Avro Canada


Avro Canada, officially A. V. Roe Canada Limited, was a Canadian aircraft manufacturing company that existed from 1945 to 1962. It was founded in 1945 as an aircraft plant and within 13 years became the third-largest company in Canada, and one of the 100 largest companies in the world, directly employing over 50,000 people. Avro Canada was best known for the CF-105 Arrow, but it was an integrated company with diverse holdings.
Following the cancellation of the CF-105 Arrow the company ceased operations in 1962.

A.V. Roe Canada

Origins

During World War II, Victory Aircraft in Malton, Ontario, was Canada's largest aircraft manufacturer. Prior to 1939, as a part of National Steel Car of Hamilton, the concern was one of a number of "shadow factories" set up in Canada to produce British aircraft designs far out of range of enemy attack. National Steel Car produced Avro Anson trainers, Handley Page Hampden bombers, Hawker Hurricane fighters and Westland Lysander army cooperation aircraft. National Steel Car Corporation of Malton, Ontario was formed in 1938 and renamed Victory Aircraft in 1942 when the Canadian government took over ownership and management of the main plant. During World War II, Victory Aircraft built Avro aircraft: 3,197 Anson trainers, 430 Lancaster bombers, six Lancastrian, one Lincoln bomber and one York transport.

Avro Canada

In 1944, an Advisory Committee on Aircraft Manufacture was established by the Canadian government. The Canadian Director of Aircraft Production wrote to Minister of Munitions and Supply C. D. Howe in 1944 to express that the establishment of a Canadian aircraft industry was of the "utmost importance to Canada", while UK-based Avro also established a company in 1944 searching for post-war opportunities. Bob Leckie of the Royal Canadian Air Force was a strong advocate, over many years, for a wholly domestic "end-to-end" industry that would design and build aircraft in Canada. However, according to Avro's Roy Dobson, the Department of National Defence gave "a cold reception" to doing anything more ambitious than the fabrication and assembly of aircraft designs and engines licensed from other companies.
Howe, as Minister of Reconstruction and Minister of Munitions and Supply, brokered a deal with Hawker Siddeley to take over the Victory Aircraft plant in 1945, with Frederick T. Smye hired by Hawker Siddeley's Roy Dobson as its first employee. Smye, born in Hamilton, Ontario, had risen through the ranks of the government's departments overseeing wartime aircraft production to become Assistant General Manager of Federal Aircraft Limited, the Crown Corporation managing production of the Avro Anson at the National Steel Car/Victory Aircraft plant.
In 1945, the UK-based Hawker Siddeley purchased Victory Aircraft from the Canadian government, creating A.V. Roe Canada Ltd. as the wholly owned Canadian branch of its aircraft manufacturing subsidiary, UK-based A.V. Roe and Company. Avro Canada began operations in the former Victory plant. Avro Aircraft, their first division, turned to the repair and servicing of a number of World War II era aircraft, including Hawker Sea Fury fighters, North American B-25 Mitchell and Avro Lancaster bombers. From the outset, the company invested in research and development and embarked on an ambitious design program with a jet engine and a jet-powered fighter and airliner on the drawing boards.

Expansion and diversification

A.V. Roe Canada was restructured in 1954 as a holding company with two aviation subsidiaries: Avro Aircraft. and Orenda Engines, which began operating under these names on 1 January 1955. Each company's facilities were located across from each other in a complex at the perimeter of Malton Airport. The total labour force of both aviation companies reached 15,000 in 1958.
During the same period, with Crawford Gordon as president, A.V. Roe Canada purchased a number of companies, including Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation, Canadian Car and Foundry, and Canadian Steel Improvement. By 1958, A. V. Roe Canada Ltd. was an industrial giant with over 50,000 employees in a far-flung empire of 44 companies involved in coal mining, steel making, railway rolling stock, aircraft and aero-engine manufacturing, as well as computers and electronics. In 1956 the companies generated 45% of the revenue of the Hawker Siddeley Group. In 1958, annual sales revenue was approximately $450 million, ranking A.V. Roe Canada as the third largest corporation in Canada by capitalization. By the time of the cancellation of the Arrow and Iroquois, aircraft-related production amounted to approximately 40% of the company's activities with 60% industrial and commercial.
In 1956, 500,000 shares were issued to the public at a total value of $8 million. By 1958, 48% of the shares of A.V. Roe Canada were publicly traded on the stock exchange. Although controlled and largely owned by UK-based Hawker Siddeley Group, all profits from A.V. Roe Canada were retained within the company to fund development and growth. Management of the Canadian companies remained in Canadian hands.

