

He was one of those that swore that RL 206 was in Trenton after Black Friday. Said he saw a large delta wing plane (it was dark) and heard a sound only made by paired Iroquois engines. He always thought it strange that 206 was "broken up" on the line and not outside with the finished planes. He once told me that in all the films they show 206 less complete than she really was...and that the engineering mockup has disappeared from the factory floor.

He wondered, was the mockup painted as 206 before the workers came in to cut the planes up? If so, where is CF-105 MkII RL 206?

I'll admit...it's a nice thought.

Also, I too have the book.

I've never heard of this story. I did here of a rumor that one of the real Arrows was sunk in Lake Ontario.

One of the more interesting things about the Arrow is that it would probably still be quite useful in service today. Most modern US fighters don't go above Mach 2. Even the Raptor, which is suposedly the best can only go at Mach 2. Of course it can turn better than the Arrow but then again the Arrow was never ment to be a dogfighter.

I say we bring the Arrow back and use it to invade some bum hole Middle-Eastern country. Muhahaha!  ;D

i bet that thing can go fast

Fighters today tend to be slower than they were before (missiles are far faster), but far more manueverable.

Even the MKII Arrow (Iriquois engines) was limited by thrust not aerodynamics. Wind tunnel tests done much later showed the basic design was stable right up to the materials design limit...somewhere in the Mach 3 range.

Whether Arrow would have catapulted Canada into the lead in aircraft design and development is open to question...Canada was pretty tapped in that field after paying for Arrow. The next design (or upgrade) would have meant going past the cutting edge of design, right past the bleeding edge and well into unexplored territority. We might not have been able to take advantage of our lead.

One thing Arrow would have done is change the fighter paradigm for a generation. Arrow would have looked down on everybody...and challenged them to come up and play.

Steelx wrote:

i bet that thing can go fast!

You're durn tootin' it could. Chief test pilot Jan Zurakowski recorded a maximum speed of Mach 1.89. Fellow test pilot Spud Potocki took it to M1.96. Remember; this was in 1959.  By any standards; that's incredibly fast.

SilverFox expands nicely:

Even the MKII Arrow (Iriquois engines) was limited by thrust not aerodynamics. Wind tunnel tests done much later showed the basic design was stable right up to the materials design limit...somewhere in the Mach 3 range.

Exactly! I wish I had the mathematical skill; I'd love to be able to work this out - but the above speeds were recorded using the American Pratt & Whitney J-75 engines. The Orenda Iriquois engine was as revolutionary as the airframe - over 43% more powerful than the J-75; while almost 35% lighter.
So powerful in fact; it almost ripped itself off its test bed during initial trials before they throttled it back. It was air-tested on a B-47; bolted to the tail of the bomber. When they fired that huge puppy up; the pilot (Mike Cooperslipper) had to shut down the bomber's own engines to keep the wings on - the accelleration pegged the stress-gauges.

Contrary to what most people think; while RL-206 (the first of the Iriquois-equipped Arrows) was scheduled to fly the monday after Black Friday; it was not in fact airworthy - it had been downchecked due to electrical problems earlier. RL-207 was to fly in its place - it was the only MkII Arrow capable of flight at the time.
The destruction of RL-207 has sadly been well documented;  :( so as nice as it is to dream an Arrow survived (and boy; do we wish!); in reality none did - wishful thinking was the prime factor in thinking one might have.  

BTW: The FS2004 model shown above looks great; but regrettably doesn't have a VC. That is of course the choice of the builder; he's done a helluva job on the flight model; but I'm going to write him a) thanking him for building the excellent aircraft and b) asking him if he could please, please, please, please, please, pu-LEEEEEZZZ build a VC for it?
With sugar on top??

In light of this thread on one of the worlds best and certainly Canadas most famous aircraft, I present to you all to see one of my most prized posessions.........

I too, like a few members here, have the Arrowheads book on the Avro Arrow.....along with a sister publication of the Avro CF-100 Canuck..........here in the following image is a real photograph of the image which was colourized to become the jacket cover for the Arrow book. This B/W photo was printed from a duplicate of the actual negative which was exposed on the only flight of RL-205, a flight which was of 40 mins duration.