The Arrow – Docudrama

I was chatting with my neighbour yesterday – he worked on the Arrow and was there the day they closed the doors. I would seem that he has a whole personal stash of photos taken inside the factory during the construction of the aircraft. I’ve never seen many of these anywhere else. Maybe he will share.

Those images would be important historical documents!

Nonsense…
It was an expensive aircraft for a small country…and its timing was wrong.
The US stood to make money if the program continued…the avionics (the expensive bits) were contracted t a US maker..Hughes, IIRC.
The “US is afraid of competition” conspiracy might have held water IF the US went ahead with an advanced interceptor…but like the UK 1957 White paper, most folks assumed the days of manned interceptor were numbered.
The USAF only bought a relative few of its F-106.

I can’t think of an all-new post-Arrow purpose-built interceptor fielded by the west. Like the F-35, or Phantom or Torando…multi-role aircraft became the norm.

Really, this forum has gone downhill since the older experts left. All we seem to get now is schoolboy conspiracy theories.

I’m really not a “US killed Arrow” conspiracist, I tend strongly to the “too much for Canada but it would have succeeded with full US or UK backing” point-of-view.

However, there IS this little factoid:
Yes, the Arrow was cancelled 20 February 1959 but this was before the September 1959 cancellation of the North American XF-108 Rapier.

In the late 1950s the United States Air Force (USAF) sought a replacement for its F-106 Delta Dart interceptor. As part of the Long Range Interceptor Experimental (LRI,X) program, the North American XF-108 Rapier, an interceptor with Mach 3 speed, was selected. However, the F-108 program was canceled by the Department of Defense in September 1959.

During this time, Lockheed’s Skunk Works was developing the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Oxcart program. Kelly Johnson, the head of Skunk Works, proposed to build a version of the A-12 named AF-12 by the company; the USAF ordered three AF-12s in mid-1960.

The AF-12s took the seventh through ninth slots on the A-12 assembly line; these were designated as YF-12A interceptors. The first YF-12A flew on 7 August 1963.

On 14 May 1965 the Air Force placed a production order for 93 F-12Bs for its Air Defense Command (ADC). However, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara would not release the funding for three consecutive years due to Vietnam War costs. Updated intelligence placed a lower priority on defense of the continental US, so the F-12B was deemed no longer needed. Then in January 1968, the F-12B program was officially ended.

I was chatting with my neighbour yesterday – he worked on the Arrow and was there the day they closed the doors. I would seem that he has a whole personal stash of photos taken inside the factory during the construction of the aircraft. I’ve never seen many of these anywhere else. Maybe he will share.

Many bits from Arrows survive in sometimes surprising locations, the biggest being with CA&SM (nee CAvM) in Ottawa, being a Mk.2 nose, one each nose and main gear, an Iroquois engine, two Mk.1 outer wing panels, et cetera.

indeed –> http://avroarrowsurvivors.blogspot.com/ 🙂

Really, this forum has gone downhill since the older experts left. All we seem to get now is schoolboy conspiracy theories.

Very good, you get two Brownie Points for that comment 🙂

Hi All,
Thought you may like the following a video about the Super Arrow and concept of both the Super Arrow and Stealth images both quite good looking but I prefer the Super Arrow myself..

Geoff.

JB is nearly right…some old fogies still lurk.

If a gorilla is willing to provide kit that meets (a high %age of ideal) Specification, it is wasteful for a smaller team to duplicate. See India wasting resources to duplicate fit kit. So: UK ditched Blue Water SSM because US was scattering Sergeant/Lance far, wide, free; Arrow lapsed for an Air Defence system (Voodoo/Bomarc) that both did the job and had back-up infrastructure (spares, tools, manuals); TSR.2 had been overtaken by avionics evolution.

Most conspiracies are footling: frankly, my dear (US Govt/industry) don’t give a d…n.

It’s also a shame that defence programmes of various countries over the years, have been
governed by the wishes of the US government.

Nonsense…
It was an expensive aircraft for a small country…and its timing was wrong.
The US stood to make money if the program continued…the avionics (the expensive bits) were contracted t a US maker..Hughes, IIRC.
The “US is afraid of competition” conspiracy might have held water IF the US went ahead with an advanced interceptor…but like the UK 1957 White paper, most folks assumed the days of manned interceptor were numbered.
The USAF only bought a relative few of its F-106.

I can’t think of an all-new post-Arrow purpose-built interceptor fielded by the west. Like the F-35, or Phantom or Torando…multi-role aircraft became the norm.

Really, this forum has gone downhill since the older experts left. All we seem to get now is schoolboy conspiracy theories.

