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Episode 5 - Flying into a Bunker (Part 3)
30 Plays3 months ago
Did you know that Canada once had the ability to manufacturer planes that were rather cool and technologically advanced for their time? How about how we decided that storing nuclear weapons and building bunkers was a better option than building a plane?
This is the last of a three part series! Listen to parts one and two before you get to this episode!
Also, we know that we screwed up and said Q-series instead of C-series.
Contact us:
[email protected]
This episode's news:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bear-rossland-home-invasion-wildlife-survival-black-bear-1.7225763
Bobby Broccoli video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBGPfR21Zvo
Heritage Minute:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/avro-arrow
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
So I was listening to the CBC as I usually do in the morning and was listening to radio one and I'm going to play a clip for you. So yesterday we brought a new companion into the studio for a quick chat about hockey and politics. Her name is Ada. Have a listen. Hi, Ada. How's it going? Just got my morning coffee. How about you? Did you catch that crazy Canucks game last night? We did catch the Crazy Canucks game last night. um The come from behind win. I mean, crazy is a way to put it. how did What did you think of it? Oh man, I was on the edge of my seat. I'm still buzzing from it.
00:00:38
Speaker
Okay, so the CDC did a whole special where they got chat GPT to talk about a Canucks game against the Oilers, who they eventually lost to, and then had an AI voice read out ah whole text can over the whole I can't remember the specifics, but that's not what I was sharing. That was just kind of to give you the preamble. This is actually what I wanted to share with you. Yeah, I mean scamming people is one way to do it, but there's all sorts of other implications too. I thought I was being cute about a month ago and I used chat GPT to write a birthday poem for my mom and then I used my voice clone to record it and then I sent it to her as an attachment on the text message and didn't hear back for a couple days and I was like, hey mom, what'd you think of my deep fake birthday greeting? And she looked at me and her face just dropped.
00:01:26
Speaker
She started crying and she's like, what kind of world do I even live in? I can't tell the sound of my own son's voice. oh my god It was completely disorienting for her. I really hadn't thought it all the way through. I mean, imagine being you know our folks age and having all this technology change around us, not really knowing how to make sense of things. The next thing you know, you're getting birthday poetry from your son's robot. Yep. Nice, nice. Yeah. so I'm not going to name him because, um, I have a connection to him, so I don't feel like specifically calling him out, but you have to like, this is the thing about these AI bros. They're all unimaginative. And this guy, like this guy is probably the worst. Like I'll, I'll be honest. Like I struggle with, um, trying to write birthday cards or any sort of cards in general, because like, it's a really personal thing, right? And you're trying to say something that comes from the heart and.
00:02:21
Speaker
Like, there's a lot of effort that that's required in writing these cards, right? And meanwhile, this douchebag here is, I'm going to go and give a card to my mom with a voice that a computer generated that's supposed to sound like me. Hopes she likes it. See, this is why I have my policy of for, like, my mom's birthday and for Mother's Day. I send her ah jack shit.
00:02:47
Speaker
I love my mom. I wouldn't do this. to I wouldn't do that to her. Well, like I see her and we'd like talk and stuff like what I'm there and visiting with her and present. I just I don't I don't see the need of going through like the the the going through the ritual and like going through the ritual of gift giving seems even further cheap and when you're not even going to actually put in the fucking effort. So you don't hate your mother to the point where you would, hold on a second, let me dial this back a bit here.
00:03:20
Speaker
You don't hate your mother enough to go and send her a chat GPT card, I guess. I don't hate my mom at all. I just prefer to engage sincerely with people while I'm physically there. Yeah, that's fair. I, I could not like, I think anyone who knows myself or anyone that knows you will know that our stance on AI is very much. a Oh, I actually have something for you. Are you gonna send me a DM with something in it? Yes. I saw this on Mastodon the other day. Actually wait, I think I saw it today. Yeah, I saw it today.
00:03:55
Speaker
AI accidentally made me believe in the concept of a human soul by showing me what art looks like. Jesus Christ. Let me say, art is like without it. That is, that fucking nails, like I've had people tell me, it's like, oh, you know, like AI art has managed to make me like an artist. And it's like, you know, like, no, it hasn't like, I'm doing dance these days, right? I'm actually doing a form of art, which is dancing. And I suck at it, but you know what? I'm putting the effort in to become a better dancer. um If somebody wants to become a better player at like, I don't know, like to me, AI art is no different than having an aimbot in Counter-Strike.
