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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 1926.PDF
FLIGHT, 28 August 1959 77 A ski-equipped DHC-2 Beaver for Wardair, an aggressive Quebec province air charter and air cargo operator A BROAD REVIEW OF A FATEFUL YEAR By JOHN O. HARBRON Canadian Aviation in 1959 [Toronto, August 18]T HOUGH much of Canada's aircraft industry has receiveda 3- to 4-year reprieve as a result of the award of contracts for the construction of the Lockheed F-104G Starfighterfor the R.C.A.F.'s overseas squadrons, the dark cloud that formed around the Dominion's aircraft makers following the terminationof the Avro CF-105 Arrow programme last February has far from lifted. What the industry has been through since the cancellationof the all-important Avro Arrow programme, as well as critical assessments made by the Canadian community against the pre-viously accepted high costs of air defence, have, in all probability, put a permanent damper on the expansion plans of military avia-tion in Canada on a scale anything like that of a few months ago. As far as the aircraft and aero-engine fabricators and theirexpectant sub-contractors are concerned, the Lockheed contract represents the last major government order for a manned aircraft.Indeed, in many ways, the 1,400-m.pJi. F-104G is not a manned aircraft so much as it is a manned missile, whose armament mustbe nuclear in nature and whose mission must be as swift as that of a pure missile. But this is not so disturbing to the industry asthe fact that the relatively known element of volume government orders to keep the industry alive is coming to an end and willnot be conceivably replaced by anything of equal stature or volume in the pure missile era. Internally, in the industry itself, the Lockheed contracts haveproduced squabbles of a type unknown before. The division of the prime contract between Toronto and Montreal was the causeof this. The Lockheed airframe contract goes to Canadair Ltd. in Montreal. The related aero-engine contract goes to OrendaEngines Ltd., A. V. Roe of Canada Ltd's engine subsidiary which almost went out of business when the Arrow contract suddenlyterminated. But while the Canadian Government clearly states that it is determined to obtain "reasonable regional distributionof the industrial effort" across a large nation to build the 200 Starfighters, the machinists' unions representing the still inactiveAvro Aircraft Co., A. V. Roe's airframe division, complained bitterly against "being left out in the cold" by the new CanadianGovernment contract. Thousands, left unemployed after the Arrow cancellation, have either gone home to Britain, to other jobsin the U.S.A., to non-aviation jobs in southern Ontario or are still looking for work. The great Avro aero-engineering team ofArrow days was not to be restored at the airframe division by the Canadian Government. Of prime interest to both the nation and the industry is theend of the "cost plus" structure which had often brought aircraft makers in Canada as much as 7 per cent to 12 per cent on top ofgovernment contracts for aircraft manufacture, overhaul and repair. Canada's Defence Production Minister made it clear thisweek that the "gravy train era" was gone for good and is now replaced by a "target-incentive-price" basis. Neither CanadairLtd. nor Orenda Engines Ltd. can spend more than the contract price and expect the Government to bail them out. The two com- panies, and presumably the numerous sub-contractors when theyare announced, will get one dollar to every three of any money saved from the price bid. Any extra production costs over thebids will have to be absorbed by the manufacturer. As far as most of the Canadian public was concerned, it wasabout time the aviation industry was placed on this basis. Since the demise of the costly Arrow, the Press, government representa-tives and members of Parliament have seriously questioned the way in which the money was poured into this fighter. "Avro costs[are] comparable with the Seaway" a leading Canadian newspaper stated over a year ago. Today, others ask if the $420 million tobe spent on the complete Lockheed F-104G programme, which will pay for the manufacture of 200 aeroplanes, is even justified.(Incidentally, this amount approximates the figure given for the development phase leading to the construction of the first twoArrows alone!) The huge amounts required to defend Canada in the air (andin the case of the Starfighters, which will replace the Sabre Mk 6 jets, in Canada's 12 overseas squadrons), perhaps are under moredirect fire than was the CF-105 programme. When a Canadian air division was first sent to Western Europe under the NATOTreaties of 1949, countries such as West Germany, France and Belgium, undergoing industrial recovery from the* war, weredefenceless in the air against the U.S.S.R. Today, all of them are not only prosperous, but two have been substantial customers forCanadian military aircraft. West Germany bought 225 Sabres from Canadair Ltd. Belgium bought a batch of CF-lOOs fromA. V. Roe a few years ago. France is now a capable and volume builder of her own jet fighters. A growing number of Canadiancritics, whose teeth were sharpened by the Arrow's end, ask why Canada must support these increasingly wealthy nations, nowcapable of building up their own air power? Perhaps a more effective tool against Soviet aggression in a changing age is toput defence money into larger aid donations to Commonwealth Colombo Plan nations in Asia, or make large grants to needy areasof Canada, where technological improvements are needed in a country just out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Add tothis the mounting criticism of Canada's continuing air defence policy whose increasing reliance on American sources of supplygive rise to concern about the nation's future independence as a military power, as well as the nagging criticism about the Mid-Canada detection line, which flared up in the country again this summer, and it is easy to understand why the move into theLockheed F-104G's manufacture under licence has not neces- sarily brought universal relief in Canada or inside the aviationindustry. Yet in spite of the vast change from a year ago (when optimismstill rested on the wings of the CF-105, supreme achievement of Canadian aviation skill) to today's ragged, uneasy pessimism, theLockheed award sets the pace for Canada's military aviation out- look for the early 1960s. The award was announced August 15,after bids from die country's three major aircraft manufacturers,
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