Storms of Controversy: The Secret Avro Arrow Files Revealed

STORMS OF

CONTROVERSY

FOURTH EDITION

STORMS OF

CONTROVERSY

THE SECRET AVRO ARROW

FILES REVEALED

PALMIRO CAMPAGNA

DUNDURN PRESS

TORONTO

Copyright © Palmiro Campagna, 2010

Originally published by Stoddart Publishing in 1992.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Project Editor: Michael Carroll

Copy Editor: Matt Baker

Design: Jennifer Scott

Printer: Marquis

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Campagna, Palmiro

Storms of controversy : the secret Avro Arrow files revealed / Palmiro Campagna ; foreword by Richard Rohmer. -- 4th ed.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-55488-698-2

1. Avro Arrow (Turbojet fighter plane). 2. Aircraft industry--Canada--History. 3. Canada--Politics and government--1957-1963. 4. Canada--Foreign relations--United States. 5. United States--Foreign relations-Canada. I. Title.

TL685.3.C34 2010     338.4’762374640971     C2009-907462-1

1 2 3 4 5   14 13 12 11 10

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Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

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For James Gilbert and all the children in the world.

May their dreams become reality and not suffer

at the hands of those unable to dream.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Major-General (Retired) Richard Rohmer

Preface to the Fourth Paperback Edition

Preface to the Third Paperback Edition

Preface to the Second Paperback Edition

Preface to the First Edition

1 Dreams

2 U.S. and U.K. Interest

3 The Arrow

4 Up, Up, or Away?

5 Mutilation

6 Why?

7 Myths and Misconceptions

Epilogue

Postscript

Appendix I: A Selection from the Secret Files

Appendix II: The Forgotten Tapes and Costs Revealed

Appendix III: A Report on Arrow Flight-Test Models

Appendix IV: Continuing Arguments About the Arrow’s Destruction

Notes

Index

FOREWORD

The Arrow controversy caused by the abrupt 1959 cancellation of the development of that years-ahead-of-its-time jet aircraft by the Diefenbaker government (followed immediately by the brutal destruction of all existing Arrows) has left a searing scar on the national psyche of Canada. The intimidating puzzle has been — why? Why the cancellation, why the destruction? In his work, Palmiro Campagna lays out hitherto unavailable evidence from Cabinet records. His precise, unemotional documentation gives a new and brilliantly clear picture of the American political influence that used the United States’ Bomarc system threat to cause the naive Canadian government to elect to invest in that worthless system and to cancel the Arrow.

The Canadian Cabinet argument was that Canada could not afford both programs. The United States, as Campagna tells us, forced the Diefenbaker decision in favour of the Americans’ nuclear-warheaded Bomarc system.

The explanation of the whys of the demise of the Arrow, as skill-fully developed by Campagna, will not bury the Arrow controversy. But it will serve to illuminate the dim-bulb rationale that pervaded the tempestuous, reactionary Diefenbaker years.

The administration of John George Diefenbaker left its indelible, depressing footprint on the ego of a Canadian people anxious and capable then to become one of the world’s leading high-tech nations. What a powerhouse of technology employment and high prosperity Canada would be enjoying today if the Arrow had survived and flown into our future.

Major-General (Retired) Richard Rohmer

Toronto

June 1992

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH

PAPERBACK EDITION

The year 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the cancellation of the Arrow, so it is fitting that more than a half-century after the demise of the plane, another, completely revised edition of this book is appearing. New this time around are two more appendices, one concerning Arrow flight-test models and the other serving as a summary of the continuing controversy around the destruction of the interceptor.

The 50th anniversary of the Arrow’s termination was observed by the usual newspaper articles and stories. One such article appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. The writer noted the technical superiority of the Arrow, a fact finally acknowledged by many Canadian historians, but then he went on to discuss the cancellation and the reasons for it. He raised the usual refrain that the project was over-budget, blaming technological advances as the reason behind the cost increases.