00:04:37
Speaker
Well, i the way I look at it is a little bit more like what AI art allows you to do is create art objects, but that's not what art is. like e you're you're yourre The tries to encapsulate some experience in an art object, and that art object is then perceived by people who then have an art moment. And that that's the art, that transaction process. So just having a thing that mindlessly spits out, like literally mindlessly spits out art objects, doesn't actually really further that. It doesn't, it doesn't help you make more art. It just creates more art objects. So like, by cheaper than making them these disposable things, you're not
00:05:27
Speaker
like really able to like create that connection of like artist message medium object like observer like you're you're you're cutting out an entire half of that pipeline i think i think that's that's what that that person is feeling yeah it's fair well do you want to go make art and start our show i do want to go make art and start our show
00:05:59
Speaker
Welcome to the Schwinnigan Moments podcast. My name is Heather. I use she or they pronouns. My name is Tamarack. I use they them or it it's pronouns. Do you know what today is? ah Today is June 6th. It is. It's also the 80th anniversary of D-Day. ah You mean that that massive anti-fascist demonstration that we that was performed in the beaches of Normandy? Yes. Actually, the really funny thing is about that is ah Nigel Farage made an appearance at Normandy today, and I was like, why are you there? You're on the side that lost. By the way, that was not my joke in the first place, but I'm borrowing it. But yeah, it's like um it's kind of topical for this episode. So we're going to finally finish talking about
00:06:47
Speaker
the goddamn afro arrow, but hell yeah, we're going to do the news first.
00:06:57
Speaker
Okay, I brought to you a little story out of Rossland, BC that is perhaps the most Rossland, BC thing you have ever heard. Rossland has a has like one of my favorite pizza joints in the world. like They have one location in Rossland and they also have one location in Whistler. I've never actually been to Rossland. I'm mildly biased against it because I had a friend who grew up in Rossland who nonstop trash docked it. That's fair. i stayed that I've stayed there before ah ah when I was traveling to Spokane.
00:07:30
Speaker
So have you ever had this fear of like a wild animal creeping inside your tent? Yes, I go camping and yes it's happened. ah Not into my tent but I've definitely heard what I was pretty certain was either a deer or um something similar sized. Okay, have you ever had a fear of a wild animal entering your house? It's happened to me twice. Has it ever been a bear? Uh, I've had bears in my house, but not the ones that I would be concerned about. Well, a... Russelline mother, her daughter, and her daughter's friends, had an unexpected, uh, unexpected and uninvited guess to her daughter's sleepover with her friends. Uh, of a goddamn bear. We're talking to like a brown bear, or no, no, brown bear would be bad, a black bear, I hope. The article that I have didn't state? Oh, that's comforting.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah. So, Catherine Rice ah said she never actually saw the bear entering the home, but she heard noises, kind of of rummaging, and basically just went straight to her daughter's room, woke them up, told them what was happening, and they fucking hid, which is the correct thing to do. Unless you have bear spray, a shotgun, and nerves of steel, you're not gonna win. ah Yes, ideally two out of those three things. On the subject of bear spray, and this is a side note, um so I go hiking pretty regularly. As do I. Yes. And I was taking my backpack that I normally use for hiking with me to go do some stuff and that resulted in me taking the train.
00:09:12
Speaker
And I left my apartment and went to go grab my water bottle and went for the wrong side and actually grasped a bottle that didn't seem correct. And it turned out it was my bear spray. And I was like, oh, cool. I was like ba just at the gates to the station and I was about to board it with, you know, bear spray. Not a good idea. Yeah, I always keep that holster like very intentionally located. Yeah, well in this case I always keep it in a water bottle pack because it's the easiest place for me to keep it and grab it on a moment's notice. Yeah, for me, I i don't make that mistake because I use a 12-gauge launcher because sometimes I use a slightly more multi-purpose launcher for for bear deterrents. Did anyone get injured and what happened to the bear?
00:09:57
Speaker
No one got injured. They hid. They stayed in place in the bedroom. Bears are not interested in humans. They're interested in what humans have. Yeah, generally not. They they tend not to like predate on humans. It takes a really desperate bear, and I've been hiking for hiking and backpacking for a large number of years. I have never encountered one, nor have I heard any like credible stories of what was guaranteed a predation type of attack. It's very rare. They mostly just want your stuff. um Unless, so yeah unless you're Timothy Treadwell, do you know who Timothy Treadwell is? Uh, the name sounds familiar. He was the one that was, um, killed while hiking out in, um, I want to say like, Oh, somewhere in Alaska. I want it like not far. Oh, the the grizzly, but the grizzly guy. Yeah. Who's a death was recorded on a camcorder that somehow started recording from inside of a duffel bag.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that's a... Was him and his girlfriend that were murdered by the bears? Yes. That story is wild and I would love to talk about it at some point, but it's not a Canadian story. It's an Alaskan story. Yeah. ah Anyway, ah they sheltered a place. Bears weren't interested in eating children. They wanted all the delicious, delicious trash and food in the house. ah So the bear just trashed the place and eventually ah Trail RCMP showed up, opened the front door and chased pay the bear out of the basement where it had got to.
