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PREFACE TO THE FOURTH PAPERBACK EDITION

The year 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the cancellation of the Arrow, so it is fitting that more than a half-century after the demise of the plane, another, completely revised edition of this book is appearing. New this time around are two more appendices, one concerning Arrow flight-test models and the other serving as a summary of the continuing controversy around the destruction of the interceptor.

The 50th anniversary of the Arrow’s termination was observed by the usual newspaper articles and stories. One such article appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. The writer noted the technical superiority of the Arrow, a fact finally acknowledged by many Canadian historians, but then he went on to discuss the cancellation and the reasons for it. He raised the usual refrain that the project was over-budget, blaming technological advances as the reason behind the cost increases.

As noted in Storms of Controversy, now in its fourth paperback edition, and in Requiem for a Giant, my book about A.V. Roe, cost increases were the result of changes requested by the Royal Canadian Air Force. They were also caused by increasing material and labour expenditures. There was also the illusion of cost increases as work progressed faster than anticipated, allowing for more to be done in a given month, hence greater expenses accruing in the same month. All of this was itemized in Requiem for a Giant in which I also discussed at length the records of the Special Committee on Defence Expenditures from 1960. These records reveal that in 1959, after the cancellation of the Arrow, the Department of National Defence returned $262 million in approved but unspent money. But only $45 million was from the Arrow program. The balance would have paid for the completion of the development work and the building of 37 aircraft.

The part of the program that was not within Avro’s control but was cited to cost hundreds of millions was the development of the Astra fire-control system by RCA, a company that had never worked in this highly specialized area before. For its part, Avro recommended using the available Hughes fire-control system with Falcon missiles. When this system was adopted, costs decreased dramatically. In addition, Avro is on record as guaranteeing a fixed price per aircraft of $3.75 million. What the writer of the Ottawa Citizen article and other commentators have failed to point out is that, for the most part, the money used for the Arrow project was spent in Canada, a fact being lamented in the new millennium as military expenses and therefore jobs are forced to go offshore in some instances due to the lack of opportunity in this country. It is interesting that on several occasions, George Pearkes, the minister of national defence in 1959, denied that cost was the reason behind the Arrow cancellation.

The Ottawa Citizen writer, who claims to have reviewed the documentation on the Arrow, notes that Avro had not diversified or made backup plans, so that when the decision to terminate was acted upon, all employees were fired by Crawford Gordon. In fact, in Requiem for a Giant, I reproduced the minutes of the special meeting of the Management Committee of Avro Aircraft Limited held on February 19, 1959, the day before Black Friday. The minutes read:

… the Chairman [J.L. Plant] opened by stating that he had called this Special Meeting of Management Committee by reason that it was necessary for the Committee to formulate Management plans in the event that the Government decided to terminate the ARROW Program on or before March 31st next …

For those who have actually read the documents, the records show that the government was poised to make a decision by March 31, 1959, but then decided to advance the date forward to February 20. As for the contention that Avro was being put on notice in September 1958, that is simply incorrect. The decision at that time was to terminate the Astra and Sparrow development, something Avro itself had been campaigning for.

Why were all Avro employees fired immediately? One has only to look at the reproduced cease-and-desist orders reproduced in Appendix I in this book. Once Avro was told to stop all work immediately, there was no choice but to let everyone go. Other people have insisted that Avro should have been in the civilian aircraft market, but they forget that in 1949 Avro produced the Jetliner, the first commercial jet transport to fly in North America.

In 1949, Avro was at least five years ahead in respect of commercial aircraft design. The Jetliner was a superb aircraft. While some historians have argued that no one was prepared to purchase the Jetliner, or that there were problems with the design, again the documented record proves otherwise. Trans-Canada Air Lines officials noted the technical superiority of the design, and C.D. Howe’s own commissioned study of the program demonstrated that the Jetliner was the wave of the future. A letter from the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., and reproduced in Requiem for a Giant, clearly states that the U.S. Air Force had set aside money to purchase 12 Jetliners for use as trainers and refuellers, while other documents reveal the efforts of Howard Hughes to purchase the Jetliner in quantity for Trans World Airlines.

Finally, the author of the Ottawa Citizen article speaks of the strategic uncertainty and perceived diminished need for a manned interceptor in the coming decades. In fact, shortly after the cancellation of the Arrow, the United States told Canada it needed interceptors, as evidenced in the documents. This is where I maintain the idea of American influence in the cancellation. U.S. intelligence first created the bomber gap in the early 1950s at the Arrow’s inception, actually causing an acceleration of the program, and then followed with the missile gap and diminished bomber threat, thereby encouraging the termination of the Arrow.

When I initially published this book in the early 1990s, I advanced for the first time a theory, or more appropriately a reason, why those in certain quarters of the U.S. hierarchy might want to see the Arrow program terminated. It involved the capabilities of the Arrow, Soviet moles, and the possibility of exposing or ending American U-2 spy flights. As stated in this book, such hypotheses were and remain speculation.

Unfortunately, some people have taken my conjectures as absolutes, which they were not intended to be. The situation is best summarized by Julian A. Smith, a history of science instructor at Ryerson Polytechnical University in Toronto in 1993. In writing an online review of Storms of Controversy back then in HOST, an electronic bulletin for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, he stated the following:

Conspiracy theories, by their very nature, often invite skepticism from their readers; but Campagna’s arguments are clearly explained and well documented. Whether you agree with the more extreme suggestions of Soviet spies and CIA involvement is not really that important, for Campagna has certainly given historians a fresh approach to the Avro Arrow problem, and for that the profession owes him their gratitude.

On a further note of clarification, the Arrow continues to assume mythic proportions. For example, I have received numerous emails asking if the Arrow would still be the best aircraft of its kind today, and blogs compare the Arrow’s capabilities with contemporary military planes. Simply stated, an aircraft is designed to achieve certain specifications. If those specifications require it to fly at a certain speed, it will have the design and power to do so. In the 1950s, the RCAF laid down a series of specifications that, after careful consideration, proved beyond the capabilities of the aircraft of that time to achieve.

Avro, to its credit, accepted the task of attempting to meet these ambitious specifications. In doing so, the company’s engineers quickly realized certain breakthroughs would be required in a myriad of specialized scientific fields. One by one, they tackled each problem and solved it, producing in the end a world-class interceptor, ahead of its time because of the numerous technical innovations it embodied, not because no other country could do it. Some of those innovations did not make their way into other aircraft until years later, but the Arrow needed them then to satisfy specific RCAF requirements. The technological achievements did not go unnoticed, and that is why key Avro engineers ended up in positions of esteem at NASA and with many aircraft manufacturers. They did not go as “extra hands” but as leaders, having proven their technical abilities with the Arrow.

Finally, I would like to say that I wrote Storms of Controversy for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I wanted to expose the wealth of documentation that had not, in fact, been destroyed in 1959 and which did show the technical advancement of the aircraft. Furthermore, I wanted to reveal who ordered the physical destruction, how much the project cost, and what external influences and pressures were being brought to bear on the politicians of the day and the executives and engineers at Avro. I also wrote the book to correct some of the errors propagated by those who should have known better but who sadly continued to retail old myths. Ultimately, though, I wrote this book to inspire people to think about the great legacy the Arrow represents and to ponder the endless possibilities that await those who dare in the decades to come. As such, I wish to thank Dundurn Press, and in particular my editor, Michael Carroll, for all his work and effort in bringing Storms of Controversy back to a new generation of readers.

Palmiro Campagna

Ottawa

February 2010