[Moose4]

I think the "C" stands for "we can't make them ourselves, so we bought these from below the 49th parallel, but we have way too much pride to ever actually admit that we can't make them anymore, so we'll buy them, paint fake canopy outlines on the bottom (they really did this!), and rename them with a 'C' for 'Canada' in front." I think the Canadian Forces have done that with every single aircraft they've bought from us for the past 40 years; the T-33 became the CT-133, the P-3 Orion became the CP-140 Aurora, the RF-101 Voodoo became the CF-101, etc.

Interestingly enough, Canada did, and does, have a pretty decent aircraft industry. After Avro went belly-up, de Havilland Canada produced a long line of fantastic short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft (Beaver, Otter, Caribou, Twin Otter, and the Dash-7), at least one of which (the Caribou) flew with the US Army in Vietnam. The Dash-8 is a reasonably successful turboprop airliner, and the Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ-200, CRJ-700, CRJ-900) is the mainstay of a lot of regional jet fleets for carriers like Delta Connection. But they got out of the military aircraft industry when the cancellation of the Arrow put Avro under.

}:-)4

[Nathan Zachary]

I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but a lot of the F18's f15's etc. parts are made in various places in Canada.
The Canadian CF18 hornet is built to Canadian Airforce requirements, they have features not found on USAF models. Canada uses them for and has longer range requirements for them than we do, they double as their long range bomber.

[Nathan Zachary]

Much of the aircraft industry that we know today was in fact founded in Canada, as was intercontinental flights. Madonald Douglas builder of the first pressurized long range passenger jets was a Canadian.
The aircraft industry has a very interesting (with heavy Canadian influence) history. You should reseach it sometime.

[Ender Wiggin]

This is not a uniquely Canadian paint job. Some US planes have decoy canopies painted on the bottom too. The concept is that an enemy will be momentarily confused- the attitude of the decoyed fighter will not be immediately apparent, and that makes it hard to predict which way it's going to go.

As for the Dash-8 and Dash-80, I have droned many miles in these boxy wingovers, they do what they are supposed to do (which is a good thing for an aircraft).