…Re the appearance of service Arrows, the Mk.2 would’ve been the initial service variant, and would have looked very much like the Mk.1s, the main difference being slightly wider jet pipes for the Iroquois engines. Ultimately, no doubt, there would have been changes, probably including external stores (likely under the belly rather than on the wings) replacing the F-106-style pop-open weapons bay…the bay section possibly being remade for photo-recon or ELINT/ECM use. On the drawing board was a Mach 3 version which would probably have appeared in pre-production form around 1965 or so; as designed it featured “petal” intakes closely reminiscent of those on the Republic F-105 Thunderchief but quite a bit larger, and iirc an even bigger vertical fin. It gets called “Arrow 3”, but I’d guess there’d have been a mark or two in between, since such a big machine seems to invite modification for assorted roles beyond the long range interceptor job it was initially designed to do. It would have made a good tactical bomber (a la F-111 or TSR2) or spy plane (RA-5C or SR-71). All that is academic of course. Canadian though I am, even I recognize that we had bitten off more than we could chew with the Arrow program. The concurrent abandonment of the Iroquois engine, though, was an inexcusable gaffe at least equal to the abandonment of the C102 airliner several years earlier.

S.

Re the mooted Arrow revival as an F-35 alternative, yes, that actually got sufficiently far along that the proponent successfully enlisted the aid and influence of the former CF chief of staff to promote it in Ottawa! Of course it never came to anything, as didn’t the slightly less wild-eyed concept a number of years earlier to build a full-size flyable Arrow 2 replica as a commemorative/educational piece. The nearest we will see to an Arrow re-creation is probably the 100% scale mockup built for TAM/CASM at Downsview.

I like to maintain the fantasy that 25202, the test program “workhorse” until it suffered a gear collapse in late ’58, got spirited out of the plant aboard several trucks during the scrapping, crossing the US border at Niagara Falls instead of stopping at Hamilton, and thereafter was used by the USAF as a lead-in trainer for the SR-71…being scrapped at Groom Lake in 1966 when no longer needed…picture a matt black Arrow with red low-viz USAF markings…it’d have looked really, really mean…

S.

Over here in Canada most people consider this film nothing but “tripe”
Not very accurate at all

I think each episode was about 120mins, less adds

Hi All,
Anybody with Sky+ can go into search and find it, only trouble is it is billed as a mini series in two parts from my memory it wasn’t that much of a long film to warrant this.

Geoff.

Entertaining programme, I wonder how close to the truth it was ?
The Arrow looked to me, like a cross between a TSR-2 and a Fairey Delta 2
A shame a completed aircraft wasn’t kept for a museum.

It’s also a shame that defence programmes of various countries over the years, have been
governed by the wishes of the US government.

I’m Half way through it as we speak, I saw a funny piece on a Canadian news channel where someone had proposed reinstating the arrow as an F35 alternative!

What sort of differences do you think a production Arrow would have had over the prototype? Bigger radome? Wing hard points? I keep imaging it in RAF markings

I just watched it. A shame it was so ridiculous, it makes a lot of silly claims. The bit where they ‘buzzed’ the Prime Minister’s house made me spit my coffee out! Fairly entertaining in a cartoon version of reality. The visual effects, model work and CGI were the most realistic thing about it.

My next door neighbour was a machinist working on the Iroquois program. He has a few fan blades from the beast in his collection of bits. He too still feels a sense of anger at the program cancellation all these years later. He was there that ominous day….

That “docudrama” was far more drama than docu…but still, it raised interest in the by-then-somewhat-forgotten achievement the Arrow represented. Interestingly the DVD release of “The Arrow” included among its extra features the 1979 CBC documentary “There Never Was An Arrow”, which genuinely was a historical piece; I bought the DVD for that alone, have never watched the drama itself other than when it was first broadcast on TV. There’s some nifty mockup and model work (instead of the CGI that would be exclusively used now), but the story is pretty bent out of shape, and the ending, with Jack Woodman soaring off to parts unknown with the Mk.2 (which never flew in real life), is quite the howler. Truth told the real story is much more dramatic and wrenching. The approximately 80%-scale Arrow mockup completed for the drama is now in a museum in Alberta; a 100% scale mockup is stored in Toronto awaiting the planned revival of the former Downsview museum in a new location. Like TSR2, the CF-105 was absolutely huge…ten feet longer than the Lancasters built in the same plant not that many years before.

The British broadcast date of “The Arrow” concedes with the 55th anniversary of the cancellation of the Arrow program; surely that isn’t a coincidence…someone doing scheduling for this UK network has been doing his or her homework!

Many bits from Arrows survive in sometimes surprising locations, the biggest being with CA&SM (nee CAvM) in Ottawa, being a Mk.2 nose, one each nose and main gear, an Iroquois engine, two Mk.1 outer wing panels, et cetera. The biggest mistake made in cancelling the Arrow program was probably the concurrent abandonment of the Iroquois engine…which could have been a real moneyspinner (think: Iroquois-powered Phantoms…)

S.

JZA -there was more than one Arrow seat in the U.K. The RAFM had one in store at Cardington until they had the clear out there. It went to a collector and then onwards eventually to Canada. Another turned up in the last few years and that featured on EBay as well. Its very likely that these came from the Martin Baker
and were probably used for development purposes.

The entire thing is on YouTube