Avro Arrow
Why did the Avro Arrow program really get the axe?
Other than the standard conspiracy theories, what was happening in military aviation and politics that shut down and then destroyed all of the Arrows? Did the U.S. have a hand in it or was it something else?
Its more the something else. The wikipedia page gives a good overview of the whole program, and its worth remembering that a lot of air defense in the West at that time was being shifted to anti-air missile batteries ( Canada, for example, deployed the Bomarc missile system in Quebec and Ontario ), and away from manned interceptors. To quote wiki:
"The Arrow was far from the only heavy high-speed interceptor design cancelled at that time; the Republic Aircraft XF-103 and the North American Aviation XF-108 Rapier, designed to have higher performance specifications than the Arrow, were cancelled in the mock-up stage of development at approximately the same time.[9][10]Even the Convair F-106 Delta Dart was very nearly terminated. In the UK, the ramifications of the 1957 Defence White Paper led to the cancellation of almost all manned fighter aircraft development."
So, some of it was costs, some of it was Canadian Party politics, and some of it was the then prevalent view that manned interceptors were a thing of the past; It didn't help that the first Arrow aircraft was rolled out the same day that the USSR showed that missiles can orbit a satellite; Oct 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 day...
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