As noted in Storms of Controversy, now in its fourth paperback edition, and in Requiem for a Giant, my book about A.V. Roe, cost increases were the result of changes requested by the Royal Canadian Air Force. They were also caused by increasing material and labour expenditures. There was also the illusion of cost increases as work progressed faster than anticipated, allowing for more to be done in a given month, hence greater expenses accruing in the same month. All of this was itemized in Requiem for a Giant in which I also discussed at length the records of the Special Committee on Defence Expenditures from 1960. These records reveal that in 1959, after the cancellation of the Arrow, the Department of National Defence returned $262 million in approved but unspent money. But only $45 million was from the Arrow program. The balance would have paid for the completion of the development work and the building of 37 aircraft.

The part of the program that was not within Avro’s control but was cited to cost hundreds of millions was the development of the Astra fire-control system by RCA, a company that had never worked in this highly specialized area before. For its part, Avro recommended using the available Hughes fire-control system with Falcon missiles. When this system was adopted, costs decreased dramatically. In addition, Avro is on record as guaranteeing a fixed price per aircraft of $3.75 million. What the writer of the Ottawa Citizen article and other commentators have failed to point out is that, for the most part, the money used for the Arrow project was spent in Canada, a fact being lamented in the new millennium as military expenses and therefore jobs are forced to go offshore in some instances due to the lack of opportunity in this country. It is interesting that on several occasions, George Pearkes, the minister of national defence in 1959, denied that cost was the reason behind the Arrow cancellation.

The Ottawa Citizen writer, who claims to have reviewed the documentation on the Arrow, notes that Avro had not diversified or made backup plans, so that when the decision to terminate was acted upon, all employees were fired by Crawford Gordon. In fact, in Requiem for a Giant, I reproduced the minutes of the special meeting of the Management Committee of Avro Aircraft Limited held on February 19, 1959, the day before Black Friday. The minutes read:

… the Chairman [J.L. Plant] opened by stating that he had called this Special Meeting of Management Committee by reason that it was necessary for the Committee to formulate Management plans in the event that the Government decided to terminate the ARROW Program on or before March 31st next …

For those who have actually read the documents, the records show that the government was poised to make a decision by March 31, 1959, but then decided to advance the date forward to February 20. As for the contention that Avro was being put on notice in September 1958, that is simply incorrect. The decision at that time was to terminate the Astra and Sparrow development, something Avro itself had been campaigning for.

Why were all Avro employees fired immediately? One has only to look at the reproduced cease-and-desist orders reproduced in Appendix I in this book. Once Avro was told to stop all work immediately, there was no choice but to let everyone go. Other people have insisted that Avro should have been in the civilian aircraft market, but they forget that in 1949 Avro produced the Jetliner, the first commercial jet transport to fly in North America.

In 1949, Avro was at least five years ahead in respect of commercial aircraft design. The Jetliner was a superb aircraft. While some historians have argued that no one was prepared to purchase the Jetliner, or that there were problems with the design, again the documented record proves otherwise. Trans-Canada Air Lines officials noted the technical superiority of the design, and C.D. Howe’s own commissioned study of the program demonstrated that the Jetliner was the wave of the future. A letter from the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., and reproduced in Requiem for a Giant, clearly states that the U.S. Air Force had set aside money to purchase 12 Jetliners for use as trainers and refuellers, while other documents reveal the efforts of Howard Hughes to purchase the Jetliner in quantity for Trans World Airlines.

Finally, the author of the Ottawa Citizen article speaks of the strategic uncertainty and perceived diminished need for a manned interceptor in the coming decades. In fact, shortly after the cancellation of the Arrow, the United States told Canada it needed interceptors, as evidenced in the documents. This is where I maintain the idea of American influence in the cancellation. U.S. intelligence first created the bomber gap in the early 1950s at the Arrow’s inception, actually causing an acceleration of the program, and then followed with the missile gap and diminished bomber threat, thereby encouraging the termination of the Arrow.

When I initially published this book in the early 1990s, I advanced for the first time a theory, or more appropriately a reason, why those in certain quarters of the U.S. hierarchy might want to see the Arrow program terminated. It involved the capabilities of the Arrow, Soviet moles, and the possibility of exposing or ending American U-2 spy flights. As stated in this book, such hypotheses were and remain speculation.

