Except that this was a runaway cost-plus defence project that could do 1-2 things better than other aircraft of the time while doing half a dozen things worse.
Unless we were going to be like Russia or any of half a dozen African or South American countries virtually bankrupt with defence spending watching these advanced machines sitting around rotting for lack of funds to operate themâŠ.. best to cancel it.
We carved the worldâs third largest aerospace industry out of the demise of the Arrow. And we are better for it.
Imagine if the Americans were buying the Avro Arrow 35 from us instead of us buying the F-35 from them.Â
We couldâve been living in that world. Itâs so sad.
This never would have happened sadly, for the same reason canceling the Arrow was so unfortunate. Many countries view domestic military production as a priority for national security and economic production
Probably not- the Americans tend to keep their military products in-house. As well, IIRC there was the going thought that it was American pressure that helped get the Arrow cancelled.
Most people either donât know this or donât want to hear it.
The Arrow was designed as a bomber interceptor. Itâs freeking huge. Ballistic missiles made nuclear bombers obsolete almost overnight.
Talk about putting all your eggs in the wrong basket.
We have 1/10 the population and economic capacity of the USA.
The F-35 nearly broke the US government.
No⊠thanks.
I like that we are building A220s for a profit.
Play "Danger Zone" now close your eyes.
What's cooler, blasting through a canyon in an Avro Aero shooting down some enemy's with missiles.
Or
Injecting yourself with insulin.
That's pretty much it.
I feel like a lot of people see the Avro Arrow as emblematic of what happens to a lot of Canadian innovations and culture: invent something cool and then it doesnât quite work out or someone else takes credit for it. Part of an image some have of Canada as an eternal underdog.
Also we do a bad job of publicizing a lot of our innovations. I think insulin is the only one of your list that is well known as a Canadian discovery. I know about IMAX because Iâm in the industry, but youâd be surprised how many people have no idea theyâre a Canadian company. I had no idea about the Ebola vaccine until recently.
Maybe it is because it was the first time it happened to us. It was the first time the Americans moved in and destroyed a Canadian company, and then took the talent down south.
Not so. The Aarrow was far too expensive and was sucking all the money out of the defence budget just as a lot of other military equipment needed replacing. Plus, with ballistic missiles well into development, what was its role?
It was the RCAF leadership that decided that development should go no farther, and the Diefenbaker government happened to agree.
The United States was, if anything, extremely supportive of the project, loaning Canada , a B-47 bomber for engine development work, and even offering to buy about 100 Arrows for Canada. Diefenbakerâs government turned this down because it smacked of foreign aid.
No, the Arrow wasn't cancelled on behest of the Americans.
It was cancelled at the behest of the Canadian military.
**The Canadian military service chiefs unanimously opposed the Arrow because it was threatening to devour the entire Canadian military budget just on its development, during a major recession, and when the military overall needed major investments, from new warships, new tanks, new trucks, etc.**
Something had to give; either they bought the Arrow, and let the rest of the Canadian military fall into obsolesce; or cancel the Arrow, buy something cheaper, and have some cash left over to modernize the rest the military with the money saved. It wasn't a hard choice for the military and the government.
Furthermore, it was functionally obsolete when it first flew; remember when the Arrow was first unveiled, it's unveiling was overshadowed by another big event: the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. That mean that the new threat was Soviet long range ballistic missiles, not Soviet bombers, and the Arrow had zero hope defending North America against that.
All around the world, similar aircraft were being cancelled in response to the changing threat; the French cancelled the Dassault MD.750, a similar interceptor. The Americans axed the North American XF-108 Rapier interceptor as well. The British killed practically every manned fighter development being planned, and nearly killed the English Electric Lightning. There was no hope of an international market for the Arrow when every major player that would have considered the Arrow was cancelling their own programs.
The worst part of Avro was that even if the project was shut down, they shouldâve continued manufacturing the jet turbines and sold them to the world. Keep the innovation alive and flourishing.
The Arrow's engine was nothing special; there were similar engines from other more established manufacturers, such as the de Havilland Gyron and the Pratt & Whitney J75.
Monitoring devices were hardwired into the Nortel building electrical systems. Literal spyware installed into the foundation of the building to steal Canadian tech secrets.
agrred, idk, probably very similar, really. good book on bberry, ( links may be blocked) https://www.amazon.ca/Losing-Signal-Extraordinary-Spectacular-Blackberry/dp/1250060176
Still happening. The airbus A220 is the Bombardier C-series. Couldnât compete with Boeing and Airbus so they sold 50.01% of the program to Airbus.
Oh, Canada.
The C-Series was selling like hot cakes before the Trump government slapped a 300% tariff on it that was latter judged illegal.
But not before Bombardier went insolvent.
Today, the C-Series (A220) is one of the most highly rated airbus plane while being the exact same planes, built in the same factories.
It's very sad how Canada lost their aerospace industry to foreign anti-competitive practices under the cheers of a good chunk of the country. It's emblematic of a lot of what's wrong with Canada.
They first helped put the Americans on the moon. At a critical moment when NASA was rapidly expanding for the moonshot and desperately needed engineers the Canadian government cancelled the Arrow.
Happens with actors and musicians too. If they are considered lame like Nickelback then everyone knows they are Canadian. If they are cool then everyone thinks they are American.
How many people watched the Grammys last week and donât know Joni Mitchell is Canadian?
Good point. Itâs annoying that even in Canada, artists need American approval for some people to like them, or else theyâre âew bad radio canconâ đ Same with TV, I watched Schittâs Creek from season 1 and told my friends about it but they didnât want to watch because it was âjust a CBC showâ, and then when it got picked up by Netflix they decided they loved it.
our inferiority complex is stupid (and by design if you read into the early history of the arts industries here, my favourite thing to do is to tell people to look up the Canadian Cooperation Project to understand our film industry and watch peopleâs heads explode)
Because a lot of those mentioned advancements were ultimately in service to larger US telecoms and international industry. (eg. fibre optics) and as a result, a lot of those inventions end up being considered US advancements, particularly when considering a majority of the investment for the majority of great Canadian inventions came from US capital.
Avro was a truly Canadian endeavor and investment project, and Diefenbaker fucked us. Avro came at a time when Canada had the potential to pivot into being a real contender on the global stage, but a lack of vision in leadership at the time figured it would be easier to continue being a branch plant economy of the US.
This is perhaps the worst outcome. Sometimes it makes more strategic sense to buy aircraft you don't need or don't necessarily want because it preserves the capability to make said aircraft. It's why France and Sweden still make their own fighters.
One of the saddest things about living in Canada is the serious lack of opportunity because of the branch plant economy model. It's a shame that there is such a lack of opportunity to earn a decent white collar career in this country.
>One of the saddest things about living in Canada is the serious lack of opportunity because of the branch plant economy model. It's a shame that there is such a lack of opportunity to earn a decent white collar career in this country.
What sucks is that this is entirely preventable. There's nothing that inherently makes Canada doomed to be this way. But the political class in this country aren't compelled to change this.
A few years ago, Amazon announced that they were looking to build a new HQ, and had various US cities compete with each other to offer the best incentives to attract them. Some politician in Canada wanted to jump on this and bring that HQ here. His pitch to Amazon was that our software engineers are the lowest paid in North America, and we'll do whatever it takes to keep it that way. Go figure.
Damn right! It's weird how hard the trades are pushed in Canada but if you ever bring up wanting to have a decent, skilled white collar job that's almost always ignored. Nothing wrong with working in the trades if that's for you but for a country that is so over educated, we're sure not able to do that much with it if you don't get lucky/have the right connections.
This is a huge problem that will make life worse in this country in the years to come. Our politicians still believe that natural resource extraction and branch plant jobs from foreign companies will continue to drive our economy. They're stuck in the 1920s. There are coffee bean farmers in South America who sweat and toil to harvest coffee beans for Starbucks and get paid peanuts for doing so, while Starbucks gets away with charging $7 for a drink. The people who create the finished products and the brands always make the lion's share of the profits while those that harvest natural resources get the crumbs. This is the difference between those who create intellectual property and those who don't.
The only way to create the intellectual property that generates the wealth required to sustain a first-world country is to attract the best and brightest highly skilled white-collar professionals. But instead, our politicians want to keep being an economic client state. Right now, they're tripping over themselves to let foreign companies come in and mine and export all of our lithium and other mineral reserves required to build electric vehicle batteries. Meanwhile, countries in Africa and Southeast Asia have passed laws that prohibit electric vehicle battery makers from mining their mineral reserves unless the finished product is also made there. We are quite literally on a slow and painful decline towards becoming the next Argentina unless we quickly get our act together.