00:11:30
Speaker
It was ripping up floors and punching holes in drywall. Do you know, it's real sad that the housing situation is starting to get to the bears that they have to go and squat inside of human homes. That was my joke. Fuck you.
00:11:52
Speaker
No wonder we're friends.
00:11:57
Speaker
Literally the next thing I had, ah like like my little notes for this. I don't have them in the show notes, obviously, but my little note for this is like, this is this is just another sign of Justin Trudeau's failing housing policy. Oh, God. Hey, at the end of the episode, I'll have a remark to make about it Justin Trudeau anyway. um All right. Well, is that the news? Yeah, that's the news. All right. So if you haven't listened to the previous episode or the episode before, probably should listen to it. You can probably start here and get an ah and be okay without it. But if you want to learn about the Canadian aerospace industry and how it came to this point,
00:12:38
Speaker
It's probably helpful to give it all a listen. Now, in the last episode, we ended up on mentioning that we're about to enter into the Cold War in Tamarack. Why don't you tell us what the Cold War was about? The Cold War was about the good guys who were staving off the evil, like all-consuming empire of the West. God damn it. I have a clip to play. I'm going to play this clip. This is Commander Gilmour, U.S. Strategic Command, and General Borshevsky, Russian intelligence. Russian intelligence? Are you mad? A lot's happened since you were frozen. The Cold War's over. Well, finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Hey, comrades! Hey! Austin, we won. Oh, groovy, smashing. Yay, capitalism!
00:13:31
Speaker
I wish that movie aged well. I hate i do too. that That sequence did very much. like I don't want to talk about James Bond, but like James Bond hasn't aged well at all, but neither has Austin Powers. No. As mentioned in the previous episode, the incident with Igor Gorzenko in Ottawa sparked not only Canada's involvement in the Cold War, but also much of the West. This led to Canada becoming a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, in 1940. A4 mentioned bad guys. Sorry, what? A4 mentioned bad guys and also current day bad guys, let's be real. Okay, NATO's specter, fine. So it's an organization which exists to this day to keep commies and Russians away and has never had conflict with Canadian priorities to this very day. Yeah, no, not at all.
00:14:20
Speaker
This has led to RCAF bases, World Canadian Air Force, for those who haven't listened to the last two episodes, being established in Western Europe york throughout the following decades. This included RCAF station Marvy in Lorraine, which is in the region in France. Also in Lorraine was Groten-Keene, as well as in West Germany. And you're going to correct me on this, Tamarack Zwebrücken. Zwebrücken. Okay, there you go. So I don't speak German. um Canadian forces base Lehr. yeah that Listen, I don't speak German. Located near where? Strasbourg. Okay.
00:14:55
Speaker
I wanna say Strasbourg correctly. And then- I want you to pronounce these next, these next two German words. Oh my fucking God. Okay. See if the Baden Solingen. Solingen. Solingen. Okay. So I don't say the G. Located in Reinemünster. Reinemünster. I got it. Okay. Also in West Germany. And then as you can tell, everything was like just located in Southeastern West Germany and Northeastern France with the exception of NATO Air Base. ah This is Dutch. Geilkirchen. Geilenkirchen. Is that Dutch? ah No, it's a German word. the Dutch dutch is judge is the fake country much like much like Canada is.
00:15:37
Speaker
Much of it is fake, because it's all fake land, um located near the southern Dutch border. This is where it gets fun. um At some point, the Soviets suggested joining NATO. This was 1954, but the United States rejected the request. Yes. There was a period of time where the Cold War just didn't need to happen. And like i need I need you listeners to understand this, that like the Cold War almost didn't, except for NATO. Well, NATO was the anti-Kami anti-Russian club. Yeah, it was the no commies allowed club. And NATO wanted in because, well, we're Kami, not commies. Yeah. This came about during the Berlin Conference over fears of German militarism. But this is not a topic for this podcast. I know how that connects. What's that? Over fears of German militarism?
