This column wraps up my four-part series on the Avro Arrow with a look at the various conspiracy theories that arose from the abrupt cancellation of the Arrow project.
It seems it is a foregone conclusion any historical event will spawn any number of alternative facts, which then lead to a review of our understanding of the event. I believe this is a necessary step in our review of our history and, given the constant review of the Arrow saga, it is not at all surprising we have several conspiracies to examine.
Given the circumstance behind the cancellation of what was dubbed the world’s most advanced aircraft, a project of such immense national pride to Canadians, one can only imagine the anguish resulting from its cancellation, and the mandated destruction of all existing aircraft, materials, tooling and blueprints.
The nation was left in shock — not to mention the many local residents employed by the storied firm — and, for many, the wound still smarts today, and conspiracy theories have continued to swirl.
The primary theory put forward by the government (and is still considered the primary belief) is related to the usability of the Arrow.
Just as the Arrow was being built, strategic priorities among the superpowers shifted, largely due to the advancing technologies related to ballistic missiles. Interceptor aircraft were judged of little use against an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which flies in space and drops a ballistic warhead onto its target far faster than an aircraft or its missiles can travel.
In part 2 of this series, I spoke about how the same day the first Avro Arrow was rolled out (Oct. 4, 1957), the Soviets launched their first R-7 rocket, which was also their first ICBM. Some say at that moment the Arrow project became obsolete.
Surface-to-air missiles were quickly becoming a reality, exemplified by the United States’ BOMARC missile. It launched with a booster rocket and then switched to ramjet engines, getting it to its target in half the time it would have taken the Arrow, and then destroyed the target using a nuclear warhead. The issue of the nuclear component was said to have been another issue for the government.
The Arrow’s cost was seen as an issue. Canada was a small country, and we couldn’t support the development of such an expensive plane by buying them all ourselves; there existed no interest at all among our allies. The American XF-108, the Arrow’s competitor, was itself shelved seven months after the Arrow.
Five Arrows were completed in total. After two months of various parties in the government discussing what to do with them (the United Kingdom didn’t want them), the order was given to destroy everything: planes, engines, parts and plans.
The reason given for the destruction of the Arrows was national security. It was believed the Soviets had at least one spy inside Avro. This theory was supposedly confirmed with the 1998 publication of The Sword and the Shield, a book that gave some of the history of the spy, code-named Lind, and his KGB contact.
Even more information on this came out in the 2016 book, Shattered Illusions. Any fear within the Canadian government about the Soviets obtaining classified information on the Arrow would seem justified.
I have advanced two of the theories as to the Arrow’s cancellation, but there are several other theories, both true and false, that continue to spread. We shall take a quick look at three of the most popular.
Canadian historian Jack Granatstein speculated then-prime minister John Diefenbaker may have cancelled the Arrow just to spite Avro president Crawford Gordon, who was politically and culturally the opposite of him. It is well documented that Diefenbaker and Gordon disliked one another intensely.
Regardless of whether Diefenbaker felt that way, the decision to cancel the Arrow was far broader and more powerful than one man’s personal whims. Diefenbaker pointed to the cost to Canada of having recently joined NORAD and having to upgrade its missile defences (a cost of nearly a quarter-billion dollars) and the fact they simply didn’t have money for both. Canada’s minister of defence had also pressed for the Arrow’s cancellation. Diefenbaker was indeed the one who made the final call, but he made it in consultation with his cabinet.
When I was studying history at university, I heard the theory that the United States had the Arrow killed to protect its aerospace industry from a superior competitor. At the time, I reasoned that even if the U.S. did have this kind of influence over the Canadian prime minister (and, by extension, over the United Kingdom), it does not seem at all clear that reducing the available inventory of frontline allied interceptors in the face of a mounting Soviet threat would have been in the Americans’ interest. American national security would have been enhanced having the Arrow up north as the first responder.
The story is that all items related to the Avro Arrow’s development were destroyed. However, one story that seems to linger is at least one Arrow was spirited out of the country and preserved.
