Avro Arrow model marks 100 years of Canadian aviation history
Fifty years after the federal government cancelled the Avro Arrow project, a full-scale replica of the airplane was rolled into position Friday at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin, 70 kilometres south of Edmonton.
Volunteers, along with students and staff from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Aircraft Structures program, put 500 hours into refurbishing the model, which was originally built in several stages and used in the CBC television miniseries Canada's Broken Dream.
"I'm hoping to instill some enthusiasm in the students, get them to learn and understand a little piece of Canadian history they can take with them for the rest of their careers," Dave McIntosh, chair of the Aircraft Structure program at NAIT said Friday.
Replica on display until September
The project was completed to mark the 100th anniversary of powered flight in Canada, and the 50th anniversary of the cancellation of the Arrow project.
The 80-foot model looks just like the original, according to Byron Reynolds, honorary curator of the aviation program at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum.
Byron Reynolds is the honorary curator of the aviation program at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin. (CBC) "It's absolutely stunning, and it turned out wonderful. Of course it's not an air-worthy replica by any sense … but it gives you some idea of what could have been if the program had continued. We'd probably still be flying them now 50 years later," Reynolds said.
There are two full-scale replicas of the Avro Arrow in Canada, one is in Toronto and the second is this one in Alberta, he said.
"In February of 1959 when that airplane was cancelled, we were absolutely at the top of our game," Reynolds said. "Canada took a second seat to nobody … nobody had anything that would even remotely compete with this airplane flying or even on the drawing board at that time."
When the project was cancelled in 1959 by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, all prototypes and blueprints were destroyed, he said.
"It's a remnant of our technological past glories here in Canada and a fitting tribute to all those who have contributed to aviation in Canada over the last 100 years," he said.
The full-scale model will be on display at the museum until early September.
Read about the Avro Arrow.
posted by The Wizard of 'OZ' @ Tuesday, July 14, 2009
2 Comments:
At Saturday, July 18, 2009 ,
STAG said...
Actually all the blueprints were, and still are on file at the Patent Office in Ottawa. The team which built the Arrow were hired en masse by NASA, and they put a man on the moon....much more important IMHO than building yet another war machine.
Of course, the design team did not disappear either...they went on to work for Lockheed and built the Delta Dagger...a spittin' image of the Arrow. (google it...you'll see the obvious)
What Canada, and the Conservative Party of the time DID was refuse to fold to a military industrial complex which was attempting to hold them up. They were already four times over budget, and demanding that much again to finish the job, the job description itself was dramatically changed, and as subsequent geo-political events have shown, we didn't need the blessed thing anyhow.
The company DID behave badly, the president didn't HAVE to cut them all up...he "could" have allowed the project to be completed, and maybe the airplane would have had a chance to prove itself. But it was a lot of "maybes" and of course, the government paid as much in cancellation fees as the company would have gotten to finish the job....an often overlooked but very instructive point.
The company went on to create some excellent passenger and freight aircraft and still exists as "AVRO Aircraft". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro#Avro_Canada_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_748
So don't mourn it. Respect the fine work, and respect the men and women who created a team which in turn created a remarkable airframe. However events have moved passed this.
At Saturday, August 22, 2009 ,
Anonymous said...
The F-102 Delta Dagger predates the Arrow by 3 years. It was first flew in 1953 and was fully operational in 1956. So, no the engineers from Avro did not leave Avro to build it, it was built before the Arrow. It appears more that AVRO mirrored their design efforts on a plane that was already in production. The USA was far ahead of Canada in aircraft design by the time the Arrow first flew.
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