AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 236 / 305

Plate 236 of 305 · Cold War · Supersonic all-weather interceptor

Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow Mk 2

Arrow Mk 2 RL-206 (25206), painted as RL-206, RCAF serial 25206, the first Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow Mk 2 and the first Arrow fitted with Orenda Iroquois engines, completed at Malton, Ontario, but never flown before the programme was cancelled in February 1959; only its nose section survives, at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa, and the model shows the whole aircraft as it would have stood on the ramp: a two-seat supersonic all-weather interceptor with a long slender nose and probe, tandem cockpits under a low canopy with small windows, raked side intakes with splitter plates, a high-mounted thin delta wing with slight anhedral and a dog-tooth in the leading edge, no tailplane, a large swept fin, two jet nozzles side by side in the tail and a very tall tricycle undercarriage with tandem-wheeled main legs: gloss white overall with a black radome, black intake lips and splitter plates, ‘RL’, a maple-leaf roundel and ‘206’ on the duct sides, maple-leaf roundels on the wings, a natural-metal and black dielectric strip along the spine, and the serial ‘25206’ above a red and blue fin flash, as photographs of RL-206’s surviving nose and of the other Arrows at Malton show (no Arrow is preserved whole; shape from an airwar.ru three-view scaled to the published span; the fin, spine and wing markings are copied from photographs of RL-201 and the underwing roundels follow period Avro artwork).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as RL-206, RCAF serial 25206, the first Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow Mk 2 and the first Arrow fitted with Orenda Iroquois engines, completed at Malton, Ontario, but never flown before the programme was cancelled in February 1959; only its nose section survives, at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa, and the model shows the whole aircraft as it would have stood on the ramp: a two-seat supersonic all-weather interceptor with a long slender nose and probe, tandem cockpits under a low canopy with small windows, raked side intakes with splitter plates, a high-mounted thin delta wing with slight anhedral and a dog-tooth in the leading edge, no tailplane, a large swept fin, two jet nozzles side by side in the tail and a very tall tricycle undercarriage with tandem-wheeled main legs: gloss white overall with a black radome, black intake lips and splitter plates, ‘RL’, a maple-leaf roundel and ‘206’ on the duct sides, maple-leaf roundels on the wings, a natural-metal and black dielectric strip along the spine, and the serial ‘25206’ above a red and blue fin flash, as photographs of RL-206’s surviving nose and of the other Arrows at Malton show (no Arrow is preserved whole; shape from an airwar.ru three-view scaled to the published span; the fin, spine and wing markings are copied from photographs of RL-201 and the underwing roundels follow period Avro artwork). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.0 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Arrow 1 & Arrow 2); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Arrow Mk 2 RL-206 (25206) modelled here.

History

The CF-105 Arrow Mk 2

In the early 1950s the Royal Canadian Air Force was already looking beyond its CF-100 Canuck to an interceptor that could meet Soviet jet bombers far out over the Arctic, at high altitude and close to twice the speed of sound. No foreign aircraft would do, so in 1953 Avro Canada at Malton, near Toronto, was given the job. Its design, the CF-105, was a large two-seat delta with a thin, high-mounted wing, long-legged undercarriage folding into it, side intakes feeding two engines in the rear fuselage, and fly-by-wire controls with artificial feel, advanced for its day.

The Arrow was built straight from production tooling, without hand-built prototypes. The first, RL-201, was rolled out on 4 October 1957, the day Sputnik 1 was launched, and Avro’s chief development pilot Janusz ‘Jan’ Żurakowski flew it on 25 March 1958. Five Arrow Mk 1s, powered by American Pratt & Whitney J75s as a stopgap, flew in the following months and reached Mach 1.98 in testing. The Arrow Mk 2 was to have Orenda’s own Iroquois engine, and the first of them, RL-206, was complete and nearly ready to fly early in 1959.

Costs had risen steeply, and missiles were thought likely to replace manned interceptors. On 20 February 1959 the government of John Diefenbaker cancelled the Arrow and the Iroquois, and thousands of Avro and Orenda workers were laid off that day. The aircraft that had flown, RL-206 and those on the production line were cut up, and a group of Avro engineers went on to NASA’s manned spaceflight programme. Only RL-206’s nose and a few parts survive, in Ottawa; none is in a UK museum.

This airframe

Arrow Mk 2 RL-206 (25206)

25206The airframe modelled

RL-206, RCAF serial 25206, was the sixth Arrow built and the first Mk 2, with Orenda Iroquois engines in place of the J75s of the five Mk 1s. It was complete but had not flown when the programme was cancelled in February 1959, and it was cut up with the rest. Its nose section was saved, used for a time by the RCAF Institute of Aviation Medicine in Toronto, and is now at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa. The model shows RL-206 whole, as it would have stood on the ramp at Malton: gloss white overall with a black radome, black intake lips and splitter plates, and ‘RL’, a maple-leaf roundel and ‘206’ on the duct sides, as the surviving nose shows. The roundels above the wings, the natural-metal and black strip along the spine, the dark fin tip and the serial above a red and blue fin flash are copied from photographs of RL-201 and the other Arrows, and the roundels under the wings follow period Avro artwork. Its shape comes from a three-view drawing scaled to the published span, and the long nose probe is extra to the published length.

Where to see one

Not on charge

No complete Arrow survives. The nose of Arrow 2 RL-206 (25206) is at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa.

All 305 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.