Myth of the Arrow

Chris Taylor, aviation nut, neatly dissects the myth of the Avro Arrow:

The Arrow doesn’t lead the pack.  It has good top speed and an acceptable service ceiling, but a thoroughly mediocre radius of action.  Radius of action being the distance an aircraft can travel from its base and return, without refueling (this figure also includes a measly five minutes of combat engagement).  The Arrow would have been the last to achieve IOC—whereas the very similar Convair F-106 had comparable speed, a slightly higher service ceiling, almost twice the radius of action, was available four years earlier, and was several times cheaper ($2 million per F-106 versus $8-10 million per CF-105.)

The F-106, incidentally, remained the backbone of USAF’s interceptor fleet until replaced by the F-15 Eagle.

As Col. Larsen makes clear, the Arrow died because of multiple factors.  The RCAF had already accrued some bad experiences with the Avro-built CF-100, and they didn’t like the support they were getting from the company on that product.  The RCAF’s senior brass very much doubted whether Avro could build an even more complex aircraft and still make it reliable and easy to maintain.

It is difficult for non-Canadians to grasp the power of the Avro Arrow myth. A Canadian built and designed 1950s era jet fighter, it was one of the fastest aircraft of its day. With a top speed of 2.3 Mach, it was certainly a world class fighter. But plenty of other countries turn out world class military and civilian aircrafts, none have acquired the mystique the Arrow has in Canada. The myth of the Arrow has its origins not in the talented crew of engineers and designers who built the CF-105, but deep within the Canadian psyche. 

We are a small country, living next to a very large one. In the 1950s we were also a new ex-colony of Great Britain. Living in the shadow of the English speaking world's two great powers, Canada has struggled to differentiate itself. The Arrow was a remarkable technical accomplishment for so small and so new a country. It suggested that despite our size, we could compete and succeed in the wider world. However, the plane's cancellation, rather than the plane itself, was the real myth making moment. 

While Canadians are proud - in our typically understated way - of their country, they feel it has fallen short of its potential. Famously Wilfred Laurier declared that the twentieth century would belong to Canada. Instead we ended it as a well respected, and well run, middle power. Not very flashy, rather dull but the sort of place you'd want to live in. Like the suburbs with excessive amounts of snow. That good but not brilliant sense of ourselves breed a strange envy (especially toward America) and uncertainly. Human beings need explanations, even bizarre ones. The "fall of the Arrow" became Exhibit A in trying to explain our not quite world class status.

Why the Diefenbaker government cancelled the Arrow project has been source of endless speculation for half a century. Explanations stretch from the conspiratorial - the jealous Americans forced the cancellation - to the contemptuous - our government was too stupid to realize the Arrow's importance - the hum-drum reality has been conveniently ignored. It was a very good plane, just too expensive and impractical for the military needs of the time. The RCAF made a military decision that the project was unfeasible and asked the Cabinet to cancel the project, diverting funds to a more practical, albeit American, plane. 

Looming over the discussions about the Arrow's future, and referred to in some discussions of the fighter's demise, was the widespread prediction that the manned fighter had been made obsolete by the unmanned missiles of the era. It was a grossly premature assessment, but not an absurd one for the time. The logical explanations, however, are not always the believed ones. It is far more comforting to imagine that the Arrow was a victim of that unfathomable force, whatever the preferred explanation, that has held back Canada, rather than to believe it died a bland and sensible bureaucratic death. For the generations of Canadians - including yours truly - that were raised on the Arrow Myth, to question that myth is to question a part of our Canadian childhoods. The questioners should expect no gratitude. 

Comments

[nomdeblog]

Soory for the double post; I just left this comment at Dr Roy’s

The myth is another good reason to shrink government.

Someone needed to explain the strategic role of the Avro and how that would fit or not fit with a realistic Foreign Policy. But no politician did that in the 60’s nor with the geopolitical issues of today. Why?

Foreign policy should be one of a small handful of roles left to Ottawa; the rest should devolve to the Provinces. The reason myths like this persist is because we are sending 308 MPs (soon to be 338) 90% of whom have no idea what our FP is or should be. They are no different than Obama, no experience for the job that they should be doing. Heck, we have over 50 Bloc MPs who haven’t travelled far beyond Trois Pistols

We need much smaller government in Ottawa and MPs with some global exposure who have first hand experiences in the other side of the world. Dr Roy comes to mind (as does Publius)