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3 THE ARROW

Until recently, high-performance aircraft were not committed to production until after flight testing of one or more prototypes…. The Arrow programme is unusual in Canada in that even the first flying model has been built on production tooling.

— Avro News, October 4, 1957¹

The CF-105, or Avro Arrow, had begun as a project under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. However, after assuming power in June 1957, the Conservative government of Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker would mark the official unveiling of the Arrow program on October 4, 1957. Remarkably, the aircraft had been built and made ready to fly in just four years, an incredible achievement. As a time-saving measure, Avro did not hand-build the first aircraft, but moved from drawing board to production line tooling and manufacture. This technique would be repeated 30 years later on the Stealth bomber using advanced, computer-aided design techniques unavailable to Avro at the time. As well, the man-hours expended in actual construction of the Arrow were 20 percent less than in projects of similar size and complexity.² Aviation Week, one of the most prestigious journals of its day, reported, “Avro CF-105 Arrow has given Canada a serious contender for the top military aircraft of the next several years. The large, decidedly advanced delta-wing fighter was rolled out of the Malton plant a few days ago…. The Arrow’s power, weight and general design leave little doubt of its performance potential.”³ Likewise, Flight, a respected international publication, would call Arrow “the biggest, most powerful, most expensive and potentially the fastest fighter that the world has yet seen.”⁴