The Avro Arrow Was Canada’s Awesome, Pointless Jet Fighter

By Robert Farley,The National Interest

In the early 1950s, the Canadian government began to solicit orders for a new high-speed interceptor. The explosion in jet technology had rendered Canada’s first- and second-generation interceptors obsolete; in order to patrol Canada’s vast airspace, the Royal Canadian Air Force would need something awesome.

Avro Canada answered the call with the CF-105 Avro Arrow, a high-performance interceptor on the cutting edge of existing aviation technology. A big, beautiful fighter, the Arrow offered a promise to patrol Canadian airspace for decades, while also throwing a lifeline to Canada’s military aviation industry.

But the Arrow was not to be. Changes in technology, politics and defense priorities would work to kill the CF-105, and with it the greater portion of Canada’s defense aviation industry. Still, the legend of the Avro Arrow would survive for a very long time.

An Interceptor

The Arrow emerged as part of the same intellectual and engineering ferment as the B-58 Hustler and the MiG-21 Fishbed. The early 1950s saw remarkable leaps in airframe and engine technology, such that developmental aircraft offered enormous improvements in capability over existing warplanes. Jets designed in the early part of the decade were utterly obsolete by the end.

The expansion of Soviet Long-Range Aviation provided the strategic backdrop. In the late 1940s, the USSR built its first fleet of strategic bombers around the Tu-4, a copy of the American B-29 Superfortress. The next generation of Soviet bombers could fly faster and higher, and would undoubtedly cross Canadian airspace on its way to targets in the United States. Canada’s interceptor of the early 1950s, the CF-100 Canuck, could neither catch nor kill these fast bombers.

Enter the CF-105 Avro Arrow. The Arrow’s mission mirrored that of the later MiG-25 Foxbat; hunt and destroy high-flying Soviet bombers as they entered Canadian airspace. Initial testing indicated that the Arrow could, with Orenda Iroquois engines (then under development) exceed Mach 2 for a sustained period. The Arrow would have carried between three and eight long-range air-to-air missiles, and had the capacity to launch nuclear-tipped antiair rockets. In overall performance, the Arrow was not altogether dissimilar from the Convair F-106 Delta Dart, a close contemporary in design.