When the tories got in, you mean .... the Arrow was a fighter, could have been made into a fighter-bomber maybe but it didn't have the range to threaten Russia, what happened was it had the performance to threaten Boeing
Remember Diefenbaker et al didn't cancel the programme right off, first they tried for some foreign [read 'US'] sales .... they had sold a lot of the CF-100 into Europe to cut development cost, AV Roe knew they could do the same or better with the Arrow .... and they certainly could have, if Dief had not buckled to pressure from the US, who wanted to sell the Bomarc .... which had even less range than the Arrow, less control, zero reusability, and then turned out to be nuclear-tipped, which wasn't in the original deal at all ... they did try for a few months to sell the Arrow though, then caved, and scrapped everything
14,000 direct jobs, poof ... 9,000 at Malton alone, lost along with a capitulation of sovereignty ... plus we lost one of the very top aerospace industries in the world ... and we didn't lose all this to the russians |
