When you think about the major
fighter aircraft manufacturers in the world, typically names like Boeing,
Lockheed, Mikoyan-Gurevich, Sukhoi, British Aerospace, and Dassault come to
mind. But in the 1950’s, one company developed a fighter that was well ahead
of its time and could have propelled Canada to the ranks of major aerospace
giants for decades. Avro Canada was a subsidiary of the famous A.V. Roe company
in England, and during the fifties Avro Canada was on the leading edge of
aerospace technology, with such aircraft as the Avro Jetliner and the Avro
Arrow. Avro Canada even experimented with exotic concepts like a flying saucer
that was supposed to be a replacement for the Jeep.
That experiment
did not go very far, or fast, but the Arrow certainly was capable of Mach
2 plus speeds. The Arrow was started in the mid-fifties as a long-range,
ultra-fast interceptor to counter the threat of Soviet bombers flying over
the North Pole. In late 1957, right around the time that the Soviets
launched the Sputnik satellite, the Arrow was rolled out of its hangar in
Ontario for the first time. |
Click on
image below to see larger image
|
|
|
Five prototypes of the Arrow
(serial numbers RL 201 - 205) soon found themselves being wrung through their
paces. Along with the Arrow, the Orenda engine company was developing the
Iroquois engine, which would have allowed the Arrow to pass Mach 2 and maybe
even Mach 3. While the Iroquois was under development, the five prototypes were
equipped with Pratt and Whitney J65’s, which had less thrust. Nevertheless one
of the Arrows hit Mach 1.98 in flight. A sixth prototype (RL 206) was about to
be finished and would be the first Arrow to receive Iroquois engines.
However, political storm clouds
were building on the horizon. There were concerns about the increasing cost of
the program, and the nature of the Soviet nuclear threat was changing. The
Sputnik launch and the rapid development of ICBM’s on both sides escalated the
arms race to a whole new level and missiles would eventually supplant bombers as
the new “over the pole” threat. Also, the Canadian parliamentary elections
had brought a new political party into power. All of these factors ended up
ringing the death knell for the Arrow. On February 20, 1959, new Canadian Prime
Minister Diefenbaker ordered the project cancelled. The six prototypes were
broken up and over 10,000 employees lost their jobs.
Click on
images below to see larger images
|
|
|
Only the nose section of RL 206
is known to survive today, though there are unsubstantiated rumors of at least
one intact and flyable Arrow being hidden in the far north. The demise of the
Arrow is shrouded in some mystery and many theories have been advanced as to why
the project ended. However, its legacy lived on in the Apollo lunar landing
program, as many of the Arrow engineers went to work for NASA. Others worked in
Britain and elsewhere, but the Canadian aerospace industry proved that it could
do outstanding world-class work, and today Canada has developed the highly
successful Canadair RJ regional jetliner series as well as the Spar Aerospace
robotic manipulator arm (“Canadarm”) for the Space Shuttle and International
Space Station.
THE MODEL
After I finished my twin Tutors,
I got a package at my door from Emil Varosi - he’d sent me a Hobbycraft 1/72nd
scale Arrow kit. The box art on the kit and my research soon inspired me to get
started, just after the calendar turned to January 2004.
I started out with the
cockpit….uh, what cockpit??? There was only a floor, two crude seats,
and pilot figures. But I was planning to build the bird in an in-flight
configuration (it looks far better with the gear up than on the ground!) so I
simply painted the cockpit insides neutral gray and concentrated my effort on
the pilot figures. I painted the flight suit intermediate blue (as per Barney
Dunlevy’s comments about the RCAF flight suits of that era) and the boots
black, the skin a flesh tone, and the helmet white. I finished the figures off
with a wash of a turpenoid/black oil paint mix to bring out details. Now,
I did print out artwork I made of the instrument panel on cardstock, and glued
it to a sheet styrene panel in front of the main cockpit, but it can't be seen
at all once the canopy is closed.
