Casemate UK The Avro Arrow

[Mike]

The Avro Arrow

Lorimer via Casemate UK

 

 

The Avro Arrow was Canada's version of the British TSR.2, and sadly suffered the same fate due to high costs, political wrangling and at least a little bit of subterfuge, I'm sure.  After WWII the Avro team were experienced and ready to break some boundaries to produce a potentially superb combination of a world-leading airframe in the shape of the CF-105 Arrow, and an advanced and very powerful new engine in the form of the X-116 Iroquois.  Like the TSR.2 they got perilously close to success, with five airframes completed and airworthy, plus another almost ready to accept the first of the engines.  Then it all went wrong for Avro, with cancellation of both projects and an unseemly haste to "undo" all the work that had been done by scrapping the airframes, engines and destroying all the documentation into the bargain, which always starts eyebrows arching at the perpetrator's motivation.

 

To paraphrase, the fourth dimension of any aircraft is politics, and again that's where the problems lay.  The Russians were making great strides with rockets for ICBM use, and short-sightedly the Canadian government believed the hype that was also being expounded by Duncan Sands over the Atlantic in the UK that sounded the death-knell of the TSR.2.

 

 

This book by James Lorimer & Co. is an indigenous Canadian project, and is an excellent introduction to the Arrow from anyone's point of view, as it doesn't delve too deeply into the technicalities, but instead details the situation that led up to the conception of the Arrow, and walks the reader through the design and testing process that followed by using some excellent photos with captions and links to other data that is out on the internet.  This might sound like a time sensitive thing, as it's amazing how quickly web pages change their URLs, but as they have been supplied as short links, there's plenty of opportunity for them to keep them current at least in the near future.  Google is your friend anyway when it comes to anything really, so don't worry about the future of the links, and regard them as a bit of a bonus if anything.

 

 

Bound in a traditional hardback format it would make a great coffee table book, but also has plenty of information to impart, as well as some really interesting pictures.  The preamble to the Arrow takes up a few pages that some might begrudge, but it tells an important part of the story, and I learned a few things while I was reading it and perusing the pictures, which in total number around 200 in a mixture of black & white and colour spread over 112 pages.

 

Conclusion

You can't help draw comparisons with the sad story of the TSR.2, but the blow was more devastating, as it took out Avro Canada, and lost many thousands of skilled people their jobs, forcing many to move to the US for work.  This is an excellent book to get a full picture of the period, and you can sense the pride that author Lawrence Miller feels for what is still an incredible achievement, even now.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

 

 

Review sample courtesy of