00:16:27
Speaker
OK, reunified Germany and all that sort of thing and having Germany given their own, given a stronger military president because West Germany did but join NATO. ah Yeah, but the OK, so like over over fears of like, OK, so like East Germany as the as what the Soviets considered the German successor state basically created the NVA and then West Germany formed the Bundeswehr, I guess in the 50s. Yeah, then but this is kind of the origins of the west um the Warsaw Pact.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, it was the, okay, well, if NATO's gonna be no girls allowed, well, then we're just gonna make the secret girl sleepover club. Exactly. But enough about NATO while we are gonna talk a little bit here, but in the same year as NATO's founding, Canada had its first fighter jet, the de Havilland Vampire, which took its first flight in 1943 in the UK. Fun fact, it flew as late as 1979 when it was still in use by the Rhodesian Air Force. Again, Major, are we the baddies moment? Well, Rhodesia rhodesia it was a fucked up place. And you know what? If you still like fantasize over Rhodesia, you should... dollar a forty nine day what words Hey, ah you want to know a fun Rhodesia fact? Sure. Their innovative camouflage was so good, you can't even find Rhodesia on a map.
00:17:49
Speaker
yeah
00:17:52
Speaker
Rhodesia, famously fake country, probably the most fake country to ever exist. As evident by the age of the aircraft, the vampire was not seen as an effective flying craft. And so in 1951, they began to replace it with the Canadair CL-13 Sabre, also known as the F-86 to you Americans. Unlike the F-86, it used a more powerful engine built by Avro Canada. named the TR-5 Arenda, with Arenda deriving from the Iroquois word, meaning tribal soul on the right path. I just want to note an F-86 saber fact. ah It's a copy of a MiG-15. Everybody was copying everybody at this point. In 1952, Jacqueline Cochran, an American pilot who was head of the Women Air Force Service Pilots during World War II,
00:18:39
Speaker
requested permission from then Minister of Defense Brooke Clackston. Something to note, he served as Minister under both Mackenzie King and now Prime Minister Louis Saint Laurent. I need to make like a kingship portrait to like insert whenever he's mentioned in in the YouTubes. We'll talk about that after the recording. I'm thinking like sunglasses and a little like JPEG crown. Klaxon agreed to the request and permitted her to borrow Sabre to then fly it to a record 1,050 kilometers an hour, and then three weeks later, 1,078. During this time, she made a dive with the plane and achieved 1,270, becoming the first woman to break the sound barrier.
00:19:19
Speaker
Specked out the plane was capable of a top speed of 1,100 kilometers an hour, a little bit more than that really, and could go a maximum distance of 2,384 kilometers with a service ceiling of 16,500 meters. So it's top spec is like shit. Just under the sound barrier. Just under. But the thing is, a lot of planes were like this in this era. Across six different variations of the Sabre, 350 were built without the Arenda engine, and almost 1500 had it included with the RCF being the biggest fleet.
00:19:51
Speaker
The plane was also sold either near or used to the militaries of Bangladesh, Colombia, West Germany, Greece, Honduras, Pakistan, South Africa, and notably not racist country during this time period, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the very stable country of Yugoslavia. Hey, playing both sides. It's like, if you're a communist country, you play both sides so that you don't come up on top. Well, it's funny you say that because of the countries mentioned, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the United Kingdom had planes financed through the Americans Mutual Defense Aid Program. So, you know, two out of three countries listed there were pretty much communist.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah. Figure out which ones. I mean, it's pretty, if you know anything about northern Italian labor politics. Pretty much. It only is a wild country to talk about what communism because they could have actually, um they could have done some interesting shit. They were one Operation Claudio away from flipping. Pretty much. So we're going to talk about interceptors, but I'm going to warn you all, I am not a military person. So whenever I talk about in the military, I'm a fish out of water. And when it comes to concepts about like what certain aircraft do or what troop moments are doing, just think of me as a fucking idiot. Just just leave it at that. It's much easier that way.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah, this is more my wheelhouse, which is why I never do military episodes. So it's much it's way funnier if I do the military episodes. Hell yeah. OK, the planes we've been talking about were classified as fighter jets. Well, useful. They're meant to keep air support in a given area. It's meant to shoot things down that are flying into its range and they're kind of just jack of all trades aircraft. However, there's a need to have specialized aircraft to go after larger targets, and these are called interceptors. They fly slower, but are also able to go farther and achieve a much higher altitude. It is meant to take out as many bombers as possible, and it can achieve this by having a high rate of climb. As in, it can just go up real fast. yeah Again, if this explanation sucks, I'm sorry. I'm going to use Fighter Interceptor as the same here, so just whatever. Get in the comments.