I next assembled the fuselage and
wings. I needed putty and/or gap filling CA on the wing roots and the horrid
seam splitting the top and bottom fuselage halves, as well as the top
fuselage/wing joins on the intakes and at the back end near the engines. I also
Futured the canopy, then masked off the clear areas with Tamiya tape and brushed
another layer of Future on to seal the tape in to prevent “bleed through“
(it worked very well), then glued the canopy on and faired it into the fuselage
spine with lots of putty and CA. After lots of putty, CA, and sanding came a
coat of medium gray for the canopy interior (because the canopy is clear the
gray will show when you look at it from the inside, even after you cover over
the gray with white on the outside), then came on the first coat of Gunze Mr.
Surfacer 1000. This was the first project I ever used that primer on and it did
help me a bit. But I had a long, long way to go before I could finish.
THE PAINT JOB
I had spent a few days on the
assembly portion of the project. Now came the hard part, namely getting a good
gloss white finish. I primered and sanded the bird until I was reasonably
satisfied, then used Tamiya flat white and then pure white to cover the bird.
But apparently I hadn’t sanded and puttied enough, as a horrid seam still
showed up on the left side of the fuselage. So I puttied, CA’d, and sanded
some more, laid on more Mr. Surfacer, and then more light coats of flat white.
All this time, Salt Lake was experiencing a very bitter cold snap that lasted
for three weeks, that has made this the most difficult and coldest winter I have
ever spent in my admittedly sun-kissed, desert-dwelling life. At the same time,
this cold - 10 and 20 degree F highs - made it very hard for me to spray even in
the garage with the door open in a semi-covered environment. I had to be careful
to avoid paint cracking, and after two weeks of spraying and waiting for the
paint to dry I finally felt confident enough to spray a light mist coat or two
of gloss Pure White. I finally got the Arrow to the point where I could bring it
back inside my room and finish it.
FINALLY, A FINISHING TOUCH
After I got the Arrow back
inside, I spray painted the vertical tail Tamiya Pure White in the garage and
let it dry. I then brushed gunmetal on the afterburner area and masked off the
outlines next to the dayglo areas. (I had decided early on to build RL 204 with
the dayglo panels - RL 204 of course matches the year 2004, and RL 204 also did
not have the “walkway” markings that the other Arrows had, which would make
things easier). I ended up using MM Acryl Chevy Engine Red with a dash of
Fluorescent Orange as the dayglo color and it looks very good to me. Gunze flat
black was the order of the day for the nose and intake panels, with a Sharpie
metallic marker helping out on the metal intake areas. The spine got Testors MM
Acryl Silver with a dusting of SNJ powder.
Finally, I brushed on several
coats of Future Floor Wax, and got a gloss finish I was very happy with. On came
the decals. The kit decals are actually pretty decent, with the exception of the
serial number fonts…fortunately Emil Varosi came through for me and Arrow
Graphics decals supplied the “RL 204” and tail number, as well as the RCAF
roundels, except for the one on the right intake, which was from the kit (due to
an accident with the Arrow Graphics roundel). I had few problems with putting
the decals on, except that you’ll notice a mismatch with where the “RL
204” and roundel show up on the right intake as opposed to the left. I’d
used a famous color picture of RL 204 climbing to place the decal on the left,
and I found a couple of pictures to help me place it on the right…but after I
got done with the right side I noticed the mismatch. I tried to use water to get
the decal to move, but no dice because the decal had settled in nicely into the
top layer of Future. (There was absolutely no problem with silvering by the
way). I was happy enough just finishing the bird after all my travails, so I
continued on with the base.
The base itself was a wooden
plaque I bought at a nearby craft store. My grandpa helped me out here by
varnishing the plaque, then I sprayed it gloss black. I pondered over where to
find acrylic or clear rod that I could paint with a clear orange color for lit
afterburners, when I stumbled upon some glue gun sticks at the same craft store.