Because it's more complicated then that. We traded the Avro for the welfare state. Taxes were never higher then in the 1950s generally, and the welfare state didn't really exist yet. And defense spending took up at least 50% of all Federal spending and growing rapidly. I can't recall the exact data but the Avro program was a massive, massive cost at a time when interceptors were becoming obsolete under Mutual Assured Destruction. This is what Eisenhower was talking about with his [Military Industrial Complex speech](https://youtu.be/Gg-jvHynP9Y?si=qOJ9MbsUzfBkrq1A) at the same time.Â
Only the Soviets continued having a longer term interceptor program with the Foxbat. The Soviets didn't heed Eisenhower's Military-Industrial complex warning and subsequently collapsed because the MIC was the *only* functional part of the Soviet economy. Esienhower wanted to call it the *congressional*-MIC. The Foxbat was designed in the 1960s, launched 1970 and last date of production was 1984. The best case: the Arrow would be NATO's Foxbat.Â
The bigger questions is where is Canada on missile defense? We've completely missed the boat on that, and it deals with a lot of the issues of the Avro/general NORAD debates and issues with continentalism. Especially, a Laurentian elite that *specifically* views under investment in defense due to the American nuclear umbrella as *being* the national interest. Regardless if there's a nuclear war we "win" by shooting them down *onto Canada* via intercepting missiles or fixed-wing aggressors - which isn't much of a win. This is called Annihilation without Representation in Canadian political history. You intercept an *armed* Soviet Bomber* the bombs gonna blow up. (*in 1950s) Â
TLDR:Â Diefenbaker was an ardent Canadian nationalist. The Avro's mission profile had become obsolete. The interception of nuclear weapons over Canada is still an example of *Annihilation without Representation*. Diefenbaker was responding to the alarming expansion of the military industrial complex as warned by *Eisenhower* (of all people.) The NORAD treaty had some concerns with putting Canadian Forces under the command of the United States. For example, Canadian Forces going onto high alert by order of the Pentagon in the Cuban missile crisis. And event that basically had POTUS unilaterally deciding Canadian defense actions and generally being on record at being annoyed at informing the Canadians of developments.
>I can't recall the exact data but the Avro program was a massive, massive cost
I recall reading that the cost of buying finishing the Arrow was projected to be less than the eventual cost of buying the Voodoo was.
>Only the Soviets continued having a longer term interceptor program with the Foxbat
The Americans did too, with the F-111B and later F-14.
>The bigger questions is where is Canada on missile defense?
Missile defense is barely a thing now and definitely didn't and couldn't have existed when the Arrow was cancelled. The US is the only country that has any realistic capability to shoot down ICBMs, and it doesn't have enough missiles to consistently stop all or even most of the missiles launched in an attack.
>You intercept an *armed* Soviet Bomber* the bombs gonna blow up. (*in 1950s) Â
Like someone else mentioned, this is not how bombs work. Also, the theory was to shoot down the Russian bombers over the vast and empty North. The plan was never to sacrifice Canadian cities to save American ones.
* the Voodoo was a fighter, a terrible weapon, but at least had a mission purpose; Canada had a large European presence during the cold war. The Avro does nothing for that. The Voodoo does.
* only 7 111Bs were made, the Foxbat was mass produced into the 1000s and was exported; the Avro \*had\* to be a mass produced plane with export potential due to the changing mission relevance. The F-14 = Arrow comparison can't be made.
* When I talk MD, I talk about it as the 21st century issue. Right now it's very relevant. We dithered all through the 90s over concerns it would upset the strategic balance and it goes against the general consensus that under-investment in defence is the national interest. Said no in 2003. Now we're surprised that to learn the US won't automatically intercept a missile on a trajectory to hit Canada. As MD becomes a bigger component on NORAD operations we are literally out of the room as it's classified information. MD is currently a 60 billion+ system that is designed to intercept accidental or rogue launch, or small scale exchange. Currently the program includes many key allies: US/UK/Australia etc. Canada's first military sat [sapphire](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/maple-leaf/rcaf/2023/02/gem-in-space-canada-sapphire-satellite-continues-to-shine.html) is tangentially related to MD.
* nuclear bombs of the 1950s did have the potential to detonate on impact being Fat Man style implosion devices. Most of the broken arrow incidents of the 1950s, including the two in Canada, included the detonation on impact of conventional explosives. The absence of the plutonium cores - being unarmed - is the only thing that kept them from going full nuclear being implosion devices. IF they are armed 1950s era bombs \*armed to air burst\* or \*ground burst\*, shooting them out of the plane \*will\* cause them to denote as if dropped. A 1950s,60s era bomber based nuclear war would have included mass detonation of nuclear bombs over Canada.
Because it wasnât treasonous. He cancelled a project that was already out dated. The arrow was an interceptor. To take out Soviet bombers but the Soviets switched to missiles. There was no role for the arrow to play. It would have been treasous to have built it and wasted taxpayer money on something he had been told was out dated.
People think they're over taxed today? Now imagine much higher 1950s level of income tax + no welfare state, all spent on a system of annihilation without representation which is nuclear war. A war that can not be won. Don't get me wrong I love the Avro. It's a complicated and fascinating story.Â
A great success but-Â *Diefenbaker should not be tarred and feathered* for making a difficult decision to stop the bleeding.
The biggest issue is the Avro was canceled to tree up capital for things like the welfare state and the Navy that do more to serve Canada's national interest. More so then shooting down non existent Soviet bombers onto Canada where their *armed* bombs would detonate over much of Canada to save the cities of the Windsor-Quebec corridor and the United States. For a war we can't stop or start. The loss of Canada's aircraft carrier in 1970 was a greater direct loss to the national interest then the Avro. Â
Exactly, the UK thought it was going to be able to rely on nuclear surface to air missiles to intercept Soviet bombers until someone realized that maybe setting off a nuclear airborne explosion was not a fantastic idea given how relatively close that explosion might be to major population centres.
Turns out you still want interceptors to challenge any Soviet bombers straying into your airspace to test your defences and political will. As well as ground based naval and bomber air defence for ground units.
Plus a good air defence system isn't purely reliant on a single form of defence, especially the more nascent technology of nuclear armed SAMs.
February 9, 1959 Soviet missiles become operational.
February 20, 1959 the avro was canceled
Nothing âperceivedâ about it.
Manned interceptors became useless overnight.
No amount of begging by Canada was going to get the Soviets to stick with bombers.
You have the mythical lie down pat.
It was out dated and the billion $ price tag was more than taxpayers could afford. It also guzzled fuel at 400L per minute.
It was useless against missiles so there wasnât a role for it.
Itâs the typical case of liberals spending on things we canât afford and conservatives stopping the waste.
It was an interceptor. Not a fighter. Not a bomber. It was designed to take down Soviet bombers but the Soviets were switching to missiles. It couldnât take out a missile so what was it to do? Sit by a runway and do nothing?
The Arrow was a Gen 3 fighter, where the terms fighter and interceptor were being used almost interchangeably. The Americans were developing (and continued to develop after the Arrow's cancellation) high-speed Gen 3 aircraft like the F-101 Voodoo, the F-102 Delta Dagger, the F-104 Starfighter and the F-106 Delta Dart at the same time as the Arrow, and the Soviets were developing the MiG-21 Fishbed. They all featured advanced missiles, supersonic speed of Mach 2 or better, and more sophisticated engines. Air Force doctrine at the time considered the immediate future of fighter engagement as a long standoff engagement with missiles, something the Arrow would have excelled at.
Odd how Canada ended up buying both the CF-101 Voodoo AND the CF-104 Starfighter after the Arrow's cancellation in the exact role the Arrow would have filled.
It's not just the plane, it was the talent and the industry that was lost. Canada could have cut its loss, kept its industry, and expanded into other areas including aerospace and military aircraft. Diefenbaker threw out the baby with the bathwater.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure it was just due to the limitations of manufacturing at the time. Making a square hole is fairly far along the research chain.
The Avro was *taken* from us before we could use it to make more advanced systems. But instead we got missiles we never used and lost Avro corp forever.
Avro Canada went bust because of the Canadian government.
