An indication of the quality and expertise of the engineering team on the Arrow can be assessed by what they went on to do after Black Friday. Many went into frontier-of-technology jobs in other countries and made significant contributions to the United States space programs, to the Concorde project and to Canadian, US and European commercial and military aircraft programs.
In a book titled,
Apollo: The Race to the Moon, published in 1969 by Simon & Shuster of New York, authors Charles Murray and Catherine Bly-Cox had this to say about the contribution to the American space programs made by the ex-Avro team of Canadians that went down to NASA after the cancellation of the Arrow program:
"As the Space Task Group's burden was threatening to overwhelm it, the Canadian government unintentionally gave the American space program its luckiest break since Werner von Braun had surrendered to the Americans....The Canadians never gained much public recognition for their contribution to the manned space program, but to the people within the program their contribution was incalculable”
The book also quotes one of the original American Space Task Group engineers as saying about the Canadians:
"They had it all over us, in many areas....just brilliant guys....They were more mature and they were bright as hell and talented and professional to a man."
http://www.avroarrow.org/Jim Floyd/JimFloydReflections.html
By August 1949 the C-102 Jetliner was flying (and flew only 13 days after the first purpose-designed jet transport, the de Havilland Comet). For some reason, by this time the Jetliner's original target buyer (TCA) had sworn off the Jetliner that had been created for it with the Canadian government also becoming increasingly meddlesome and destructive regarding the project. In the United States however, the enthusiasm among the major US air carriers and the USAF and US Navy was virtually universal and Avro anticipated sales of hundreds of aircraft.
National Airlines was very interested in the Jetliner as were most major American carriers with National ready to sign an order for ten when the program was halted. It is taken for granted that had National Airlines purchased Jetliners, first Eastern, and eventually all major US carriers would have had no choice but to purchase Jetliners. The Korean war provided politicians on both side of the border the means to block production of an aircraft that would have made Avro Canada a rival to Douglas aircraft in the commercial aircraft industry. C.D. Howe, Canada's Minister of Reconstruction (“minister of everything” according to the opposition Conservatives) ordered Avro to stop work on the Jetliner and concentrate work on the CF-100 which at this time was predictably at least two years away from squadron service. [and therefore irrelevant to the Korean War]
Subsequent document release shows that in fact the USAF tried to order an initial twelve Jetliners in 1951 for parting out [to] and test by the Air Refuelling, Logistics and Training Commands before purchase of an entire fleet. The documents proving this were repressed by the Liberal government of Canada and C.D. Howe at the time and were only recently disclosed. C.D. Howe's files on the Jetliner affair are also missing from the archives. For his leadership on the C-102 Jetliner project, Jim Floyd was awarded the American Wright Brothers Medal, the first non-American to win this prestigious award.
Floyd was ordered off the Jetliner project, promoted to Chief Engineer for Avro, and positioned as Avro's temporary works manager (with Bob Lindley being in charge of the “Blitz-Group” to fix the CF-100's design deficiencies) during the push to perfect the CF-100 and place it into mass production. Since the CF-100 required serious modifications and testing to install weapons, a fire-control system and to fix a structural problem with the main spar. This would have been an exceptionally challenging time for him since he was expected to prepare tooling and production lines for parts that hadn't even been designed at this point! When the challenges to perfect, arm, power and produce the CF-100 are understood, one can see that Jim Floyd and the Avro team achieved near-miracles in the turn-around of the CF-100 program between the Mk. 1 and Mk. 4 aircraft.
Even before the Mk. 4 CF-100 flew, Jim Floyd and Jim Chamberlain were involved in drawings and research for a fighter to eventually replace the CF-100 in RCAF service. This work culminated in the Avro Arrow. Unfortunately the Arrow was also (like the Jetliner) cancelled for, in this writer's opinion, rather sinister political reasons. P
erformance curves compiled for Avro Canada & Cold War Aviation show that the Arrow Mk. 2 would still be the top performing interceptor in the world today in terms of flight performance. Details of a production sharing bid for the F-101 Voodoo interceptor also demonstrate that the far superior Arrow was priced nearly 25% lower than the Voodoo. Cabinet minutes also demonstrate that the government of Canada made it their policy to kill Avro Aircraft in favour of a 100% foreign-owned aviation company operating in Canada (Canadair at the time was 100% owned by Convair/General Dynamics.)
[It is left to the imagination of the reader to guess what inducements were offered to get the individual members of the government of Canada to act in such a scandalous, not say treasonous manner. Suffice it to say that whether carrots or sticks, or both, they were all too effective. The cost to Canada in economic, industrial, technical and moral damage is well-nigh incalculable.]
http://www.avroarrow.org/Jim Floyd/JamesFloydBio.html
