Posted on 08/06/2017 8:53:42 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Scale Model Flight Test Prototypes Sunk in Lake May Provide Clues to Mystery. The Canadian-built CF-105 Avro Arrow is many things in aviation history, but more than anything else, it is an enigma.
Aviation historians suggest the Avro Arrow was an aircraft well ahead of its time. A Canadian project from the start, the CF-105 was a large, delta-wing supersonic interceptor built to repel the bomber threat from the Soviet Union.
During the 1950s at the height of the Cold War the Avro CF-105 Arrow project showcased many aviation firsts, including the first fly-by-wire flight control system and very impressive time-to-climb performance. By all measures, the CF-105 Avro Arrow program was a massive achievement for the Canadian aerospace industry, and a tangible competitor to other western aerospace contractors.
The story gets weird when then-Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker cancelled the program abruptly in 1959. It gets even weirder when there appeared to be a conspirational effort to destroy every trace of the program; including all plans and the even the five test aircraft themselves. At the time espionage was suspected as a partial motive. More than one analyst has noted thematic design similarities between the early Avro Arrow and the later Russian MiG-25 Foxbat.
The Canadian-built Avro Arrow was an advanced high performance interceptor that remains shrouded in mystery. (Photo: Avro)
Another reason cited for the sudden cancellation of the Avro CF-105 was the development of ICBMs by the Soviets that effectively rendered interceptors obsolete.
Trying to find an accurate accounting of how, where and when the only five Avro Arrows were destroyed is difficult. The primary narrative is that they were, in fact, destroyed.
The mystery deepened again in December of 2011, when an ejection seat from an Avro Arrow surfaced on eBay with a starting bid of $250,000 USD. A previous seat surfaced in 2008 and was purchased for the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto. The CF-105 was a two-seat aircraft with a pilot and radar intercept officer.
The discovery of the ejection seats fueled rumors that a single remaining Avro Arrow prototype had been smuggled out of Canada to England. One eyewitness claimed to have actually seen the aircraft over England, despite the fact that the Avro Arrow did not have the range to fly non-stop from Canada to England. Experts suggest the likelihood of an entire aircraft actually surviving the abrupt termination of the program are almost zero, but like other conspiracy theories the “hidden Avro Arrow” story has appeal, if not merit.
The Avro Arrow story regained momentum last week when Canadian mining tycoon John Burzynski announced a significant effort to recover the large-scale model prototypes used for flight testing over Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes between Canada and the United States.
The scale models launched from rockets off Point Petre in Prince Edward County east of Toronto during the 1950’s were intended to test stability of the aircraft early in the program. The Avro Arrow test models were three meters long (about 10 feet) or about 1/8th scale of the actual aircraft. A total of nine models were boosted by rockets and hurled into Lake Ontario as part of the early developmental testing.
Researchers are searching for test models launched over Lake Ontario at the end of large rocket boosters seen here. (Photo: Canadian Ministry of Defense)
The abandoned 10-foot long test models of the Avro Arrow likely lie in water between depths of 5 meters to nearly 100 meters, or 330 feet. Lake Ontario’s maximum depth is just over 240 meters, about 800 feet. The search grid for the large-scale models is over 60 square kilometers, half the size of the major Canadian city, Vancouver.
Researchers will use an autonomous programmable submarine surveillance vessel named the “Thunder Fish”. The small submarine uses high-resolution side-looking synthetic aperture sonar to make images of the lake bottom. During its submerged reconnaissance runs the mini-sub moves at about 3 knots speed.
Should the operation, called “Raise the Arrow” by its organizers, succeed in locating any of the aircraft models on the lake bottom for over 50 years they will be displayed at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa and the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ontario.
“North American” was the name of a specific company.
I’m betting 99% of the reason was to keep the research out of Russian hands. The Arrow was designed to intercept Russian bombers coming in over the remote regions of the arctic.
At that very moment, we thought -we- might need to send bombers into Russia over some very remote regions of the arctic. We didn’t want our B-52s and B-58s to run into a Russian Avro Arrow clone. Remember the Soviets copied everything they could back then, so that was a very real possibility. And the Arrow was almost -purpose built- to defend the USSR against SAC bombers.
It would have been like a very high quality MiG-25.
Nice! Good old late-night snark.
With the cancellation of the Arrow, our aerospace industry collapsed and there was an enormous brain drain headed south. The Apollo program gained a great many engineers from that project. Also, the a/c the RCAF ended up buying in future years, many Canadian engineers worked on those designs.
The F-108 - originally conceived as the escort for the Valkyrie bomber, IIRC. Equipment sure evolved quickly in that era, as did battle doctrine.
Never knew I’d be looking back at those times as “the good old days”.
My impression is that the vehicle was of the quality at least of the Marmon and Cadillac V16s of the time, and maybe between it and the Rolls. It was not a car for the middle class.
I worked for an auto repair shop after school hours back in the early '50s, insurance neither required nor desired. The owner had bought a Pierce-Arrow convertible coupe (1936 ??), restoring it to original out-of-factory status. The motor was a huge straight-eight engine, and the grille was louvered to open and sut according to the temperature of the engine. I know that the exhaust pipe of that monster engine was of a diameter not seen in personal autos of that day. It might well be compared with what is seen in a Dodge Ram Cummins diesel pickup today, or a Ford V10 F350; that is, about two inches or a little more. What a huffy sound when it came to life. But it was quiet, and just idling, you did not know it was running unless you were told, or checked the tailpipe for emissions. Smoo-oo-ooth.
IIRC, There was a rumble seat in addition to a wide, roomy bench-type seat behind the front seat. Of course, all the seat surfaces was top-grain luxurious leather, with that wonderful rich odor of fine hide tanned to the softest.
