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Aviation History
1952
1952 - 1228.PDF
538 FLIGHT The main Avro Canada works, 15 miles from the centre of Toronto. The plant is on the far side of the main highway, with Malton Airport beyond. Part III. The Avro Air frame and Gas Turbine Plants at Malton By JAMES HAY STEVENS CANADA'S AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY IT would be idle to deny that A, V. Roe Canada, Ltd., has suffered from growing pains, but these pains have had rather more than their fair share of publicity. Never theless, no critic can avoid the manifest fact that in the CF-ioo with the Orenda engine Avro produced the first entirely Canadian aircraft; nor can it be denied that in the twin Malton plants near Toronto lies one of the greatest potentials of the Canadian aircraft industry. In 1942 a Government company, Victory Aircraft, Ltd., took over the operation of the aircraft factory which, owned by the National Steel Gar Corporation, Ltd., was to build Lancasters for the Department of Munitions and Supply. Arising out of their association in Lancaster manufacture, the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Co., Ltd. (now the Hawker Siddeley Group) acquired the Malton factory in 1945 and the present company was formed with Sir Roy Dobson at its head and a nucleus staff of about 300. A year later Avros took over another Government company, Turbo-Research, Ltd., which had been formed two years earlier to keep Canada in the picture with turbine development. Having, in a sense, a dual interest in the new concern, the Canadian Government supported it with development orders for the CF-ioo, Chinook and Orenda. Trans-Canada Airlines also assisted in the private-venture Jetliner, both with moral support and the wealth of their airline experience. Progress with the prototypes of all four projects was rapid, and first results could scarcely have been better. The Chinook ran in March, 1948, and the Orenda in March, 1949, while the Jetliner flew on August 10th, 1949, and the CF-ioo on January 19th, 1950. The performance of each was excellent: but the Jetliner was rather too early on the scene and could not be sold, finally being atrophied by re-armament; the first CF-ioo to be delivered to the R.C.A.F. suffered a secondary structural failure in the wing when subjected to higher g than that for which it was designed; and the pilot-production Orendas encountered teething troubles that had not affected the prototype. These difficulties threw production preparations out of gear, so that the firm was harshly criticized in the Canadian Press for the number of its employees—now about 6,000—and its negligible results. There is no doubt that the Government's eagerness to get an all-Canadian fighter into service was at least partly to blame for an over-zealous rush from prototype to production Now, however, after a visit by Sir Roy Dobson late last year, there has been a general reorganization and, in particular, the Aircraft and Gas Turbine Divisions have been separated under the guiding control of the president and general manager, Crawford Gordon, Jun. The aircraft division is managed by Fred T. Smye, with Edgar H. Atkin as technical director, James C. Floyd (the Jetliner designer) as chief engineer, and Dennis E. Wiseman as works manager. For the gas-turbine division, Thomas S. McCrae was imported from the Allison Division of General Motors, together with his personal assistant Fred W. Lucker, to organize production of the Orenda in the new plant. The Orenda's designer, Paul B. Dilworth, remiins chief engineer. The present plant at Malton has plenty of floor area (over 1,000,000 sq ft) but is to some extent broken up under different roofs. It is obvious, when walking through, that there has been some difficulty in accommodating the varied work in hand— reconditioning Lancasters, building prototype airframes, making, prototype turbines, and starting pre-production lines for the THE two previous articles in this series (April 4th and 18th' gave the general picture of the Canadian aircraft industry as it is today. The author now goes on to describe the activities of the three main constructors, Avro, Canadair, and de Havilland; the first of these three—taken in alphabetical order—is the subject of the present article. CF-ioo and the Orenda. There is a bay full of the large machine-tools—vertical millers, gang broaches, profile grinders and outsize lathes—for the making of gas-turbine components. In another bay is the tail end of the line of ten pre-production CF-ioos and the beginning of the real production line. When I visited Malton a couple of months ago, additional jigs for the main components were still being made in an adjoining bay. A great deal of space was occupied by the assembly stands and other work on the Orendas. When once this is finished and all engine-production activities transferred over the road to the new engine plant, the original factory will be laid out to take the CF-ioo work, with only a small area reserved for experimental gas turbine manufacture. The number of CF-ioos ordered is a secret; it seems likely that they will be used only by the R.C.A.F., who are expected to increase their order. One would imagine that, if this is the case, the factory represents further airframe manufacturing potential. It is, however, on the jet programme that Avro Canada is really concentrating. This is a joint venture with the Government, and the idea is to make the Orenda one of the major engines of the N.A.T.O. forces. The new factory, about a mile away from the old one, is a wonderful modern building. It is a vast rectangular structure, 440,000 sq ft in area, and completely windowless save for the offices on the north side. Except for these offices, also, it is entirely on one floor. The building is completely air- conditioned and artificially lit, so that working conditions will always be the same, summer or winter, day or night. At the southern end of the block are the production test-cells, furnaces and plant-maintenance buildings. As the factory was being completed this spring, the tool-room had started to operate and the first of the machine tools, large vertical millers, had arrived Assembly line for the CF-100, some of the ten pre-production models of which are seen here. On the right are wing jigs.
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