Stories have persisted of some Avro pilots and engineers managing to secretly fly one Arrow to safety in some other country. People have come forward to recall seeing or hearing an Arrow flying overhead sometime after Black Friday.
Just after the project’s cancellation, a black and white aerial photograph was shown of the five original Arrows in various states of disassembly on the Avro tarmac. But then, soon after, in June 1959, a photo emerged showing one of them, tail No. 202, had gone missing. Speculation was made that 202 had been reassembled and flown away. In fact, it had been taken back into the hangar for the removal of some classified electronics from the Hughes Aircraft Company.
Government memos have been preserved that detail the progress of the destruction. These records were digitized in 2021 and are now publicly available through the National Research Council of Canada. Given the passage of time and the fact none of the disgruntled workers was ever a whistleblower, it does seem to strain the conspiracy’s credibility.
There was a discovery of an authentic Avro Arrow ejection seat in the U.K. in 2011, which added fuel to this conspiracy theory. It was in the hands of a broker who was offering it for sale; it had belonged to a private collector who had acquired it from an old, long-since-defunct aviation museum. The earlier history of the ejection seat remained unknown, and it could not be traced to a specific Arrow. It was suggested it may have been spirited away as a souvenir.
Another version has a complete Avro Arrow flown to the U.K. and its parts distributed to museums. Given that it would have attracted massive attention, it seems an unlikely possibility. The story of an Arrow landing at RAF Manston in the 1960s has drawn skepticism as the details are implausible and there is no evidence available.
The distance from Avro headquarters to RAF Manston is more than 3,100 nautical miles, more than double the Arrow’s maximum ferry range of 1,500 nautical miles. This would have had to have been a flight with numerous stops for one of the world’s most recognizable and noisiest airplanes, requiring scores of ground personnel and controllers, with nobody knowing about it.
One draftsman, Ken Barnes, took an entire book of huge blueprints for the Arrow, perhaps the most sensitive souvenir possible. He hid them at home, and only after his death did his son announce their existence by loaning them to the University of Saskatchewan for a special exhibition.
The number of conspiracy theories continues to grow each year. History and historians by nature re-examine the known facts and reassess the known evidence, so I doubt it will end any time soon.
It would obviously be great to learn an Arrow still exists or documents have been found that put to rest why the project was cancelled with some certainty. Today, a gorgeous full-scale replica of the Arrow is available for public viewing at the Edenvale Aerodrome in Ontario, and seeing this magnificent work is probably the closest any of us will ever get to experiencing what might have been.
Sources: The Avro Arrow Conspiracies: Conspiracy theories surround the cancellation of this advanced Canadian aircraft from the 1950s by Brian Dunning; The Avro Arrow: For the record by P. Campagna; NRC Canada; Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow; NRC Digital Repository; Government of Canada; The record-breaking jet which still haunts a country by M. Plessing, BBC Future, BBC, June 16, 2020; The Avro Arrow Home Page: keeping the memory alive, R. Kyle Schmidt; Avro Arrow blueprints on display after sitting in Saskatchewan man’s home for decades, by D. Shields, CBC News; Avro Arrow article by Barry Jordan Chong; Canada’s CF-105 Arrow Interceptor Is the Cold War Legend That Refuses to Die, The War Zone, by S. Walker; The Drive; Canada’s ‘Black Friday’: Sabotaged by U.S. or Smuggled to U.K. — What Happened to RCAF’s Avro Arrow Fighter Interceptors? by Parth Satam; Conspiracy Interceptor: Facts and fictions of the Avro Arrow, by Christopher Waddell; The Avro Arrow: For the Record, by Palmiro Campagna.
Newmarket resident Richard MacLeod, the History Hound, has been a local historian for more than 40 years. He writes a weekly feature about our town’s history in partnership with NewmarketToday, conducts heritage lectures and walking tours of local interest, and leads local oral history interviews.
