The Avro Arrow wasn’t that great

While certainly an impressive piece of hardware, it was far from the magical super plane of Canadian myth.

Everything Should Be Better: From canned food donations to the lottery, @TristinHopper takes aim at all the pointless and wasteful things we do out of laziness, ignorance or worse.

Produced by John Richardson and Tristin Hopper
Edit & Photo illustration: John Richardson

#ShouldBeBetter

[garywalker]

1. Being that all the weapons were stowed in a removable weapons pod, the aircraft could have been configered, with different weapons packs for a bomber, ECM, Reconnaissance.
2. The combination of long range and high speed was NOT matched in the 1960s.
3. The aircraft was already paid for, by scrapping it, we simply got NOTHING for all the money spent.
4. The Iroquois engine was still state of the art 15 years later, we could have sold them
5. The Arrow's fly by wire system was state of the art for 25 years later, this could have been incorporated into other aircraft as well.
6. Once the aircraft was in squadron service, other nations would be far more inclined to buy it.

[kedalsj]

Whenever I want to see some strong anti-Canadian story, possibly written by a convicted felon, I know that the National Post is the place to go.

[justarandomf-gphantom]

I wish they would have continued with the the CF-105, and I'm not even Canadian.

[hotfraulein]

This person doesn't know what he is talking about!

[darosamsone]

None of those other planes, by comparison, could pull 2G on a turn without losing altitude and speed. Only the CF-105 could at that time

[martentrudeau]

Canadians lost a lot by not building their own plane, jobs, industries, and technologies. Avro Arrow combined range with speed, the F-4 Phantom could never fly the great distances the Arrow could. Canada didn't just loose a good plane it lost a lot of other things too.

[jamesshields]

“SMALL COUNTRY LIKE CANADA”

Ya were the second largest

[ronmerkus]

The Avro Arrow was ahead of it's time, in it's day, and regardless of how you feel about will never change the facts about it's ingenuity, which are in use today!!!!

[MrDavidMcDonald]

It was never flight-tested with the much more powerful engines specifically designed to power it!

[jagersxford]

There are so many holes in this guys observations, it's hard to know where to start.

[voyager]

To be sure, nostalgia and a patriotic sense of pride can flavour perceptions of things that have passed into the mists of history...but the assertions in this video are so laughably mistaken I literally laughed out loud. The National Post, eh? What an embarrassing and telling, presentation.

[HamiltonCornish]

I think this guy needs to do more research.

[ontheedge]

The point is not that it was the greatest but it was Canadian and would have been a great beginning ! Imagine where that Jet and Company could be today .
It’s time we build a future for Canadians that will protect and give Young Canadians a great future and to know we can protect our own citizens would make all of us proud .

[Philosopherkey]

The Avro Company was the first to produce a working passenger jet ahead of Boeing. When the Canadian Government had Avro design the Arrow the passenger jet and its production were put on hold as the resources of the Avro company could not facilitate both projects. When the Avro Arrow was cancelled we not only lost the arrow but potential to be a leading manufacturer of passenger jets as the passenger jets were put on the backburner and never developed because the arrow took priority.

[MystoRobot]

Wasn't that great *...says the ignorants xD*
_(You know what isn't great? The National Post.)_

[trentriver]

The plane was intentionally cancelled before number 6 could fly with the Orenda engine. That engine was much more powerful than the Pratt and Whitney engine that was put in versions 1-5 and would have likely shattered many records of the time. Tristin left that out. It had many other innovations as well. Also - the Americans convinced Diefenbaker that jets were passe and missiles were the future - here we are 75 years still using jets. This does not even take into consideration what might have evolved from the wonderful team of engineers that were brought together for this project. Short-sighted move.

[LarryTheRoleplayerTM]

For starters, don't use the RCAF logo behind you when you're shitting on the RCAF

[avroarrow]

Canada a small country? Hahaha! That's how I know this guy is bull.

[kils_lo]

typically if you're main argument for why the arrow wasnt that great was that it could'nt defend from missiles you have to remember that the arrow was desingend and began constuction before the age of missiles.

[jackofclubs]

Bro didn’t even mention how absolutely crazy the Iroquois were and that the arrow it’s max speed achieved ~M1.9 was with the worse p&w J75. The production planes, with the iroquois engines would have let the arrow push Mach 2.5. And its not like these engines weren’t meeting expectations, they were actually surpassing initial targets and an arrow fitted with iroquois engines was planned to fly only a month or two after the program was cancelled