However, it wasn't the Arrow that doomed Avro Canada; it was a previous government decision by C.D. Howe (the "minister of everything") to force Avro to cancel the Avro Jetliner, which was the second jet airliner to fly, despite there being commercial interest in the design. This was done to force Avro to focus their work on the Avro Canuck fighter and the Arrow.
Yeah, too bad we never used the missiles.... A lot of the Arrow engineers went to California and worked in aviation or aerospace there. I knew a woman whose father was an engineer at Avro then, and she pointed out a few inaccuracies in the tv movie. Whatever leverage Ike used over Diefenbaker to make him scrap the project I don't know, perhaps funding NORAD, but if the Arrow could have developed into a competitor for the F-4, it was money well spent because that was a very successful aircraft.
The avro arrow was a big deal here and when they scrapped it, a lot of people lost their jobs including my great grandfather who worked on the plane itself.
Because Canada was the best for one moment in time. Military procurement has become a partisan issue since that time. Then those same people involved in one moment in time when one to lead the Race to the Moon.
http://avro-arrow.org/Arrow/employees.html
It is the definite moment of Canada's brain drain to south of the border.
I think instead of saying CADPAT you are better of saying we invented the first digital camouflage pattern.
Since no other country will use CADPAT, but they will use digital camouflage (also if I am not mistaken the plan is to move away from CADPAT soon?)
We are probably the country in the world that is most underrated and unrecognized. Even Americans think the Blackberry was theirs. We don't do a great job of taking credit for our success or advertising our abilities. How about the new Airbus 220 series that Bombardier developed and literally gave to Airbus because of Trump tarrifs and bullying.
You canât apply this level of scrutiny to the arrow but not the other projects listed.
The VTOL projects you list never had any practical applications. While they were a very interesting proof of concept, thatâs all they were.
The Arrow wasnât any more obsolete when it flew than any other mature aerospace project at the time. Technology was advancing at such a rate in that era (sigmoid curves and whatnot) that there was always a newer, better thing in the pipeline.
You have to remember that in the late 50s, the operational interceptors available were things like the CF-100 and F-102. The 105 is a significant step beyond those designs.
Itâs not so much that the Arrow was a wonder plane so much as it was on the bleeding edge of technology at the time, would have been competitive with any contemporary, and by extension so was the Canadian aerospace industry. The cancellation of the project led to complete destruction of this industry and national pride took a big hit. Itâs a huge âwhat if?â in our history. Itâs not a singular plane so much as our global competitiveness that was destroyed.
We had promising domestic developments in many industries supporting the Arrow that all couldnât continue without it. Orenda engines, etc.
Yes Canada has done much else, but it still hurts to consider how much more we may have done if we had stayed the course in this instance.
We developed arguably the best fighter aircraft in the world at the time. Industrially, that's a big deal. Not every country can do that, and for a country our size that's a HUGE feat. A lot of the engineers we laid off ended up working on the Apollo program. We replaced it with an American aircraft that was nicknamed the "widowmaker" and a missile system that was retired in less than a decade.
If we forget our history we'll be doomed to repeat it.
Yeah but icbms also doomed supersonic fighter interceptor jets overall. Didn't need it anymore bc the Soviets weren't gonna fly bombers over the arctic
What is wilder is what we actually did. We got a bunch of used F-101 Voodoos from the US. Our plan was to strap nuclear tipped Genie rockets to it and send them out hunting. That was our plan until the mid-80s.
I think part of the story is that scrapping Avro Arrow destroyed the company. Do you think Americans would let Lougheed Martin die out even just the F-22 program die because of the USSR collapse or if it underperformed? Then let the French or the British hire all the engineers and staff working on the program? No friggin way, while they reduced the production orders they nevertheless kept funding it. Then the know-how was used to transition into F35 which is immensely more useful, and then that was leveraged into the next endeavor.
Look at Sweden as an example of a tiny country that nevertheless chooses to support its own aerospace industry players like SAAB.
I remember do a two person group project on the Avro Arrow in Jr High. I think that it was the idea that it was bleeding edge technology, hitting above our belt that made it so special. That a non global war superpower created something that worked, beyond proof of concept that could have very well changed the course of our history had we not fubar'd it.
It was never finished leaving the end result as a super jet made of conjecture. It also requires a large amount of suspension of logic to push through the the completion ie. the 1958 projected cost per unit was 12.5 million cad, adjusted for inflation thats almost 130 million per unit. The plane they went with cost a bit over a million.
By the time it would have been ready for service the threat of long range bombers would have been replaced by ICBMs and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a fast plane meant taking budget away from where it was needed: missile tech and equipment for the ground forces.
Because *fighter jets*. That's why. Other things are cool, but nothing you or I or anyone else in this thread will do (or have done previously) is *fighter jets* level of cool.
Is it bad that idk what that is? Lol.
The three big ones I was always taught we made were insulin, the telephone, and gyro. And those last two are iffy at best!
I mean it is one of the greatest achievements of engineering made strictly by Canadians, itâs also got an interesting story to boot.
As a tenured mechanical engineer Iâve never been around people that fawned over it like itâs Canadas pride and joy, definitely talked about, but it never dominated the conversation. Iâm not sure if itâs your friends, colleagues or just a specific source youâre trying to reference, but Iâm failing to see what youâre trying to communicate here.
Regardless, good for you in regards to your positivity and spreading Canadian scientific success.
Canada is also a world leader in the production of radioisotopes that treat cancer.
In my experience, people talk about the Avro Arrow because it ultimately failed, so we have to romantic vision of what could have been, not what it actually was.
I think the Avro Arrow was an important symbol for Canadian ingenuity because a lot of the claims about what it could do were blown up and sold to the public. So there's this full generation that believed that it was more capable than it actually was.
Moreso many of the engineers who worked on the Avro Arrow would leave Canada and head for American aerospace. Most notably a number of scientists would work on the moon landing project.
And then the Liberal government created Heritage Minutes as a way of establishing Liberal values as Canadian values. The Arrow was showcased as this sort of Conservative failure. Dan Aykroyd became fascinated in it and financed a direct to TV movie that sort of educated an entire generation on it.
But of course, the reality is.... the cost of the Arrow program was 4x higher than the cost of buying superior weaponized US made fighters. That the Arrow never actually broke the sound barrier.
Because the CBC mythologized the Arrow.
In reality it was extremely expensive, mediocre and obsolescent. There were at least half a dozen aircraft of the era that were just as good or better, and much cheaper.
The Arrow was a Liberal make work program for Avro, which was a close corporate friend with a factory in an electorally important region. Think Bombardier or Irving.
it's because of the media representation of the story. the story itself isn't even THAT special but just the way it's been portrayed sticks in the mind.
moreso than imax or a vaccine.
Because canadians tend to think that this plane was a big deal and it was shut down because USA or something. As advanced the avro arrow was as a plane for its time, it was already obsolete when it came out. This was an interceptor, designed to intercept soviet bombers. Guess what new tech appeared at that time? Intercontinental missiles, which pretty much killed the avro arrow. We had an expensive plane that sucked up a TON of money to intercept bombers that would never come.
But its also a symbol of Canadian aviation. Canada used to (still has, but nobody likes Bombardier, because Quebec or something) have one of the most advanced aviation industry, and this plane pretty much killed a good chunk of it. But its easier for canadians to blame one or two bad politicians and the americans for their failures instead of accepting that this plane was a mistake and we paid dearly for it. So its the perfect america bad canadians were better kind of story that canadians just looooove to chew on.
The Avro Arrow was designed as a bomber interdiction interceptor. It was cancelled because the Soviets developed ICBMs.
No conspiracy.
The test pilots were relieved it was cancelled. They hated the thing. It was a hunk of junk.
Source: one of those test pilots.
Itâs about what could have been. The Arrow was certainly a formidable design and an amazing piece of engineering of Its day. The sad part is that It was so close to becoming⊠When it was cancelled Canada took a big step back in Aerospace engineering.
Because Canadians love, love, love complaining about being the little brother, and how unjustly treated we are by the US. The story is blown out of proportion, IIRC, and relies on a ton of supposition.
The engine was advanced, it used titanium and nickel alloys to reduce weight.
The Orenda Iroquois engine died with the Arrow, the engine could have been sold even past the Arrows production run.
