KINGSTON—The quest to find nine invaluable pieces of Canadian aerospace history took a controversial step forward as two Canadian Forces warships joined the underwater hunt for Avro Arrow models lying in Lake Ontario.
It's the first government foray into an ongoing search by several groups for the 1/8-scale models of the fabled plane. The models were crashed into the lake in the 1950s during production tests for what would become the only Canadian-made supersonic fighter jet.
Yesterday, two navy ships on regular training missions in the Great Lakes, the HMCS Glace Bay and the HMCS Kingston, used sonar to scan the lake bottom for any signs of the models.
They will then use a remote controlled submersible vehicle called the Phantom to investigate likely targets and to relay live camera images.
Capt. Paul Doucette, an Armed Forces spokesperson, said they found nothing on the first day of the three-day exercise. He admitted that the "chances of finding anything were very, very remote."
"It's like searching for a needle in a haystack. (The models) have been there for quite some time. All sorts of things could have happened to them."
The Arrow, with its needle nose, swept wings and huge air intakes was the world's fastest and most advanced fighter when it made its debut on Oct. 4, 1957.
But the newly elected Deifenbaker government cancelled the costly program in 1959 and ordered all 11 existing planes, five in flying condition — as well as all traces of the program — destroyed, for reasons that remain controversial to this day.
Bill Coyle, 72, who was an aeronautical engineer with A.V. Roe in Malton when the company developed the long-range fighter for the RCAF to intercept Russian bombers over Canada's north, asked the military to join the search.
"There's quite a bit of Canadian pride in that. (The Arrow) was years ahead of its time," said Coyle, patron of the Aerospace Heritage Foundation of Canada in Toronto.
"The name said it all. It flew like a great white arrow" on test flights over Toronto, Coyle said, even breaking the sound barrier over the city with a thunderous roar, something planes are not permitted to do today.
The models, three metres long and two metres wide, were fired from Point Petre, a small peninsula west of Kingston between 1954 and 1957. They carried on-board sensors that transmitted flight data and were also filmed from shore to fine-tune the plane's aerodynamics.
Some of the other search groups are unhappy about the navy's involvement although, no matter who finds them, the parts will inevitably end up in a museum.
Andrew Hibbert, president of Arrow Recovery Canada in London, Ont., called for the warships to wait until his search crew, which is scouring the same area, has finished.
"Our only beef with the navy is if they are scanning the area based on information they have gotten from our Web site," after years of research, he said.
"Up until this year, they had no interest."
But Coyle, who provided the navy with information, laughed at the idea that his group had taken material from anyone else, given that many of his members worked on the project for A.V. Roe.
He said his group bought the lost models from the Canadian government a few years ago with the understanding that if recovered, they would be donated to museums.