00:22:00
Speaker
You use a fighter to fight things that are close. You use an interceptor to fight things that are far. And because we're Canada, everything is far. Pretty much. We also have to like basically defend three oceans. Tamarack, you'll see in the notes here there's a kind of nice looking plane. Yeah, it's all right. got You got two big old fuel tanks at the edge of the wings. Is that what they're for? ah Yeah. Oh, cool. I don't know if they're drop tanks, but they that's that's that's what would be there.
00:22:30
Speaker
Okay, again, I don't know much about airplanes, so I will believe you on this. um This is a CF-100 Canuck. It was Canada's first interceptor, and it was introduced in 1952 as the Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck, which earned the nickname Clunk. Yeah, it turns out, but much like our local hockey team, it too was about as close to getting the Stanley Cup. You know, at that point, the Vancouver Millionaires, I think, had the Stanley Cup 20 years prior. But anyway, Yeah. this was the only and for sorry This was the first and only fighter jet or interceptor to be designed in Canada to enter mass production. The RCAF made an order to Avro Canada as early as 1946, and by January of 1950, the first prototype was demonstrated. The plane had a service ceiling of 14,000 meters and a top speed of 888 kilometers per hour.
00:23:23
Speaker
However, with the aid of a nosedive from its peak ceiling, the plane was capable of reaching Mach 1.1 or 1358 kmph during a demonstration prior to the Christmas of 1952. One of the things about fighter planes at this point is that they typically had features like ejection seats. Ejection seats were used by active military aircraft in World War II, in particular by the Germans, but by this point it was common across all military planes of the CF-100's generation. However, unlike the previously mentioned Sabre, this plane only saw use with the RCAF and the Belgian Air Force. I do i do find that you're calling out the Germans in particular because German german army and war or german Air Force and World War II are also famous for making planes where the pilot just dies horrifically.
00:24:13
Speaker
I don't remember all the fucked up fuels they used in World War II that would basically melt the skin off of your arms if you like got anywhere within like 10 meters of it. Yeah, rocket powered planes that didn't have landing gear, all those sorts of things. There was a ah thing that somebody posted on, I want to say Mastodon. It was like the most offensive fuel possible. It was like maximum thrust for like the most environmental damage possible. It was like this absurd combination of two things you should never have near you, but it like had ridiculous performance capabilities. So the the like pre-Nedlin Soviet rocket program, basically.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah it's like the only it's it's either that or be like under those nuclear rockets, which would kill you if you like stood anywhere near the nozzle. Probably not unless it's actually active. No, no, that's what I mean. If it's running, you don't want to be like you. I'm not going to get into the topic of this because it's not like I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a nuclear rockets um exhaust to say the least. Okay, be fine. So unlike the previously mentioned saber, this plane only saw use within the RCF and the Belgian Air Force. This is important to know for later because those within Avro and the Canadian government were nervous about the poor sales of the CF 100 translated to worse outcomes for an upcoming project that we're about to discuss.
00:25:29
Speaker
You see, under capitalism, when you build when you build a military plane to defend your country's borders, it needs to turn a profit. yeah Best economic system ever devised. Really works well for militaries. Yeah, fantastic. In total, 692 were built, roughly a third of what the Sabre sold. By 1981, all of these planes were retired after three decades of use. So we'll go into this next plane here. And what do you see here? We have, I think it's a Sabre, and then we have a modification of a Sabre, which we're going to talk about.
00:26:02
Speaker
Oh, did they did they did they just go and glue them together? No, no, no. This is just a formation flight here. like the I wouldn't even... Oh, no, no, no. I mean, like, not like that the two planes glued together. I mean, the the it looks like it looks like you have a CF-100 and like a kit bash of a ah of ah of a saber and a CF-100. Well, this is why I titled this section Canada's Unicorn Plane. um One of the flaws with the CF-100 was that speed became an issue. Supersonic flight was explored by Avro and a variant of the CF-100, dubbed the CF-103, which is what I was showing you, was built using a wooden mock-up.
