Seeing as Mr. Campagna has done so much research here for his three books on the Avro Arrow and is one of the top experts on the Arrow, we wanted to know from him, what other interesting documents LAC has in its collection that helped him throughout his research. PC : Right. What you have available are records from a number of different departments.
In fact, in my latest book, I've itemized the ones that I've used. If you look at my other books, the references are all there, but they are the actual records from Department of National Defence, Department of Defence production, Lester B. Pearson files, John Diefenbaker records—although there wasn't much there; I think most of his are in Saskatchewan, but there was the odd thing here, I remember. You have all of these records that are available. They have now been cataloged into thematic guides.
JA : Thematic guides help users and researchers by providing background information and links to supporting material. These guides are meant to highlight the wealth of content available in specific subject areas, but not provide comprehensive coverage of a topic. LAC has a whole thematic guide on the Avro Arrow, which can easily be found in the Military Heritage section of our website. PC : They're all neatly categorized and catalogued, as far as I know, unclassified.
In addition to those, you've got photographs in various collections, some of which were donated after the fact, from individuals. You've got videos in your Moving [Images] and Sound [Recordings] sections, both silent videos of the Arrow as well as audio like the Supersonic Sentinel. There's also videos of the launches of the models, also with audio in those, that you can have access to.
They've been declassified. Basically, there's a whole host of materials that are very easy to access now and some of them are even available online. They've been digitized and you can actually download them from your desk, whatever.
JA : In the 60 years since the cancellation of the Avro Arrow project, there have been many rumours floating around. We're sure Palmiro has heard and even written about some of them. Here's one we asked him.
Does he thinks there are any complete Avro Arrows still in existence? Any that survived the dismantling? PC : No. I would say very simply I know there are a lot of people who cling to the hope that there's at least one Arrow kicking around somewhere. Everything that I have seen and read convinces me completely that everything was destroyed. I referenced a memo earlier from July of , I believe, which clearly says three of the five aircraft are completely disassembled, the other two will be completed within the coming weeks and Arrow has been completely disassembled.
Here, we are in July—they know exactly what is being taken apart and what isn't being taken apart. Anybody who might've had an interest in trying to hide the Arrow or steal it somehow or whatever, they've all left the company. There's nothing left there, and they know that the torches are coming in, and they're tearing everything apart.
I think one of the sources of the rumours that one got away, stems from some of the photographs that were taken where you have one photograph, an overhead shot, it's black and white, which shows five Arrows on the tarmac.
The fifth one is already started to be disassembled. Then there's some colored photographs that were taken from a different angle. In those, that one aircraft has been disassembled even more, so you know that that photograph came just after the black and white one, but Arrow further in the distance in the [first] photograph is missing completely.
There's no way that they took it apart in the span of time that those two pictures were taken. The only thing that kind of makes sense to me in that scenario is that we know, again thanks to the Archives, that was being— that they were installing the Hughes fire control system from the United States, which was a highly secretive, classified system.
We know the business of the moles trying to get information on whatever they could. My guess is that was brought back into the hangar where they could remove that equipment without anybody taking pictures, without anybody flying over and whatever, and that's where it was destroyed. So yeah, there is no Arrow out there. It's there and you can actually see the torch marks in the back of it when you get up close, where they literally cut it to pieces.
For some reason not on display, they have some of the two wingtips off in the back. They have an Iroquois engine, which is on display. They have part of the nose landing gear, I believe it is, which I think is still on display and that's about it. Also in the back, they have a Bomarc missile, which is what sort of replaced the Arrow when it was cancelled. I think those are the biggest pieces that are still on display. There's a radome—that's the black piece at the very front of the airplane.
It's on display at the [Canadian] War Museum actually, here in Ottawa. I think they have one or two of those somewhere else in Canada. There's little bits and pieces out there, but nothing of significance.
The commanding officer of that unit, Commander Roy Stubbs, gave the Western Canada Aviation Museum magazine this quote about how they got it out…. I showed him a piece of the Arrow's cockpit section and engine nacelles and a few other bits. I asked him what we should do with it and he said to keep it hidden until the climate in Ottawa was right, and then he would arrange to have it placed in the National Aeronautical Museum in Ottawa.
