Avro Arrow "Avro Arrow" by Brent Wilson This is an essay about the short life of one of Canada's finest achievements, the Avro Arrow.

Essay by BrentMWHigh School, 11th gradeA+, May 2004

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The compelling rise and demise of the Avro Arrow is a chronicle of triumph and tragedy for Canadian aviation but still remains a benchmark of technology and innovation as one of the finest achievements in Canadian aviation history. The Arrow was a technical masterpiece, at the forefront of aviation engineering at the time, surpassing that of all other nations, and was to be admired by some, coveted by others, and feared by all. This plane could have been many things for Canadians; the fastest plane in the world, our best defense against the Soviets, and a push that our aviation industry so very needed to propel it to the forefront of its field. The Avro Arrow was a Canadian built interceptor which started it's life as a political entity and ended it's life as the same, becoming a $400 million dollar scrap of metal, the stuff that legends were made of.

At the end of the Second World War, Canada was one of the world's major powers, and the RCAF, fearing of a "bomber gap," wanted a plane capable of flying higher and faster then anything they had, in which Avro Canada had the answer. The Avro Arrow was born out of Canada's imperative need for the protection of the nation. The year was 1953, and Canada was, along with the rest of the world, throughly enveloped in the Cold War, buried deep with their own suspicions of each other. Canada, realizing that it needed a defense from the threat across the Pole, along with the swaggering post-war RCAF wanting a strong deterrent to counter the Soviet Union, gave the green light to Avro Canada, which began design studies of a prototype supersonic all-weather aircraft. In July 1953, the Department of Defense Production issued a directive authorizing a design study...