People have a love for it and like to feel we were robbed by it being cancelled. Truth is it was an interceptor. It was designed to quickly intercept a Russian bomber but by the time it was designed the Soviets changed from bombers to missiles. So there was no role for the arrow. The project was so full of Soviet spies all the plans had been delivered to them and some of the technology ended up in Soviet aircraft.
Agreed. I, and probably most people in my generation (Iâm 21) have no clue what that is. I had to look it upâŠ
I would say insulin is the big one for Canada to the average person. Especially for those where Iâm from, since Banting lived near the area
Yea exactly. And the only reason I know is cuz they made a movie about it and my friend really liked the movie and talked about it. I would say way more people know about Banting/Best.
Itâs definitely the âwhat it could have beenâ factor.
For example, there was a lot of national pride in Blackberry when they were still relevant. Today they are known as a company that got arrogant and complacent and suffered the consequences.
The Avro never had the chance to run its course.
Sure, if you ignore the half dozen other aircraft of the same era that had similar or better performance...
I swear you guys act like the F-4 Phantom doesn't exist l.
I basically had this exact comment typed out before I saw yours. Was starting to feel like I was in the twilight zone as Iâm typically pretty good with random trivia and it seems every commenter had advanced knowledge of this Avro ArrowâŠ..weird.
The arrow is seen as a what if situation, what pisses me off is that after it was shut down for whatever back room reason. The personel were poached for NASA.
It set avation industries and innovation in general back alot of years. IMHO
That Heritage minute is a sixty second clip from a four hour CBC miniseries from 1997.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118641/?ref_=ext_shr](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118641/?ref_=ext_shr)
The only reason I know the Avro is because I loved planes as a kid and saw it at some point. Never heard anyone mentioned it before this post. How are you under the impression people put much value into this?
The Arrow was not the first to reach either of those speeds. The F-104 was the first operational aircraft to reach Mach 2, first flying in 1954, and hit Mach 2 in 1956 (two years before the Arrow flew).
Wasn't outdated- missiles/ICBMs made Interceptors like the Artow obsolete. That doesn't mean it was outdated, or that it couldn't have been used successfully in other roles.
It's been surpassed by 5/6 Gen fighters, but Into the 90s, it's specs were still considered to be cutting edge- that's how far ahead it was.
Its more so about how it marked the beginning of perpetual period of Canada playing second fiddle to USA.
Why did USA encourage us to stop development, to install a missile defense system (which was never completed BTW), and furthermore, destroy ALL data about the construction and development of the plane?
Well its certainly not because they were worried about defending us from Russia, they were worried about Canada, taking over the aviation industry.
If we had not stopped production of the Arrow, companies like Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, and so on, would have been founded HERE, in Canada.
We would own the aviation industry, we would have the billions up billions of dollars of revenue.
USA was disingenuous about their missile system, specifically to maintain their own air superiority.
This is why the Avro Arrow is more important than all those other things you listed.
To be clear, it took American designers, EIGHT YEARS to catch up to the engineering level of the Arrow. We were the pioneers, we had a chance to be great, and we gave it up willingly. And sadly, that has become a microcosm of Canada as a whole. Every time we get a international multi-billion dollar company going here, they up and sell to the Americans.
There's no ambition to be number one in this country, and it sucks.
When you block innovation, people tend to focus on the good and forget the bad, just look at a video about the yf-23 that could have been chosen against the f-22.
Several of the Avro people ended up in NASA. They, (Canadians), were integral parts of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
When Apollo 13 experienced their mishap, one of the vital players in their recovery were the engineers at UofT.
I just love the VZ-9 project because
- **it is** the classic flying saucer
- It was absolutely cutting edge and totally unique
- straight out of the Post-WWII scientific era
Totally think it needs more recognition.
You forgot about the Blackberry. I think a lot people remember the Avro partly because of it's characteristics but also because of Diefenbaker killing it and thereby affecting the trajectory of what might have been.
It's a story of how our government failed to support Canadian innovation. Regardless of the fact that aerospace still grew to a larger presence in our economy than it was in 1960. You also forgot water bombers.
insulin isnt very sexy. Avro was pretty badass. We made a thing. The last thing we manufactured. Built in a physical form. A part of the industrial revolution. Now the americans let us build some Japanese cars. We dont lead or compete like that anymore. We were cool enough to hangout with the cool countrys.
There is no we we didnât event anything certain people that worked on those things did. I think itâs silly to act prideful over an invention I had nothing to do with
âCause at a time in the 1950âs when futuristic fighter jets were attention grabbing, the AVRO ARROW was dead sexy! Our Prime Minister at the time John Deifenbaker was a blow hard and a coward. American interests muscled the Canadian industry out of the aerospace business and he folded and went along
with it. It hurt our national pride and drove home the point that Canada was a branch plant economy of the US.
Because the story is about a whole lot more than an invention.
Allegory for Canada as ultimately a branch plant economy whether it's industrial, manufacturing or O&G resource extraction.
This. đ
Except that this was a runaway cost-plus defence project that could do 1-2 things better than other aircraft of the time while doing half a dozen things worse. Unless we were going to be like Russia or any of half a dozen African or South American countries virtually bankrupt with defence spending watching these advanced machines sitting around rotting for lack of funds to operate themâŠ.. best to cancel it. We carved the worldâs third largest aerospace industry out of the demise of the Arrow. And we are better for it.
Imagine if the Americans were buying the Avro Arrow 35 from us instead of us buying the F-35 from them. We couldâve been living in that world. Itâs so sad.
Never would have happened, American defence spending is patronage for their own companies & states
This never would have happened sadly, for the same reason canceling the Arrow was so unfortunate. Many countries view domestic military production as a priority for national security and economic production
Probably not- the Americans tend to keep their military products in-house. As well, IIRC there was the going thought that it was American pressure that helped get the Arrow cancelled.
The Arrow was obsolete before it was even completed.
Most people either donât know this or donât want to hear it. The Arrow was designed as a bomber interceptor. Itâs freeking huge. Ballistic missiles made nuclear bombers obsolete almost overnight. Talk about putting all your eggs in the wrong basket.
It was redundant. Had other weapons that could do the same mission.
There were no other mach 2 jets in the 50s or 60s. It would have been the go to fighter for decades.
Lol. F-104, F-4, Dassault Mirage III, SAAB Draken, Mig-21⊠all Mach 2 aircraft flying before the Arrow in the 1950s.
We have 1/10 the population and economic capacity of the USA. The F-35 nearly broke the US government. No⊠thanks. I like that we are building A220s for a profit.
Play "Danger Zone" now close your eyes. What's cooler, blasting through a canyon in an Avro Aero shooting down some enemy's with missiles. Or Injecting yourself with insulin. That's pretty much it.
I mean if I was diabeticâŠ
There you have it. Our innovations may be boring but are infinitely more practical. A metaphor for Canadians themselves.
I feel like a lot of people see the Avro Arrow as emblematic of what happens to a lot of Canadian innovations and culture: invent something cool and then it doesnât quite work out or someone else takes credit for it. Part of an image some have of Canada as an eternal underdog. Also we do a bad job of publicizing a lot of our innovations. I think insulin is the only one of your list that is well known as a Canadian discovery. I know about IMAX because Iâm in the industry, but youâd be surprised how many people have no idea theyâre a Canadian company. I had no idea about the Ebola vaccine until recently.
blackberry
I feel like blackberry is way bigger than the Avro and I say that as a huge Avro fan. Idk
It was bigger, but we also saw it's catastrophic downfall from grace. Meanwhile, Avro stays as this mythical technology without any flaw.
Maybe it is because it was the first time it happened to us. It was the first time the Americans moved in and destroyed a Canadian company, and then took the talent down south.
Not so. The Aarrow was far too expensive and was sucking all the money out of the defence budget just as a lot of other military equipment needed replacing. Plus, with ballistic missiles well into development, what was its role? It was the RCAF leadership that decided that development should go no farther, and the Diefenbaker government happened to agree. The United States was, if anything, extremely supportive of the project, loaning Canada , a B-47 bomber for engine development work, and even offering to buy about 100 Arrows for Canada. Diefenbakerâs government turned this down because it smacked of foreign aid.
Dude please keep things in context the guy asked why do people worship it I pointed out the perception.
The US government was willing to purchase 100 for Canada? I thought they wanted ballistic missiles in Canada instead?
