​CF-105 Arrow - Fast Facts 4

​Black Friday – Feb 20, 1959. At the recommendation of a Defense Minister who had come to believe manned interceptors were obsolete in the age of missiles, the entire Arrow and Iroquois engine programs were cancelled by the Canadian Government.

Canceling the Arrow program instantly put 14,300 Avro employees out of work along with a similar number employed by the program’s 650 subcontractors.

In a subsequent memo dated March 26 1959, RCAF Air Marshall Hugh Campbell recommended to the Defense Minister that all Arrow airframes, engines, engineering and test data be reduced to scrap to avoid the embarrassment of such material ever being put on public display.

With the cancellation of the Arrow program, and the replacement Bomarc Missile System still failing in testing, Canada was left essentially defenseless for two and half years during the height of the Cold War with Russia.

The Canadian Armament Research & Development Establishment, in a report published two years after the aircraft were destroyed, reported that the Avro Arrow had met 95% of its specification in only 72 hours of test flights.