Unfortunately, some people have taken my conjectures as absolutes, which they were not intended to be. The situation is best summarized by Julian A. Smith, a history of science instructor at Ryerson Polytechnical University in Toronto in 1993. In writing an online review of Storms of Controversy back then in HOST, an electronic bulletin for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, he stated the following:

Conspiracy theories, by their very nature, often invite skepticism from their readers; but Campagna’s arguments are clearly explained and well documented. Whether you agree with the more extreme suggestions of Soviet spies and CIA involvement is not really that important, for Campagna has certainly given historians a fresh approach to the Avro Arrow problem, and for that the profession owes him their gratitude.

On a further note of clarification, the Arrow continues to assume mythic proportions. For example, I have received numerous emails asking if the Arrow would still be the best aircraft of its kind today, and blogs compare the Arrow’s capabilities with contemporary military planes. Simply stated, an aircraft is designed to achieve certain specifications. If those specifications require it to fly at a certain speed, it will have the design and power to do so. In the 1950s, the RCAF laid down a series of specifications that, after careful consideration, proved beyond the capabilities of the aircraft of that time to achieve.

Avro, to its credit, accepted the task of attempting to meet these ambitious specifications. In doing so, the company’s engineers quickly realized certain breakthroughs would be required in a myriad of specialized scientific fields. One by one, they tackled each problem and solved it, producing in the end a world-class interceptor, ahead of its time because of the numerous technical innovations it embodied, not because no other country could do it. Some of those innovations did not make their way into other aircraft until years later, but the Arrow needed them then to satisfy specific RCAF requirements. The technological achievements did not go unnoticed, and that is why key Avro engineers ended up in positions of esteem at NASA and with many aircraft manufacturers. They did not go as extra hands but as leaders, having proven their technical abilities with the Arrow.

Finally, I would like to say that I wrote Storms of Controversy for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I wanted to expose the wealth of documentation that had not, in fact, been destroyed in 1959 and which did show the technical advancement of the aircraft. Furthermore, I wanted to reveal who ordered the physical destruction, how much the project cost, and what external influences and pressures were being brought to bear on the politicians of the day and the executives and engineers at Avro. I also wrote the book to correct some of the errors propagated by those who should have known better but who sadly continued to retail old myths. Ultimately, though, I wrote this book to inspire people to think about the great legacy the Arrow represents and to ponder the endless possibilities that await those who dare in the decades to come. As such, I wish to thank Dundurn Press, and in particular my editor, Michael Carroll, for all his work and effort in bringing Storms of Controversy back to a new generation of readers.

Palmiro Campagna

Ottawa

February 2010

PREFACE TO THE THIRD

PAPERBACK EDITION

In this latest edition of Storms of Controversy, I add to a new appendix (Appendix II) information about the Arrow that came to light in 1997, and I have included more previously unseen declassified documents.

The Arrow controversy remains alive and well. Proof of this was provided in an interview by the Canadian Press with former Conservative Cabinet minister Pierre Sevigny in February 1998, which was published in every major newspaper across Canada. In the interview, Sevigny claimed that the destruction of the Avro Arrow was ordered by A.V. Roe president Crawford Gordon. Sevigny and the Canadian Press ignored the entire paper trail of government documents I provided in the first edition of this book in 1992. In the ensuing firestorm of public opinion, Sevigny admitted that he had not seen these documents. Too often the word of such individuals is taken as truth simply because of their claims of involvement, but mostly these people talk out of their hats because they are not privy to inside information. As a result, rumours and accusations are easily spread and the debate quickly degenerates into an emotional, factless argument.

Controversy about the Arrow also lives on in cyberspace — numerous websites are devoted to the issue. As well, there are many projects afoot to build small- and full-scale replicas of the Arrow. There is even talk that the United States might return the Avrocar to Canada. One model has languished in a hangar at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., since it was delivered to the United States in the early 1960s, and the other rests atop a pedestal at Fort Eustis, Virginia. I have discussed the Avrocar project in detail in my book The UFO Files: The Canadian Connection Exposed. The CBC has aired a television movie called The Arrow that, though primarily a work of fiction, features many original flying sequences of the Arrow, beautifully restored.

In 1997, the Avro mole, a spy code-named Gideon, long thought to have died in the Soviet Union, reappeared in Canada. Gideon has been implicated in the Soviet attempt to steal Arrow manufacturing secrets. The exact roles he and the KGB played in the Arrow affair have yet to be determined. I urge anyone with new, legitimate information about Gideon and this covert episode to come forward.