Eventually this was done and at least a bit of history was saved. JA : We asked Palmiro what sort of impact the cancellation had. What was the reaction of the Canadian public?
The Avro plant was in Malton, west end of Toronto. They did what they could, they protested, but nothing came out of it. Generally speaking, there were a lot of newspaper articles coming out saying that this was a good thing, because they were under the impression that the thing— that it was costing too much, that it was breaking the bank or whatever.
There were one or two reporters in particular, I don't recall the names now, who were really against the Arrow for whatever reason. A lot of negativity on the one side, but then others pointing out all the benefits, etc.
I guess that tug of war has been going on ever since. I keep running into all kinds of people who were impacted by the cancellation, who say it was just devastating to their family. Some ended up going back to Britain because they had immigrated here on purpose, to work in high tech. There were some that— like one guy who ended up pumping gas for a few years before he was able to get back into [the] aeronautical [field].
The impact was there, it still resonates today. How did that come about? In fact, they'd already been in negotiations actually with Avro. Why did they want the Avro people so badly? Well, I've written about that in my latest book. It's not that NASA didn't have the people to do that work either. The problem, at least as it was explained to me back then, was that the people doing research in space-related stuff, they were scientists, engineers, whatever, but working in a very narrow, specific field.
What was needed were people that had industry experience, marketing experience, managing personnel experience, and those people were in their industries.
The problem was that NASA was looking at a two-year program. They were having issues of convincing people to leave good jobs to go work for them for two years without necessarily having a job afterwards, because you can bet your industry is going to hire somebody in behind you to fill that gap.
In comes Avro: We just cancelled everything, we've got people with engineering experience, managerial experience, communications experience, marketing experience, they had it all.
Those 25 guys had exactly what NASA needed at that point in time to turn what the or or however many people were working on in their labs into actual products, into an actual capsule that they needed for John Glenn. That's what the contribution was from Avro.
They could have kept that contribution in Canada if we had work or something for them to do. It was either they [went] to the States, or they went back to Britain or wherever, or [they were] Canadians; because it was really a mix.
I think out of the 25 people [who went to NASA], at least 10 or 12 had been born in Canada; the others had gotten their Canadian citizenship, or whatever. I don't know what those other 12 did, except go to the States for that work. In Palmiro's first book, he mentions that one persistent rumour seemed to be that the United States pressured Canada into cancelling the project.
We asked Palmiro, according to his research here at LAC, what was his take on the implication of the US government related to the cancellation. PC : Yes, that's an interesting question which comes up. When you look at the documents, the archival record from both Canada and the United States, you will see, for lack of a better term, American fingerprints all over the place.
What I mean by that is we get the okay from the American government and the British government, militaries, I should say, to start the project in the first place. In each case, we get a yes from the United States and we get a yes from Britain, mostly from the United States. Then, we look at the intelligence regarding the missiles. It's coming from the United States. George Pearkes as the Minister of National Defense is quoted in an American document as telling the Americans that Canada would abandon aircraft altogether unless the United States really thought they were necessary.
This is our minister making this comment, it's ridiculous. We keep getting or taking the lead from the United States. Thousands of aviation workers left the Avro Aircraft Ltd. Skip to main content. John Allemang. The Avro Arrow shown during the rollout cermony in Malton Oct. Canadian Armed Forces. Close Local your local region National. Search Submit search Quick Search.
Comments Close comments menu. Video link. Close X. Click to scroll back to top of the page Back to top. By Elton Hobson Global News. Posted March 25, pm. Updated March 26, am. View image in full screen. Smaller font Descrease article font size - A. Share this item on Facebook facebook Share this item via WhatsApp whatsapp Share this item on Twitter twitter Send this page to someone via email email Share this item on Pinterest pinterest Share this item on LinkedIn linkedin Share this item on Reddit reddit Copy article link Copy link.
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