Management team

  • Fred Smye served as director of Canadian Aircraft Production during World War II, in 1944 joined Federal Aircraft in Montreal. When Hawker Siddeley purchased Victory Aircraft in 1945, Smye became the first employee of A.V. Roe Canada and later that year he became assistant general manager of Avro Aircraft. He later served as president of Canadian Applied Research and Canadian Steel Improvement.
  • Crawford Gordon left the Department of Defence Production in 1951 to take over as President and General Manager of A. V. Roe Canada to assist with problems in development and production of the Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck. Gordon oversaw Avro Canada's restructuring and expansion during the 1950s into the third largest corporation in Canada.

    Avro Canada aircraft

CF-100 Canuck

In 1946, A.V. Roe Canada's next design, the Avro XC-100, Canada's first jet fighter, started at the end of the era of propeller-driven aircraft and the beginning of the jet age. Although the design of the large, jet-powered all-weather interceptor, renamed the CF-100 Canuck, was largely complete by the next year, the factory was not tooled for production until late 1948 due to ongoing repair and maintenance contracts. The CF-100 would have a long gestation period before finally entering RCAF service in 1952, initially with the Mk 2 and Mk 3 variants.
The CF-100 Canuck operated under NORAD to protect airspace from Soviet threats such as nuclear-armed bombers during all weather and day/night conditions. Although not designed for speeds over Mach 0.85, it was taken supersonic during a dive by test pilot Janusz Żurakowski in December 1952.
A small number of CF-100s served with the RCAF until 1981 in reconnaissance, training and electronic warfare roles. In its lifetime, a total of 692 CF-100s of different variants, including 53 aircraft for the Belgian Air Force, were produced.

C102 Jetliner

Work was also underway on a jet-powered civilian short- to medium-range transport known as the C102 Jetliner. It nearly became the first jet transport in the world when it first flew in August 1949, a mere 13 days following the first flight of the de Havilland Comet. The Jetliner represented a new type of regional jet airliner that would not see comparable designs until the late 1950s. An aggressive marketing campaign was directed at U.S. airlines and the USAF.
When the Rolls-Royce Avon AJ-65 engine was withdrawn from foreign markets by the British government, the design was modified to take four Derwent engines of higher weight and lower performance. The resulting design could no longer meet the operating range requirement of Trans-Canada Airlines. The sales prospects of the Jetliner floundered after the launch customer TCA withdrew from consideration of the four-engine variant. The American industrialist Howard Hughes even offered to start production under license.
The company was still attempting to get the CF-100 into production at the time and, consequently, the Canadian government cancelled any further work on the C102 due to Korean War priorities: C. D. Howe demanded the project be stopped to increase production of the CF-100, so the second C-102 prototype was scrapped in the plant in 1951, with the first relegated to photographic duties in the Flight Test Department. After a lengthy career as a camera platform and company "hack", CF-EJD-X was broken up in 1956. The nose section now resides in the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa.

CF-103

In 1951, during production of the CF-100 Canuck, a design was explored for a revised version with swept wings and tail modifications. Known as the CF-103, it offered transonic performance with supersonic abilities in a dive. However, the basic CF-100 continued to improve through this period, and the advantages of the new design were greatly eroded. It was considered an interim aircraft between the CF-100 and the more advanced C-104 project, and as such development did not progress beyond creation of a full-size wooden mock-up and separate cockpit.

C104 Advanced Fighter

By 1950, several design proposals for a supersonic interceptor were explored which included versions with swept wings, a tail-less delta wing, side-body engine intakes, in-nose engine intakes, turbine engines and rocket engines, and combinations of several.
In 1952, two versions of a design for a delta-wing fighter known as C104 were submitted to the Royal Canadian Air Force: the single engine C104/4 and twin-engined C104/2. The designs were otherwise similar, using a low-mounted delta-wing; the primary advantages of the C104/2 were a larger overall size which offered a much larger internal weapons bay and gave twin-engine reliability. Subsequent discussions between the RCAF and Avro examined a wide range of alternatives for a supersonic interceptor, culminating in RCAF "Specification AIR 7-3" in April 1953. Avro's response became the CF-105.