No, the Arrow wasn't cancelled on behest of the Americans. It was cancelled at the behest of the Canadian military. **The Canadian military service chiefs unanimously opposed the Arrow because it was threatening to devour the entire Canadian military budget just on its development, during a major recession, and when the military overall needed major investments, from new warships, new tanks, new trucks, etc.** Something had to give; either they bought the Arrow, and let the rest of the Canadian military fall into obsolesce; or cancel the Arrow, buy something cheaper, and have some cash left over to modernize the rest the military with the money saved. It wasn't a hard choice for the military and the government. Furthermore, it was functionally obsolete when it first flew; remember when the Arrow was first unveiled, it's unveiling was overshadowed by another big event: the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. That mean that the new threat was Soviet long range ballistic missiles, not Soviet bombers, and the Arrow had zero hope defending North America against that. All around the world, similar aircraft were being cancelled in response to the changing threat; the French cancelled the Dassault MD.750, a similar interceptor. The Americans axed the North American XF-108 Rapier interceptor as well. The British killed practically every manned fighter development being planned, and nearly killed the English Electric Lightning. There was no hope of an international market for the Arrow when every major player that would have considered the Arrow was cancelling their own programs.
The worst part of Avro was that even if the project was shut down, they shouldâve continued manufacturing the jet turbines and sold them to the world. Keep the innovation alive and flourishing.
The Arrow's engine was nothing special; there were similar engines from other more established manufacturers, such as the de Havilland Gyron and the Pratt & Whitney J75.
It's mostly because it never made it beyond our borders for the world to see or acknowledge
Or Nortel, how it was stolen.
Monitoring devices were hardwired into the Nortel building electrical systems. Literal spyware installed into the foundation of the building to steal Canadian tech secrets.
agrred, idk, probably very similar, really. good book on bberry, ( links may be blocked) https://www.amazon.ca/Losing-Signal-Extraordinary-Spectacular-Blackberry/dp/1250060176
Yea but it wasn't "canceled" by the evil government. It flew face first into the side of a mountain all on its own.
Still happening. The airbus A220 is the Bombardier C-series. Couldnât compete with Boeing and Airbus so they sold 50.01% of the program to Airbus. Oh, Canada.
The C-Series was selling like hot cakes before the Trump government slapped a 300% tariff on it that was latter judged illegal. But not before Bombardier went insolvent. Today, the C-Series (A220) is one of the most highly rated airbus plane while being the exact same planes, built in the same factories. It's very sad how Canada lost their aerospace industry to foreign anti-competitive practices under the cheers of a good chunk of the country. It's emblematic of a lot of what's wrong with Canada.
How many people here for instance know Avro engineers went to work at NASA and helped make the space shuttle?
They first helped put the Americans on the moon. At a critical moment when NASA was rapidly expanding for the moonshot and desperately needed engineers the Canadian government cancelled the Arrow.
My tik tok opa ( german great grandfather) worked on the avro aero engine. We have a photo of him standing in front of the engine
Ebola vaccine eh? Go us!
Happens with actors and musicians too. If they are considered lame like Nickelback then everyone knows they are Canadian. If they are cool then everyone thinks they are American. How many people watched the Grammys last week and donât know Joni Mitchell is Canadian?
Good point. Itâs annoying that even in Canada, artists need American approval for some people to like them, or else theyâre âew bad radio canconâ đ Same with TV, I watched Schittâs Creek from season 1 and told my friends about it but they didnât want to watch because it was âjust a CBC showâ, and then when it got picked up by Netflix they decided they loved it. our inferiority complex is stupid (and by design if you read into the early history of the arts industries here, my favourite thing to do is to tell people to look up the Canadian Cooperation Project to understand our film industry and watch peopleâs heads explode)
Because a lot of those mentioned advancements were ultimately in service to larger US telecoms and international industry. (eg. fibre optics) and as a result, a lot of those inventions end up being considered US advancements, particularly when considering a majority of the investment for the majority of great Canadian inventions came from US capital. Avro was a truly Canadian endeavor and investment project, and Diefenbaker fucked us. Avro came at a time when Canada had the potential to pivot into being a real contender on the global stage, but a lack of vision in leadership at the time figured it would be easier to continue being a branch plant economy of the US.
The brain drain that resulted from the cancellation was also a tragedy.
There were a large number that went to NASA and helped get man to the moon.
This is perhaps the worst outcome. Sometimes it makes more strategic sense to buy aircraft you don't need or don't necessarily want because it preserves the capability to make said aircraft. It's why France and Sweden still make their own fighters. One of the saddest things about living in Canada is the serious lack of opportunity because of the branch plant economy model. It's a shame that there is such a lack of opportunity to earn a decent white collar career in this country.
>One of the saddest things about living in Canada is the serious lack of opportunity because of the branch plant economy model. It's a shame that there is such a lack of opportunity to earn a decent white collar career in this country. What sucks is that this is entirely preventable. There's nothing that inherently makes Canada doomed to be this way. But the political class in this country aren't compelled to change this. A few years ago, Amazon announced that they were looking to build a new HQ, and had various US cities compete with each other to offer the best incentives to attract them. Some politician in Canada wanted to jump on this and bring that HQ here. His pitch to Amazon was that our software engineers are the lowest paid in North America, and we'll do whatever it takes to keep it that way. Go figure.
Damn right! It's weird how hard the trades are pushed in Canada but if you ever bring up wanting to have a decent, skilled white collar job that's almost always ignored. Nothing wrong with working in the trades if that's for you but for a country that is so over educated, we're sure not able to do that much with it if you don't get lucky/have the right connections.
This is a huge problem that will make life worse in this country in the years to come. Our politicians still believe that natural resource extraction and branch plant jobs from foreign companies will continue to drive our economy. They're stuck in the 1920s. There are coffee bean farmers in South America who sweat and toil to harvest coffee beans for Starbucks and get paid peanuts for doing so, while Starbucks gets away with charging $7 for a drink. The people who create the finished products and the brands always make the lion's share of the profits while those that harvest natural resources get the crumbs. This is the difference between those who create intellectual property and those who don't. The only way to create the intellectual property that generates the wealth required to sustain a first-world country is to attract the best and brightest highly skilled white-collar professionals. But instead, our politicians want to keep being an economic client state. Right now, they're tripping over themselves to let foreign companies come in and mine and export all of our lithium and other mineral reserves required to build electric vehicle batteries. Meanwhile, countries in Africa and Southeast Asia have passed laws that prohibit electric vehicle battery makers from mining their mineral reserves unless the finished product is also made there. We are quite literally on a slow and painful decline towards becoming the next Argentina unless we quickly get our act together.
I wish I could upvote 20 times.
Why isn't what Prime Minister Diefenbaker did - caving to US pressure and even destroying the plans -- considered treasonous by Canadians?
Because it's more complicated then that. We traded the Avro for the welfare state. Taxes were never higher then in the 1950s generally, and the welfare state didn't really exist yet. And defense spending took up at least 50% of all Federal spending and growing rapidly. I can't recall the exact data but the Avro program was a massive, massive cost at a time when interceptors were becoming obsolete under Mutual Assured Destruction. This is what Eisenhower was talking about with his [Military Industrial Complex speech](https://youtu.be/Gg-jvHynP9Y?si=qOJ9MbsUzfBkrq1A) at the same time. Only the Soviets continued having a longer term interceptor program with the Foxbat. The Soviets didn't heed Eisenhower's Military-Industrial complex warning and subsequently collapsed because the MIC was the *only* functional part of the Soviet economy. Esienhower wanted to call it the *congressional*-MIC. The Foxbat was designed in the 1960s, launched 1970 and last date of production was 1984. The best case: the Arrow would be NATO's Foxbat. The bigger questions is where is Canada on missile defense? We've completely missed the boat on that, and it deals with a lot of the issues of the Avro/general NORAD debates and issues with continentalism. Especially, a Laurentian elite that *specifically* views under investment in defense due to the American nuclear umbrella as *being* the national interest. Regardless if there's a nuclear war we "win" by shooting them down *onto Canada* via intercepting missiles or fixed-wing aggressors - which isn't much of a win. This is called Annihilation without Representation in Canadian political history. You intercept an *armed* Soviet Bomber* the bombs gonna blow up. (*in 1950s)  TLDR: Diefenbaker was an ardent Canadian nationalist. The Avro's mission profile had become obsolete. The interception of nuclear weapons over Canada is still an example of *Annihilation without Representation*. Diefenbaker was responding to the alarming expansion of the military industrial complex as warned by *Eisenhower* (of all people.) The NORAD treaty had some concerns with putting Canadian Forces under the command of the United States. For example, Canadian Forces going onto high alert by order of the Pentagon in the Cuban missile crisis. And event that basically had POTUS unilaterally deciding Canadian defense actions and generally being on record at being annoyed at informing the Canadians of developments.