Those sticks were just clear enough and just stiff enough for the job, but also
had some flexibility that clear rod would not have had, and I could more easily
shape these glue sticks. I painted Testors MM Acryl Clear Orange onto the ends
of these sticks to simulate lit ‘burners, and then cut the sticks to an
appropriate size. I used CA to glue those sticks into the Arrow’s burner cans
and let dry. At length I sprayed a wooden dowel gloss black and glued it to the
plaque for the Arrow’s nose support, and glued the Arrow to that dowel and the
back of the plaque (also with CA), supported by the glue sticks, to make a
“tripod” of sorts. I made a wooden cover to hide the spot where the glue
sticks were glued to the plaque, and as a finishing touch I glued a silver
sewing needle to the nose to replace the hideously thick and long kit pitot
tube.
CONCLUSION
I’m very glad I built this
bird, and it occupies a place of honor on my 1/72nd “flight line”
on my dresser. It was a tough project to work on at times, but I learned a lot,
not only about gloss finishes and things I could use for bases and in-flight
displays, but also about our northern neighbor’s aerospace industry and
politics. The story of how the Avro Arrow came to be and how it came to die is
one that I think should be required reading for aerospace industry executives,
military generals, and politicians as well as students of history. And the
aircraft itself fascinated me in a number of ways, from its white/dayglo color
scheme and lines to its use of a large internal weapons bay and radar/missile
combination that was a forerunner of such fighters as the F-14 Tomcat, the F-15
Eagle, and others that could attack from “beyond visual range”. Had the
Arrow made it to production, I think it could have become an outstanding
reconnaissance and high-speed strike aircraft. But even though the Arrow died,
its legacy lived on in achievements ranging from the Apollo moon landings to the
Canadarm 2 “Big Arm” currently in use aboard the International Space
Station.
Happy Modeling!
Justin
REFERENCES:
http://www.avro-arrow.org/
- An Avro Arrow website
http://www.airforce.forces.ca/equip/arrowlst_e.htm
- DND Website with good pictures of the Arrow
http://www3.sympatico.ca/mkostiuk/tamarrow.html
- The Toronto Aviation Museum is building a full-size Arrow replica
http://www.mach3graphics.com/html/arrowpix.htm
- I did not discover this site until after my model was finished, another good
source of Arrow pictures
http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/a/avro-arrow.html
- an article with specifications and political history of the bird.
http://www.pacificthunder.com/wings/arrow.htm
- Another site with specifications and history on the Arrow.
http://www.avroarrow.org/
- Still another Arrow site. Includes info about Arrow test models that were
rocketed over Lake Ontario.
http://www.nscad.ns.ca/~michaell/arrow/
- a 3D model of the Arrow.
MARKINGS
RL 201 - 202 - rolled out in
all-white finish, I don‘t know if the others did. RL 201 through 205 all had
dayglo markings applied on nose, wingtips, and most of vertical tail. Later I
saw pictures that showed that RL 203 had dayglo markings only on the wingtips
and rudder, I don‘t know if the others followed suit.
RL 203 - Only aircraft with the
Canadian ensign on its tail, applied along with the dayglo full tail markings,
wingtips, and nose. Ensign was also present when the wingtips and rudder were
painted dayglo.
RL 204 - Aircraft was the only
one that did not have the “walkway” markings, according to the Arrow
Graphics instructions. Also later had a dayglo nose and wingtips retained along
with dayglo markings on the rudder with the rest of the tail white.
RL 205 - Did not have any nose
stencils, just the danger triangles on the canopies. RL 201 through 204 had the
nose section stencils.
RL 206 - All white finish. Other
details unknown.
Many thanks to Emil Varosi,
Barney Dunlevy, Sean Bratton, “Cheetah” Arsenault, Joe Dempsey, “Tilt”
Katchur and others for their encouragement and help on this bird.
|
|