The invention of the jet engine revolutionized aircraft design and Malton was at the centre of the action.
Following the end of the Second World War, British manufacturer Hawker Siddeley Group purchased Malton-based Victory Aircraft – builder of the famed Lancaster Bombers – and renamed it A.V. Roe Canada Ltd, also known as Avro Canada.
It was through Avro that Canada entered the jet age, on the strength of the Avro CF-100 Canuck, Canada’s first and only mass-produced jet fighter, which served the Canadian military from the early 1950s to 1982.
Just under 700 planes were built for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), to be used in the newly formed North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
And then there was the Arrow.
In 1953, the RCAF, concerned with the Soviet threat and the Cold War, commissioned Avro to design high-flying interceptors, aircraft that could climb quickly to intercept Soviet bombers and spy planes before either reached North America. The assumption was the Soviets would attack via the North Pole, so the planes needed to perform in extreme cold weather conditions.
This would require two innovations: a sleek new design and a powerful engine, the latter of which originated with government researchers in the early 1940s.
In the midst of the Second World War, engineers with the federal government’s National Research Council travelled to England to meet and learn from Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine, at his company Power Jets Ltd.
Their purpose: to determine how Canada could carve out a niche in the emerging jet age.
Based on their advice, the wartime cabinet of William Lyon Mackenzie created two initiatives in 1943: a cold-weather jet engine testing facility in Winnipeg, and a Toronto-based Crown corporation called Turbo Research Inc. to design and build a Canadian-made jet engine.
After the war, A.V. Roe bought Turbo Research and began integrating its innovative engine design into Avro jets. While Whittle’s jet engines relied on a centrifugal flow, the Canadian engineers experimented with an axial flow design, which enabled higher gas flow, creating a more powerful engine.
That, combined with Avro’s innovative tail-less, delta wing design body resulted in the most powerful aircraft of its time: the supersonic Avro Arrow, or CF-105.
Officials watch the Avro CF-100 Canuck, during a fly-by in Malton. (Photo credit: Region Archives of Peel)
The Arrow was a massive leap ahead in aerodynamics, speed, altitude, and armament. It could reach altitudes of 60,000 feet or more courtesy of that Canadian-designed engine that could achieve Mach 2 – twice the speed of sound.
Production and testing began in 1954 and on October 4, 1957, the first of five Arrows rolled out onto the tarmac in Malton.
Canada’s aeronautics industry was ready to take flight, led by Avro Canada, which by 1958 was Canada’s third largest company, employing over 14,000 people.
Only Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and mining giant Inco employed more Canadians.
The initial test planes were powered by Pratt & Whitney J75 engines, and following the first test flight on March 25, 1958, it was quickly apparent that the Avro Arrow was the most powerful jet interceptor the world had ever known.
Imagine, wrote news reports from that era, what additional speeds the Arrow might reach once the more powerful Avro-designed engines, now known as the Orenda Iroquois, were installed in early 1959.
Canadians and the world never found out.
On February 20, 1959, a day known as ‘Black Friday’ in Canadian aviation circles, the government of John Diefenbaker killed the program.
Avro’s 14,000 employees were immediately laid off, as were an additional 15,000 people working for Avro’s subcontractors.
But the Canadian government didn’t just kill the program; it ordered the planes, blueprints and additional parts be destroyed, including the almost finished planes with those powerful Iroquois engines.
The reason for the cancellation and the destruction of the Arrow can be traced, in hindsight, to an overestimation of Soviet technological capabilities and reach.
In the year prior to the Arrow cancellation, the Canadian military had begun to doubt the value of interceptor jets because of the perceived rise of Soviet armaments, specifically intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Declassified CIA documents from the time projected the Soviet Union could have up to 1,000 ICBMs by 1965, which would render interceptor jets obsolete.
The estimates proved to be wildly inaccurate.
However, that became apparent after the Arrows were destroyed, a move the Canadian military took to keep Avro’s world-leading designs out of the hands of Soviet agents operating in Canada, including at least one suspected mole in Avro’s Malton facility.
While the Arrow never flew, the technology used to design its engine survived as Orenda Engines, which through the 1960s to the early 1980s was the primary engine supplier and repair company for the Canadian armed forces.
You can hear more stories about the people and events that helped shape Mississauga via our podcast, We Built This City: Tales of Mississauga, available on your favourite podcast platform or from our website.