There were little storage lockers built into the side, and it had a nice long running board.
The owner painted the car with a midnight blue lacquer, six coats of it, and he depended on me to prep fro primer and the six coats, fine-sanding between the coats for adhesion of each successive coat. The final coat was waxed and so smooth that if a dry rag was paced at the top of the fender curve, that when the weight was not equally distributed quite carefully, the rag would slide off. As a 16-year-old kid, I was quite proud to be entrusted with the prepping for each coat, and the final polishing.
What a life we had, back in the day of the Greatest Generation, who won the War (the business owner had been a pilot, as was my eighth-grade teacher, P51), and proceeded to set a blistering pace for technological development never before imagined until the torch was lit by inventing ways to win WWII as soon as possible, with every heart and hand and prayer behind it, across the land.
My generation, the next after the Great one, got caught in the drag, and were pulled along by it. I know that as an engineering graduate in the early sixties, I had to turn down several opportunities to answer the urgent unsought appeals for obtaining my employment. I did take interviews with Connecticut Advanced Nuclear Energy Laboratories (Pratt & Whitney) as well as The Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories (GE), was offered top dollar beginning salary, and turned them both down for my top choice, where I was treated like a prince with broad authority. Not like today, you bet.
This Pierce-Arrow model looks very much like the one I remember working on:
Pierce-Arrow. What an experience! The president of my Dad's college owned one, I believe I heard mentioned with awe a special model with "Siver" in it. Maybe the Silver Arrow:
Maybe the geniuses moved to Canada, and had children that formulated the Avro Arrow (???).
Gosh, the fifties and sixties provided opportunities for those keeping their eyes open with a view towad a bold stroke for the teenager hust blocked by regulations and attitudes of today. We were not looking for "safe spaces" to hide out in. We were looking for adventurous experiences that were crossing the threshold of the future every day! Poor blinded sucklings still living at their parents (or a parent's) home long after the umbilical should hve been sliced figuratively at least by puberty, if not before. You know, I couldn't have a Pierce-Arrow like my employer, but in the last six monts of my high school career, I was given all the parts of a 1933 Ford converible coupe, and rebuilt it from the ground up, subsituting a 59A husky block for the V-* 60 aluminum block for depression-age economy, and replacing the front axle with mechanical brakes with the one from the '39 Ford that also supplied the block, so it could have hydraulic brakes. Got Licoln Zephyr diagonal-cut gears to replace the weaker straight-cut gears in the floor-shift transmission, too. Ask my parents for money for parts? No sir! Not one dime--nor did I even had to ask them permission for this project.No sir, Mom was astounded that I would spend $70 for the affair, and sort of dismayed--actually even cried a bit--at my profligacy when she and Dad had struggled for months to save up $100, also secretly, so they could surprise me with a graduation gift toward college. I was greatly humbled, especially since they had stayed a coming relocation to give the chance to finish scjhool in the same place. When they had to move, actually about two weeks before the commencement, the almost-finished car had to be left behind. Well, doggone, I have finally learned that familial communication is tremendously important for the childs prearation to anticipate coming events before they materialize.
Canada, eh? Did Avro anticipate the advent of ICBMs and Sputnik on their Arrow fighter fixed-wing craft? I guess not. Or at least they did not seem to retain the notion that it was the first of truly great new airframe design to survive multi-G stresses. Too bad that the quit on the threshold of success.
Maybe it was the American quality of dogged, never-take-no persistence finally carried the concept through into the battle-ready workhorses for our hot-pants jet jockeys (and their supporting staff) to get us into and through the Vietnam, Gulf War, and current Mideast struggles.
We'll see. I hope it works out good for us and freedom for all. May the Maple Leaf live forever.
Looks to be much bigger.
Politics. The Pentagon will cancel an aircraft program and ‘order the tooling & jigs’ destroyed so that the program cannot be resurrected by a future Congress. This is how the senior generals prevent the canceled program from competing with a newer, more favored program for funding. Case in point: The F-22 vs. the F-35.
In a lot of ways the F-22 is the superior air frame. If Lockheed Martin were to graft some of the more advanced features of the F-35 onto an F-22B, you’d have the ultimate pure fighter. Lockheed Martin won’t suggest it because they control both programs. But if the F-22 was built by a competitor? Bet your bottom dollar that the tooling would have been destroyed by now.
Canadian nationalists might argue that it would be great at shooting down USAF B-58s though.... :-)
Diefenbaker wanted to destroy the Arrow and, in case it was the wrong decision, he wanted no memorials to exist.
There is a small bright cloud here. Many of the suddenly out of work aeronautical engineers drifted to the US and signed on with a new government agency NASA. It could be said that if it wasn't for the immigrant engineers from Germany and Canada the US would have had a much tougher time in the space race.
I had a 77 Arrow and 67 and 69 Darts.
It would have been nice if the article would have mentioned what the models were made of and what speeds it was launched to.
From the image, the booster is a solid motor with super sonic airfoil stabilizers, so Mach 1.2 to 2?
If that’s the speed regime, then the model is probably steel or stainless steel.
The models closer to the surface are probably pretty corroded from dissolved oxygen close to the lakes surface or destroyed from water and lake bed impact. The ones in deep water may be very much intact and in excellent condition if they survived impact with the water.
I used to love the Hustler. Still do.
Seems sensible. If the value of interceptors for you has dropped and the enemy still has need of them, then dunking the program will slow their progress.
Very. Cool.
What are the chances that, if the launches of those models into the lake were public knowledge, that a team of scuba divers might have already tried to retrieve one?
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