A number of years later I represented a commercial pilot who, like myself, was ex-Air Force. He related a tale about having to deliver a parcel to Ottawa’s Rockliffe Air Force base via a Twin Otter, I believe, one Christmas Eve in the late 60′s. The base was all but deserted with personnel released for Christmas leave. So he wound up in the Officer’s Mess with the base commander and the two proceeded to get loaded.

At one point the commander told the young pilot to get his coat on and follow him. They marched out to one of the three wooden hangars. The commander told the young pilot to pace off the length of the hangar on the outside. Then he took him inside and again had him pace off the length of the hangar. There was a difference of some 15-feet, a false wall. The commander then told this young pilot behind that wall was a crated Avro Arrow but he was never to speak of it again if he valued his career. If the Arrow was behind a false wall as claimed the young pilot saw nothing of it. He only knew what he was told and the fact that there was a false wall.

If the general was lying to me about a surviving Arrow, it was the first time he lied to me and we did exchange an awful lot of information during that period. If my client subsequently lied to me I can’t imagine why because he had nothing to gain from it. But that’s all I have, hearsay.

Still it’s hard to imagine anyone resurrecting the Arrow today. It was a huge airframe designed to accommodate two equally massive Orenda engines for long-range, high-speed interception, with nuclear-tipped missiles, of squadrons of attacking Soviet bombers. It was a real Cold War interceptor. It was never a dogfighter or a strike fighter. It was nothing like the multi-role warplane we need today when we no longer field two or three types of aircraft.

So, picking the F-35 really means we’re picking a fighter that probably can’t fly to the extent of our borders up north, which is probably ok from the US’s point of view vis a vis Canadian sovereignty.