The Avro Arrow, Canada's 'greatest plane that never was'

Just before 10a.m. on March 25, 1958, ArrowRL-201roared into the skies northwest of Torontofor its first test flight.

The Arrow One, Canada's first supersonic fighter plane was finally ready to fly, after years of planning, work by thousands of people, $200 million and 17,000 blueprints.

'Previously secret films'

Two weeks later,Newsmagazinebrought Canadians an exclusive look inside the hangars.

The television cameras captured models undergoing spin and"free flight" tests, a wooden engineering mock-up, engineers subjecting the various components of the plane toarduous tests, and test pilots checking out the cockpit.

'The first production aircraft in production before it was tested'

How the Avro Arrow was built

67 years ago

Duration 8:00

CBC's Newsmagazine takes viewers behind the scenes at the Malton airport hangar where the Avro Arrow was tested and built.

But the dream of producing the plane that would bring Canadian aviation into the supersonic age was ended in 1959.

On Feb. 20, 1959, a day that workers came to call "Black Friday,"the announcement of the layoff of approximately14,000 workers came.The project, which had run to a total cost of $400 millionhad been scrapped.

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker explained the reasoning behind the unequivocal scrapping of the project.

With the current development in the U.S.S.R. of missiles and the threatened buildup of nuclear weaponry, he noted that if the production of the jet continued"thedefencethat would be available to Canada by 1962 would be ineffectual."

'A funeral procession'

John Diefenbaker on the 1959 cancellation of the Avro Arrow

66 years ago

Duration 1:15

The prime minister explains the reasoning behind the sudden cancellation of the Avro Arrow project.

CBCRadio News was at the plant as tool makers, designers, maintenance men and office workersdrove away, for the last time. Reporter Bill Beatty interviewed them as they left in "a funeral procession of cars, bumper to bumper."

One worker reported that the announcement had come with no warning "we were just working and they put it over the loud speaker, everybody as from now was laid off."

Archives3:11Avro workers react to massive layoffs

Thousands of shocked Avro workers are terminated at once. As they leave, they express their anger to CBC reporters.

Two decades later, Kay Shaw, a senior design draftsman on the project, described the destruction of the completed planes, models and all materials and plans related to its development, "an act of obscenity that nobody has been ableto explain."