Although it’s been nearly 60 years since its last flight, the story of the Avro Arrow still holds a strong fascination for Canadians.
“It has all the qualities of a great story,” said Marc-Andre Valiquette, author of four books on the plane.
“People like mystery and conspiracy theories and the history of the Arrow has plenty of both.”
Valiquette will be one of the guest speakers at this year’s Flight Fest to be held Friday, July 22 at the Capitol Theatre.
The Arrow (officially known as the Avro CF-105 Arrow) was developed in 1957 as a supersonic jet interceptor.
Considered by many to be technologically superior to jets used by the United States and the Soviet Union, the project was scrapped by the Diefenbaker government in 1959 on a day known as Black Friday in Canadian aviation history.
Theories that the project was scuttled due to pressure from the United States were fueled by the manner in which the government ordered that all parts, plans, production equipment and technical data be destroyed.
Valiquette said key factors in the plane’s demise were a federal government that had been elected on a platform of cost cutting and a lack of market.
“In March of 1958, Diefenbaker won a huge majority and since the Arrow wasn’t being really pushed by the Canadian Air Force, it became an easy target,” he said. “There were five or six American aerospace companies and the American government wasn’t going to buy something from a Canadian firm so there wasn’t a market for it.”
Although the plane was reportedly preparing to challenge both speed and altitude records of the day, Valiquette said its true potential remains unknown.
“It’s a big what-if,” he said. “It had potential and with new engines planned for it, the world speed record was in reach.”
An even bigger issue than the demise of the plane was that its cancellation virtually destroyed the Canadian aviation industry.
“We lost much more than a plane,” he said. “Fifteen thousand people lost their jobs directly and another 10,000 sub-contractors were put out of work. We never recovered.”
Valiquette said many of the top engineers who played key roles in the Apollo program that sent astronauts to the moon were from Avro.
“We lost thousands of technicians,” he said. “There were so many in southern California that they would get together and have large parties.”
Although the government had ordered everything connected with the plan to be destroyed, many parts, including part of a fuselage, were smuggled out of the plant.
“There are a lot of people I spoke to when I was writing my books that were afraid to talk to me,” he said. “I ended up with a large number of parts I donated to museums.”
The plane was the subject of a CBC mini series that, while accurate in some respects, is “pure Hollywood” in others, Valiquette said.
Flight Fest is a fundraiser for the local Air Cadet program. Tickets are available for $20 from cktickets.com.