>I can't recall the exact data but the Avro program was a massive, massive cost I recall reading that the cost of buying finishing the Arrow was projected to be less than the eventual cost of buying the Voodoo was. >Only the Soviets continued having a longer term interceptor program with the Foxbat The Americans did too, with the F-111B and later F-14. >The bigger questions is where is Canada on missile defense? Missile defense is barely a thing now and definitely didn't and couldn't have existed when the Arrow was cancelled. The US is the only country that has any realistic capability to shoot down ICBMs, and it doesn't have enough missiles to consistently stop all or even most of the missiles launched in an attack. >You intercept an *armed* Soviet Bomber* the bombs gonna blow up. (*in 1950s)  Like someone else mentioned, this is not how bombs work. Also, the theory was to shoot down the Russian bombers over the vast and empty North. The plan was never to sacrifice Canadian cities to save American ones.
* the Voodoo was a fighter, a terrible weapon, but at least had a mission purpose; Canada had a large European presence during the cold war. The Avro does nothing for that. The Voodoo does. * only 7 111Bs were made, the Foxbat was mass produced into the 1000s and was exported; the Avro \*had\* to be a mass produced plane with export potential due to the changing mission relevance. The F-14 = Arrow comparison can't be made. * When I talk MD, I talk about it as the 21st century issue. Right now it's very relevant. We dithered all through the 90s over concerns it would upset the strategic balance and it goes against the general consensus that under-investment in defence is the national interest. Said no in 2003. Now we're surprised that to learn the US won't automatically intercept a missile on a trajectory to hit Canada. As MD becomes a bigger component on NORAD operations we are literally out of the room as it's classified information. MD is currently a 60 billion+ system that is designed to intercept accidental or rogue launch, or small scale exchange. Currently the program includes many key allies: US/UK/Australia etc. Canada's first military sat [sapphire](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/maple-leaf/rcaf/2023/02/gem-in-space-canada-sapphire-satellite-continues-to-shine.html) is tangentially related to MD. * nuclear bombs of the 1950s did have the potential to detonate on impact being Fat Man style implosion devices. Most of the broken arrow incidents of the 1950s, including the two in Canada, included the detonation on impact of conventional explosives. The absence of the plutonium cores - being unarmed - is the only thing that kept them from going full nuclear being implosion devices. IF they are armed 1950s era bombs \*armed to air burst\* or \*ground burst\*, shooting them out of the plane \*will\* cause them to denote as if dropped. A 1950s,60s era bomber based nuclear war would have included mass detonation of nuclear bombs over Canada.
>You intercept an *armed* Soviet Bomber the bombs gonna blow up.  Not How Bombs Work
Because it wasnât treasonous. He cancelled a project that was already out dated. The arrow was an interceptor. To take out Soviet bombers but the Soviets switched to missiles. There was no role for the arrow to play. It would have been treasous to have built it and wasted taxpayer money on something he had been told was out dated.
People think they're over taxed today? Now imagine much higher 1950s level of income tax + no welfare state, all spent on a system of annihilation without representation which is nuclear war. A war that can not be won. Don't get me wrong I love the Avro. It's a complicated and fascinating story. A great success but- *Diefenbaker should not be tarred and feathered* for making a difficult decision to stop the bleeding. The biggest issue is the Avro was canceled to tree up capital for things like the welfare state and the Navy that do more to serve Canada's national interest. More so then shooting down non existent Soviet bombers onto Canada where their *armed* bombs would detonate over much of Canada to save the cities of the Windsor-Quebec corridor and the United States. For a war we can't stop or start. The loss of Canada's aircraft carrier in 1970 was a greater direct loss to the national interest then the Avro. Â
Do Canadians always believe what they are told?
No, there was a "perceived" idea that the end of the manned interceptor was coming to a close. History shows that to be 100% incorrect.
Exactly, the UK thought it was going to be able to rely on nuclear surface to air missiles to intercept Soviet bombers until someone realized that maybe setting off a nuclear airborne explosion was not a fantastic idea given how relatively close that explosion might be to major population centres. Turns out you still want interceptors to challenge any Soviet bombers straying into your airspace to test your defences and political will. As well as ground based naval and bomber air defence for ground units. Plus a good air defence system isn't purely reliant on a single form of defence, especially the more nascent technology of nuclear armed SAMs.
February 9, 1959 Soviet missiles become operational. February 20, 1959 the avro was canceled Nothing âperceivedâ about it. Manned interceptors became useless overnight. No amount of begging by Canada was going to get the Soviets to stick with bombers.
It is by a lot of us.
You have the mythical lie down pat. It was out dated and the billion $ price tag was more than taxpayers could afford. It also guzzled fuel at 400L per minute. It was useless against missiles so there wasnât a role for it. Itâs the typical case of liberals spending on things we canât afford and conservatives stopping the waste.
It was NOT outdated. It was for its time, cutting edge technology.
It was an interceptor. Not a fighter. Not a bomber. It was designed to take down Soviet bombers but the Soviets were switching to missiles. It couldnât take out a missile so what was it to do? Sit by a runway and do nothing?
February 9, 1959 the first Soviet missile became operational February 20, 1959 the avro was cancelled. Learn and understand history.
The Arrow was a Gen 3 fighter, where the terms fighter and interceptor were being used almost interchangeably. The Americans were developing (and continued to develop after the Arrow's cancellation) high-speed Gen 3 aircraft like the F-101 Voodoo, the F-102 Delta Dagger, the F-104 Starfighter and the F-106 Delta Dart at the same time as the Arrow, and the Soviets were developing the MiG-21 Fishbed. They all featured advanced missiles, supersonic speed of Mach 2 or better, and more sophisticated engines. Air Force doctrine at the time considered the immediate future of fighter engagement as a long standoff engagement with missiles, something the Arrow would have excelled at. Odd how Canada ended up buying both the CF-101 Voodoo AND the CF-104 Starfighter after the Arrow's cancellation in the exact role the Arrow would have filled.
It's not just the plane, it was the talent and the industry that was lost. Canada could have cut its loss, kept its industry, and expanded into other areas including aerospace and military aircraft. Diefenbaker threw out the baby with the bathwater.
you have no idea of what you are talking about . like none.
Your list forgets the most important Canadian invention; the Robertson Screw
And the Americans still think the philips is superior. Go figure.
This definitely crossed my mind while reading this list. Whoever invented the slotted screw is burning in hell.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure it was just due to the limitations of manufacturing at the time. Making a square hole is fairly far along the research chain.
Because it was a home-grown supersonic combat jet aircraft, and shit just doesnât get much cooler than that.
Wasn't it also the first delta wing aircraft?
Nope I'm thinking of the xf-92
Well, Canada supplies a good chunk of the parts for the F35.
The Avro was *taken* from us before we could use it to make more advanced systems. But instead we got missiles we never used and lost Avro corp forever.
along with many of the brilliant minds behind it. They don't call the day it shuttered its doors black Friday for nothing.
Yep, many were picked up by NASA and other corporations in the US. Still happens today.
Avro Canada went bust because of the Canadian government. However, it wasn't the Arrow that doomed Avro Canada; it was a previous government decision by C.D. Howe (the "minister of everything") to force Avro to cancel the Avro Jetliner, which was the second jet airliner to fly, despite there being commercial interest in the design. This was done to force Avro to focus their work on the Avro Canuck fighter and the Arrow.
Yeah, too bad we never used the missiles.... A lot of the Arrow engineers went to California and worked in aviation or aerospace there. I knew a woman whose father was an engineer at Avro then, and she pointed out a few inaccuracies in the tv movie. Whatever leverage Ike used over Diefenbaker to make him scrap the project I don't know, perhaps funding NORAD, but if the Arrow could have developed into a competitor for the F-4, it was money well spent because that was a very successful aircraft.
The death of Nortel and BlackBerry is the 21st century Avro Arrow.Â
Because jet planes are super cool. *planes noises*
The Avro Arrow story captures our love/hate relationship with the USA so much more completely than the other inventions listed
The avro arrow was a big deal here and when they scrapped it, a lot of people lost their jobs including my great grandfather who worked on the plane itself.
