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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1188.PDF
.. .-^^-•^^^^^^^l^^^Swwwi^^^^^^^fe^B^^^^BjHlM^fe Canadian-built and Canadian-powered: a Canadair Sabre 5 over the company's Cartierville plant. The Canadian Industry... CANADAIR, LTD. A SUCCESSOR in 1942 to the Canadian Vickers company,Canadair, Ltd., passed from Government ownership to that of the Electric Boat Company of New York in 1947, and is nowa subsidiary company of the American General Dynamics Cor- poration. Other companies in this powerful American group,chaired by Mr. John Jay Hopkins, are the Electric Boat Company, Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation, and Stromberg Carl-son. Over the past year, Canadair's main development effort has been concentrated on the CL-28 maritime reconnaissance versionof the Bristol Britannia, while Sabre and Silver Star production has continued and additional production—of rear fuselages for theGrumman CS2F-1—has begun. Canadair's facilities at Cartierville Airport, Montreal, nowoccupy 2,500,000 sq ft of covered area. In Plant 1, the largest, the assembly line for the CL-28. is being laid down, and it is here thatthe main machine and press shops are located. Plant 2, formerly belonging to Norduyn Aviation, houses the Sabre and T-33assembly lines, and a number of activities eventually to be moved to the new tooling block. The remaining unit, Plant 4 (Plant 3 isnow defunct) is used for repair, overhaul and maintenance work, and also research and development work on the "Velvet Glove"air-to-air missile project. Over 1,300 Sabres have been built by Canadair, the most recent200 of which have been the Mark 6 version fitted with Orenda 14s. As a result of scientific production-planning, the 1,000thSabre required only 8.6 of the man-hours needed for the first production machine. The rate of production has now been cutback from two to one per day, with approximately 200 more of these machines to be produced. Most of these will incorporatea revised leading-edge which will be in effect a combination of the slatted and "solid" types. Wheel-retraction and other checks being carried out on a Sabre 6 at Cartierville, where more than 7,300 Sabres have been produced. With 500 of an order for 575 T-33 Silver Stars completed, theT-33 programme is at present tailing off. About five per month will be produced for the next 15 months (compared with a peakrate of two per day). No Government decision has yet been made concerning successors to the Sabre and the T-33, although thereported chances of the North American F-100 Super Sabre, the Convair F-102 and the Lockheed F-104 in the former class havewaxed and waned continually over the past year. The need to reduce personnel numbers drastically during thepresent "cut-back" period, before the CL-28 programme of pro- duction gets under way, has been avoided by the sub-contractfrom de Havilland for the manufacture of at least 100 complete rear fuselages for the Grumman CS2F-1. The first of these unitshas already been completed. The present number of people employed at Canadair is approximately 8,000. The initial R.C.A.F. order for the CL-28 is for 13 machines,the first of which should be delivered during 1957, with an ex- pected increase of the order to 50. Compared with the originalBristol Britannia, Canadair's maritime reconnaissance version in- corporates a high proportion of new or substantially modifiedfeatures, particularly in the lengthened unpressurized fuselage. Unchanged, except for U.S. standardization, are the wings, tailunit, landing gear and flight controls. The wooden mock-up of the CL-28 has been completed and hasbeen approved by the R.C.A.F. Tooling is well advanced, and manufacture of wing skin panels, wing spar caps, inner-wingspar-webs and other components has begun. It has been reported that, since the start of work in April 1954, it is taking some 400engineers 18 months to get the new machine—Canada's largest— "into the plant." Three months were spent in preparing for theproject and another nine months in "Americanizing" all wing and tail-surface structural drawings. The whole aircraft is to be builtby Canadair with the exception of the undercarriage (Jarry Hydraulics, Montreal) and the Wright Turbo-Compound engines. Although the licence agreement with Bristols does not includecivil Britannias, the Canadair company is engaged at present in writing a specification for a military transport version of theCL-28 Britannia. During the last year, the two-storey building housing theexperimental engineering laboratory, described in our last Commonwealth Industry review, has been completed. A further$1,300,000 addition—a much larger building of more than 170,000 sq ft—is now nearing completion at Plant 1, and in it will belocated the tooling department. Consisting of a main floor and a mezzanine, this building (No. 119) will house a new foundry,pattern shop, template shop and jig shop, and will provide quarters for clerical staff for production control, tool design and planning. Under John Jay Hopkins, chairman and managing director, theexecutive head of Canadair is J. G. Notman, president and general manager. F. Pace, Jr., and L. B. Richardson are vice-chairmen ofthe board; vice-presidents in charge of manufacturing, engineer- ing and sales are R. A. Neale, W. K. Ebel and P. H. Redpath;while J. F. Tooley is vice-president and comptroller.
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