There are also questions about the Arrow story that no one seems to ask. Why did several government officials remain silent about their involvement in the destruction of the Arrow, even though their names appear on the orders to blowtorch the aircraft into scrap? Why did all these people lie low, allowing John Diefenbaker to twist in the wind? These questions may never be answered completely because many of the people involved are dead and denial of involvement runs deep.

James Dow, in his 1979 book The Arrow, wrote of the alleged meeting between A.V. Roe president Crawford Gordon and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in September 1958. Dow states that this encounter with a drunken, rude Gordon pushed Diefenbaker to cancel. The only eyewitness to this event, according to Dow, was the Ottawa Journal’s Grattan O’Leary. He was in an adjoining room when he overheard this discussion. O’Leary saw Gordon exit the room and Diefenbaker come out immediately afterward. In his memoirs, Diefenbaker does not place much significance on this meeting.

Greig Stewart, in his 1998 book Arrow Through the Heart, describes a less volatile encounter between Diefenbaker and Gordon, but also maintains that the argument sealed the Arrow’s fate. But Stewart states that it was Member of Parliament John Pallett and not Grattan O’Leary who was in the next room. Unless the prime minister had more than one adjoining room at the time, one or both of these two stories is incorrect. The truth and significance of this meeting may lie only in Diefenbaker’s personal memoirs.

In the new appendix, supported by documentation, I finally establish the true costs of the Arrow program, and I have added intriguing information from former Minister of National Defence George Pearkes in interviews he gave to Dr. Reginald Roy of the University of Victoria in 1967 that are only now resurfacing.

The new information and documents I provide on the Arrow and all of the recent developments about the story are testimony to the strength of the ongoing controversy. I wish to thank the legion of readers who have made Storms of Controversy an overwhelming success. I would like to thank the staff of the Special Collections Branch of the University of Victoria, Chris Petter in particular, for allowing me to quote from the interviews between Pearkes and Roy; my editor, Jim Gifford; the staff at Stoddart; and for inspiration, my newborn daughter, Katia Marie.

Orleans, Ontario

May 1998

PREFACE TO THE SECOND

PAPERBACK EDITION

I would like to thank all those who have provided comments, both positive and negative, since the publication of Storms of Controversy in 1992. The response has given me the impetus to continue my efforts in search of what was happening behind the scenes in the Arrow story. It has also led me into unravelling the mystery and writing about the Avrocar, Avro’s flying saucer for the United States Air Force.

In 1993, I had a chance to experience first-hand the joys of cancellation. I had been sent to Italy in September for what was to be a four-year engineering assignment on the EH-101 helicopter program. The family was moved and the house sold. In November, of course, the program was cancelled courtesy of a political decision, and we were on our way back to Canada by December, some of our boxes not yet unpacked from the original move over there. It was not a pleasant experience.

After the dust settled, I was able to renew my work on the Arrow. I was surprised to learn that many of the myths I had destroyed were still being flaunted, but such is life. Perhaps the new material will put them to bed. And what is this new material?

I have uncovered various memoranda and briefing notes that shed new light on both the Jetliner and Arrow developments. Included is what I have come to call the smoking gun. This document should have been available in the mountain of material I had originally pored over, but either I had missed it or it simply was not there. The copy I did find was in a different area altogether and actually came to me via the good graces of serendipity. It finally puts many pieces of the puzzle together and names names.

In some of the correspondence that I received, I was asked if I ever found anything more on the one that got away. In fact, I have reviewed this matter and present some intriguing possibilities. Most people point to the photos of the destruction of the Arrow on the tarmac and note that they show five aircraft being demolished. While pictures are worth a thousand words, not all is what it seems.

Is the story finally over? No, there are more documents out there, but the problem, like before, is finding them and getting them declassified.

Ottawa

October 1996

PREFACE TO THE

FIRST EDITION

The story of the Avro Arrow is one of emotion, intrigue, excitement, happiness, sorrow, and anger, but most of all it is the story of tragedy. What began as an entire nation working together to achieve the impossible ended with the destruction of that achievement. Several books and articles have