Avro Arrow Mystery Deepens With UK Discovery...

[Coddfish]

From CTV News:

Josh Visser, CTVNews.ca Staff

Date: Sunday Dec. 18, 2011 6:26 AM ET

The discovery of an intact ejection seat from Canada's legendary Avro Arrow is fuelling a half-century-old conspiracy theory that one of the purportedly destroyed jets was smuggled to safety.

The Avro Arrow program was infamously shut down by then-Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker in 1959. All related materials, from the prototype jets right down to the blueprints, were ordered destroyed.

The ejection seat was discovered in the hands of a private collector in the U.K., and has been tracked back to aviation museum closed during the 1970s.

So, how did the seat from an Arrow make its way to England?

Chris Wilson, the managing director of Jet Art Aviation, a British company that sells aircraft collectibles, suggests his discovery of the seat is the latest piece of evidence to suggest one Arrow escaped from Canada.

The seat, currently on sale on eBay for $250,000, is believed to be the matched pair to a second Arrow seat that Wilson found in 2008 and was sold to the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto. The Arrow had a front pilot seat and a rear navigator seat.

"The chances of finding one in the first place is more or less a miracle, it's a holy grail aircraft item. The chances of finding two, is just ridiculous, really," Wilson said in a telephone conversation from Yorkshire, England.

"That got me thinking that the only way a pair of seats could have come to the U.K. like that in flown condition is if an aircraft came over here."

The ejection seats have been confirmed to have been from the Arrow program by Martin-Baker, the world's leading ejection seat manufacturer, according to a letter on Jet Art Aviation's website. The letter is signed by Martin-Baker's head of business development Andrew Martin and dated Oct. 13, 2011. (Calls to Martin were not answered as of press time.)

The company Martin-Baker had a licensed facility in Collingwood, Ont. during the 1950s and was building the seats for the program.

The data plate on the seat lists its manufacturing date as Sept. 15, 1958.

"There's no question whatsoever that this seat comes from an Avro Arrow," Wilson said adamantly. "It's 100 per cent an Arrow seat."

He added that probably less than 20 ejection seats in total came off the production line for the Arrow.

Wilson is also confident that the seat he is selling came from an Arrow that saw significant time in the sky.

"This is clearly a used, flown seat," he said. "It saw a 100-plus, maybe as many as a 1,000 flying hours."

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Avro Arrow mystery deepens with U.K. discovery | CTV News

[sperminator]

do you think there will ever be a modern plane made in canada?

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

do you think there will ever be a modern plane made in canada?

I think the idea that the Avro was a perfect plane is romantacised. I saw the replica at the Air and Space Museum and spoke with a former pilot and he said it was not without problems. The cockpit had a hydraulic opening system and no capability to be blown off in an emergency. Also the missle launcher needed to be dropped before being fired -- a sever disadvantage in a firefight.

And there are plenty of modern planes built in Canada. Most of the Air Canada Jazz fleet is built by Bombardier.

[sperminator]

I think the idea that the Avro was a perfect plane is romantacised. I saw the replica at the Air and Space Museum and spoke with a former pilot and he said it was not without problems. The cockpit had a hydraulic opening system and no capability to be blown off in an emergency. Also the missle launcher needed to be dropped before being fired -- a sever disadvantage in a firefight.

And there are plenty of modern planes built in Canada. Most of the Air Canada Jazz fleet is built by Bombardier.

i didn't know that. i assumed that the planes were made in china or some other place where it is cheaper.

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

i didn't know that. i assumed that the planes were made in china or some other place where it is cheaper.

They had 5 or 6 prototypes which I think were made here. In the 60s and 70s, things were not made in China as they are today. Also I don't think military aircraft is even made in China today for obvious reasons.

[sperminator]

They had 5 or 6 prototypes which I think were made here. In the 60s and 70s, things were not made in China as they are today. Also I don't think military aircraft is even made in China today for obvious reasons.

yeah, planes would be coming down in droves.