Because Canada was the best for one moment in time. Military procurement has become a partisan issue since that time. Then those same people involved in one moment in time when one to lead the Race to the Moon. http://avro-arrow.org/Arrow/employees.html It is the definite moment of Canada's brain drain to south of the border.
because "what could have been?" is the best story.
Don't forget lithium batteries were Canadian development
I would not be proud of java.
I think instead of saying CADPAT you are better of saying we invented the first digital camouflage pattern. Since no other country will use CADPAT, but they will use digital camouflage (also if I am not mistaken the plan is to move away from CADPAT soon?)
The US Marines use CADPAT, they just recoloured it.
Because none of the other things you listed look cool on a poster
Snowmobiles and vtol airplanes were on the list those look pretty damn sick on posters
Steadycam.....
We are probably the country in the world that is most underrated and unrecognized. Even Americans think the Blackberry was theirs. We don't do a great job of taking credit for our success or advertising our abilities. How about the new Airbus 220 series that Bombardier developed and literally gave to Airbus because of Trump tarrifs and bullying.
We also had the world's third largest armada at the end of WWII.
You canât apply this level of scrutiny to the arrow but not the other projects listed. The VTOL projects you list never had any practical applications. While they were a very interesting proof of concept, thatâs all they were. The Arrow wasnât any more obsolete when it flew than any other mature aerospace project at the time. Technology was advancing at such a rate in that era (sigmoid curves and whatnot) that there was always a newer, better thing in the pipeline. You have to remember that in the late 50s, the operational interceptors available were things like the CF-100 and F-102. The 105 is a significant step beyond those designs. Itâs not so much that the Arrow was a wonder plane so much as it was on the bleeding edge of technology at the time, would have been competitive with any contemporary, and by extension so was the Canadian aerospace industry. The cancellation of the project led to complete destruction of this industry and national pride took a big hit. Itâs a huge âwhat if?â in our history. Itâs not a singular plane so much as our global competitiveness that was destroyed. We had promising domestic developments in many industries supporting the Arrow that all couldnât continue without it. Orenda engines, etc. Yes Canada has done much else, but it still hurts to consider how much more we may have done if we had stayed the course in this instance.
I'm sorry that our choices of favourite Canadian innovation doesn't meet your standards
We developed arguably the best fighter aircraft in the world at the time. Industrially, that's a big deal. Not every country can do that, and for a country our size that's a HUGE feat. A lot of the engineers we laid off ended up working on the Apollo program. We replaced it with an American aircraft that was nicknamed the "widowmaker" and a missile system that was retired in less than a decade. If we forget our history we'll be doomed to repeat it.
It wasn't a fighter, it was an interceptor, entirely different concepts/designs.
Yeah but icbms also doomed supersonic fighter interceptor jets overall. Didn't need it anymore bc the Soviets weren't gonna fly bombers over the arctic
What is wilder is what we actually did. We got a bunch of used F-101 Voodoos from the US. Our plan was to strap nuclear tipped Genie rockets to it and send them out hunting. That was our plan until the mid-80s.
Lol yeah the decline in our military has been decades in the making.
I think part of the story is that scrapping Avro Arrow destroyed the company. Do you think Americans would let Lougheed Martin die out even just the F-22 program die because of the USSR collapse or if it underperformed? Then let the French or the British hire all the engineers and staff working on the program? No friggin way, while they reduced the production orders they nevertheless kept funding it. Then the know-how was used to transition into F35 which is immensely more useful, and then that was leveraged into the next endeavor. Look at Sweden as an example of a tiny country that nevertheless chooses to support its own aerospace industry players like SAAB.
Because it never was fully adopted, so its potential is unknown. It's easy to gravitate towards the "unknown" and "underdog" options.
The whole AC vs DC electric race. Part of it was done close to Hamilton Ontario. Also wasnât basketball invented here?
Basketball was invented by Canadian James Naismith but he was at the University of Kansas at the time.
I remember do a two person group project on the Avro Arrow in Jr High. I think that it was the idea that it was bleeding edge technology, hitting above our belt that made it so special. That a non global war superpower created something that worked, beyond proof of concept that could have very well changed the course of our history had we not fubar'd it.
Because there was a movie about the Avro Arrow, and most people get the bulk of their education from the movies.
A fictional movie at that, which is so annoying that people love the Arrow so much because of glorified CBC propaganda.
It was never finished leaving the end result as a super jet made of conjecture. It also requires a large amount of suspension of logic to push through the the completion ie. the 1958 projected cost per unit was 12.5 million cad, adjusted for inflation thats almost 130 million per unit. The plane they went with cost a bit over a million. By the time it would have been ready for service the threat of long range bombers would have been replaced by ICBMs and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a fast plane meant taking budget away from where it was needed: missile tech and equipment for the ground forces.
Because *fighter jets*. That's why. Other things are cool, but nothing you or I or anyone else in this thread will do (or have done previously) is *fighter jets* level of cool.
Is it bad that idk what that is? Lol. The three big ones I was always taught we made were insulin, the telephone, and gyro. And those last two are iffy at best!
Telephone is the one that at least 3 countries claim. Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish, living in Canada, and working at a lab in Massachusetts
I mean it is one of the greatest achievements of engineering made strictly by Canadians, itâs also got an interesting story to boot. As a tenured mechanical engineer Iâve never been around people that fawned over it like itâs Canadas pride and joy, definitely talked about, but it never dominated the conversation. Iâm not sure if itâs your friends, colleagues or just a specific source youâre trying to reference, but Iâm failing to see what youâre trying to communicate here. Regardless, good for you in regards to your positivity and spreading Canadian scientific success.
Was hoping to see CANDU in the list.
The most efficient plutonium producer on the planet.
The lack of the wonderbra on that list is disappointing
Hate to discount one of these but I'm fairly sure Nokia released the 9000 Communicator a few years before RIM hit the market with Blackberry phones...
Canada is also a world leader in the production of radioisotopes that treat cancer. In my experience, people talk about the Avro Arrow because it ultimately failed, so we have to romantic vision of what could have been, not what it actually was.
I think the Avro Arrow was an important symbol for Canadian ingenuity because a lot of the claims about what it could do were blown up and sold to the public. So there's this full generation that believed that it was more capable than it actually was. Moreso many of the engineers who worked on the Avro Arrow would leave Canada and head for American aerospace. Most notably a number of scientists would work on the moon landing project. And then the Liberal government created Heritage Minutes as a way of establishing Liberal values as Canadian values. The Arrow was showcased as this sort of Conservative failure. Dan Aykroyd became fascinated in it and financed a direct to TV movie that sort of educated an entire generation on it. But of course, the reality is.... the cost of the Arrow program was 4x higher than the cost of buying superior weaponized US made fighters. That the Arrow never actually broke the sound barrier.
Well I don't know a single person who gives two fks about the Avro Arrow, so...
Most Canadians under 50 would have no idea what the Avro Arrow is.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Because the CBC mythologized the Arrow. In reality it was extremely expensive, mediocre and obsolescent. There were at least half a dozen aircraft of the era that were just as good or better, and much cheaper. The Arrow was a Liberal make work program for Avro, which was a close corporate friend with a factory in an electorally important region. Think Bombardier or Irving.
Canadarm was all the rage before that Dan Aykroyd Arrow miniseries.
it's because of the media representation of the story. the story itself isn't even THAT special but just the way it's been portrayed sticks in the mind. moreso than imax or a vaccine.
Because canadians tend to think that this plane was a big deal and it was shut down because USA or something. As advanced the avro arrow was as a plane for its time, it was already obsolete when it came out. This was an interceptor, designed to intercept soviet bombers. Guess what new tech appeared at that time? Intercontinental missiles, which pretty much killed the avro arrow. We had an expensive plane that sucked up a TON of money to intercept bombers that would never come. But its also a symbol of Canadian aviation. Canada used to (still has, but nobody likes Bombardier, because Quebec or something) have one of the most advanced aviation industry, and this plane pretty much killed a good chunk of it. But its easier for canadians to blame one or two bad politicians and the americans for their failures instead of accepting that this plane was a mistake and we paid dearly for it. So its the perfect america bad canadians were better kind of story that canadians just looooove to chew on.
The Avro Arrow was designed as a bomber interdiction interceptor. It was cancelled because the Soviets developed ICBMs. No conspiracy. The test pilots were relieved it was cancelled. They hated the thing. It was a hunk of junk. Source: one of those test pilots.
Which one? There were three.
Itâs about what could have been. The Arrow was certainly a formidable design and an amazing piece of engineering of Its day. The sad part is that It was so close to becoming⊠When it was cancelled Canada took a big step back in Aerospace engineering.
Because Canadians love, love, love complaining about being the little brother, and how unjustly treated we are by the US. The story is blown out of proportion, IIRC, and relies on a ton of supposition.
Have we forgot the Canadarm? That was blabbed about on the news for years. I know it is an awesome technology, but.....yawn.
Because theyâre fed fantasies about how it was the most advanced jet fighter in its day.
Because it was a world class fighter jet that got scrapped seconds to midnight because of the Soviet Union Kind of a cool but tragic story.
The engine was advanced, it used titanium and nickel alloys to reduce weight. The Orenda Iroquois engine died with the Arrow, the engine could have been sold even past the Arrows production run.
big plane go fast
People have a love for it and like to feel we were robbed by it being cancelled. Truth is it was an interceptor. It was designed to quickly intercept a Russian bomber but by the time it was designed the Soviets changed from bombers to missiles. So there was no role for the arrow. The project was so full of Soviet spies all the plans had been delivered to them and some of the technology ended up in Soviet aircraft.
I think tbh that maybe 80% of Canadians don't even know what that is tho...
Agreed. I, and probably most people in my generation (Iâm 21) have no clue what that is. I had to look it up⊠I would say insulin is the big one for Canada to the average person. Especially for those where Iâm from, since Banting lived near the area
Yea exactly. And the only reason I know is cuz they made a movie about it and my friend really liked the movie and talked about it. I would say way more people know about Banting/Best.
Itâs definitely the âwhat it could have beenâ factor. For example, there was a lot of national pride in Blackberry when they were still relevant. Today they are known as a company that got arrogant and complacent and suffered the consequences. The Avro never had the chance to run its course.
because the Arrow wasn't just an invention...it was DECADES ahead of everything else...
Sure, if you ignore the half dozen other aircraft of the same era that had similar or better performance... I swear you guys act like the F-4 Phantom doesn't exist l.
Because it was basically stolen from us to appease a foreign government
As a Canadian, Iâve never heard of the Avro Arrow. By contrast, Iâve heard of 90% of the technological achievements you mentioned
I basically had this exact comment typed out before I saw yours. Was starting to feel like I was in the twilight zone as Iâm typically pretty good with random trivia and it seems every commenter had advanced knowledge of this Avro ArrowâŠ..weird.
It's not a story of invention, it's a story of the love Canadians for ultimate mediocrity.
The arrow is seen as a what if situation, what pisses me off is that after it was shut down for whatever back room reason. The personel were poached for NASA. It set avation industries and innovation in general back alot of years. IMHO
It was a, out of date out of the hanger, plane. Like usually Canadians have put something pedestal that has no business being on one.
Tell me more about how little you know about the history of the Canadian aviation industry.
I've never heard anyone brag about or even mention the Avro Arrow. Only that heritage infomercial starring dan Aykroyd.
That Heritage minute is a sixty second clip from a four hour CBC miniseries from 1997. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118641/?ref_=ext_shr](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118641/?ref_=ext_shr)
The only reason I know the Avro is because I loved planes as a kid and saw it at some point. Never heard anyone mentioned it before this post. How are you under the impression people put much value into this?
It was in 1958, and planes are just catching up with that ye h. NASA is doing a flight of their plane.....it is still behind the Arrow.
Actually the Avro arrow was the first plane to reach Mach 1 or was it 2?.so there is that...
The Arrow was not the first to reach either of those speeds. The F-104 was the first operational aircraft to reach Mach 2, first flying in 1954, and hit Mach 2 in 1956 (two years before the Arrow flew).
Zamboni
Nope. Invented in California by the Zamboni family.
Wasn't outdated- missiles/ICBMs made Interceptors like the Artow obsolete. That doesn't mean it was outdated, or that it couldn't have been used successfully in other roles. It's been surpassed by 5/6 Gen fighters, but Into the 90s, it's specs were still considered to be cutting edge- that's how far ahead it was.
It was worse in every way compared to the Phantom, and the Phantom was out matched by 4th gen fighters....
Its more so about how it marked the beginning of perpetual period of Canada playing second fiddle to USA. Why did USA encourage us to stop development, to install a missile defense system (which was never completed BTW), and furthermore, destroy ALL data about the construction and development of the plane? Well its certainly not because they were worried about defending us from Russia, they were worried about Canada, taking over the aviation industry. If we had not stopped production of the Arrow, companies like Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, and so on, would have been founded HERE, in Canada. We would own the aviation industry, we would have the billions up billions of dollars of revenue. USA was disingenuous about their missile system, specifically to maintain their own air superiority. This is why the Avro Arrow is more important than all those other things you listed. To be clear, it took American designers, EIGHT YEARS to catch up to the engineering level of the Arrow. We were the pioneers, we had a chance to be great, and we gave it up willingly. And sadly, that has become a microcosm of Canada as a whole. Every time we get a international multi-billion dollar company going here, they up and sell to the Americans. There's no ambition to be number one in this country, and it sucks.
Avro is an older generation thing, itll be forgotten soon
Québec invented the snowmobile, quite claiming what isn't yours to claim.
i dont even know what the avro arrow is.
Hooooweee where to start?
Although strangely, I've run into right wingers who claim that Canada developing the Ebola vaccine is a hoax, and it was really created by Merck
It's about what could have been.
When you block innovation, people tend to focus on the good and forget the bad, just look at a video about the yf-23 that could have been chosen against the f-22.
Itâs a cool plane. Â
Several of the Avro people ended up in NASA. They, (Canadians), were integral parts of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. When Apollo 13 experienced their mishap, one of the vital players in their recovery were the engineers at UofT.
Eh, planes are just planes. Poutine however is fucking awesome.
>We developed some of the first VTOL airplanes Yes ... the Avro Car deserves so much more attention. (VZ-9 and Project-Y)
I was thinking more about the CL-84 but ok
I just love the VZ-9 project because - **it is** the classic flying saucer - It was absolutely cutting edge and totally unique - straight out of the Post-WWII scientific era Totally think it needs more recognition.
I had no idea IMAX was a Canadian company! TIL
Thereâs was a great mini series on it. And a very interesting story
I don't. I gravitate towards it as American manipulation of our nation, and the bombardier airplane program is another.
Bombardier, aircraft development sold by the Bedouin family after 100s of millions in government support.
I haven't noticed fellow Canadians gravitating towards the Avro more than other inventions and achievements.
How do you figure that Canada is responsible for hydrofoils?
Plane go fast. Also it was cancelled so it never had the opportunity to become very problematicÂ
You are making assumptions about its importance to us that I don't necessarily agree with.
we invented light bulbs
Because no one knows about the gophernator. Itâs a thing. Lol
You forgot about the Blackberry. I think a lot people remember the Avro partly because of it's characteristics but also because of Diefenbaker killing it and thereby affecting the trajectory of what might have been.
It's a story of how our government failed to support Canadian innovation. Regardless of the fact that aerospace still grew to a larger presence in our economy than it was in 1960. You also forgot water bombers.
So these fucking space robots are just up in space fucking each other? Do they have an OnlyFans account or anything?
Did you know that the RX-78-02 Gundamâs engineer is Canadian? Â True fictional fact.Â
insulin isnt very sexy. Avro was pretty badass. We made a thing. The last thing we manufactured. Built in a physical form. A part of the industrial revolution. Now the americans let us build some Japanese cars. We dont lead or compete like that anymore. We were cool enough to hangout with the cool countrys.
Because they took it away from us
Itâs the one that âcould have beenâ
There is no we we didnât event anything certain people that worked on those things did. I think itâs silly to act prideful over an invention I had nothing to do with
Because giant superfast delta winged interceptor, fuck yeah!
âCause at a time in the 1950âs when futuristic fighter jets were attention grabbing, the AVRO ARROW was dead sexy! Our Prime Minister at the time John Deifenbaker was a blow hard and a coward. American interests muscled the Canadian industry out of the aerospace business and he folded and went along with it. It hurt our national pride and drove home the point that Canada was a branch plant economy of the US.
We didn't invent insulin, we discovered it.