00:26:45
Speaker
It used a swept wing as a opposed to a straight. It was designed to improve in transonic flight as well as achieve supersonic flight in a dive. I'm not going to get into the physics too much, but my understanding is that drag on a swept wing is greatly reduced in contrast to a straight. However, because of the CF-100 achieving supersonic speeds in a dive anyway, interest in the 103 was diminished. Oh, what's this? A plane by Avro that effectively just exists in mockups and drawings? I'm sure this isn't going to be an ongoing problem. Yeah, right? Well,
00:27:23
Speaker
Avro engineers eventually began to explore the use of a delta wing instead. In addition to the speed benefits of what a swept wing could provide, the use of a delta wing could also allow for the plane to carry more fuel. Yeah, because these things are meant to fly a long way to go and meet their target. Exactly. plus it could achieve improved lift at higher altitudes and could enable much more effective landings. An example is from the Corvair's F-102 would be from 80 kilometers away at an altitude of 12,000 meters it can still land on a runway. That's a hell of a descent.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's the sort of like if this was done on a Boeing, which would disintegrate anyway. But if you did on the Boeing, all the passengers would just vomit. To be fair, Boeing's disintegrated like all the time anyway these days. Yeah, you're Boeing to die. um One of the limitations is Boeing, I'm not going. One of the limitations though was that drag was much higher at low speed and low altitude, but this was diminished because the role of an interceptor was to go fast in a single direction and get the fuck out. In 1952, Avro gave the RSAF a number of proposals based around the concept dubbed the C104.
00:28:32
Speaker
with variants including single and twin engines, respectively. The twin engine variant, the C104-2, were received positively due to its twin engine arrangement, providing reliability and for its large size permitting a larger weapon cache. Through 1953, conversations between Avro and the RCAF intensified with the Air Force creating specification AR7-3. And I'm going to read these off to you and keep them in mind as I read them to you. as if I already see the problem. The specification called for the following two crew operation, two engines, 556 kilometer or 300 nautical mile range for low speed missions, 370 kilometer or 200 nautical mile. Jesus. I can never say that to save my life range.
00:29:21
Speaker
For high speed missions, ability to land on an 1,800 meter or 6,000 feet runway, a Mach 1.5 cruising speed, an altitude of 21,000 meters or 70,000 feet, an ability to maneuver 2G turns without loss of speed, from engine start to an altitude of 15,000 meters or 50,000 feet at Mach 1.5 in 5 minutes, and a turnaround time of 10 minutes on the ground after landing. terrible What do you think of this? ah Modern day aircraft, this is nothing. This is what, 1953? This is asking for the moon. Well, the RCAF went and visited US aircraft manufacturers.
00:30:01
Speaker
then visited British and French and came to the conclusion. No such plane, meaning these requirements existed. And we did the most Canadian thing possible. like we This is 1953. Japan is 10 years away from creating high-speed rail. Things that are are happening, but like not at the rate that we want them to be. Okay, to for ah for for people who also have brain worms and ah and like remember aviation in terms of at the time, which was fairly cutting edge Soviet aircraft design, the MiG-19 was the hot new thing at this point in time. Oh, we could have just bought those. ah They look too much like the Sabre because this was this was about the plateau of the peak. That's fair.
00:30:51
Speaker
A month after the RCAF visited all these places, Avro modified their C-104 design to come up with the C-105. Unlike the 104, the 105 was proposed to have a two-man crew. It would also have a Rolls-Royce RB-106 with an option to use a Bristol Olympus oil-3, a Curtiss-Rite J67, or the Arenda TR-9, variant of the aforementioned TR-5 used in the Sabre. a problem being in Canada that we didn't really have a reliable like manufacturer to produce aircraft like jet aircraft engines. Yeah, one of the things I'm going to say is about this era of Canadian aerospace is that it was surprisingly competent. Not to say that no one else was, but Canada was rather blessed from the program that
00:31:35
Speaker
we discussed in the previous episode where a number of, like, Air Force bases and all the supporting stuff for maintaining airplanes was built up. So naturally, you know, an aerospace sector would come into this country because we were just gifted with all this stuff. Yeah, it was handed to us, but it wasn't handed to us in complete end-to-end, like, vertically integrated ah form like you would see, ah like, developing in the United States around this time. Well, yeah, and' one thing and this is a little bit of a side note, but like one of the reasons why the United States and the Soviet Union became dominant in space and Great Britain did not is Great Britain did manage to get a rocket into space and they did manage to launch one single satellite, but they had to basically rely on scraps and Canada is kind of in the same position with respect to aerospace.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, because you you can't manufacture everything in your own country, which means that you're inherently limited by the output of other countries as inputs into your industry. Yeah, exactly. So in 1953, in the July of 1953, excuse me, The RCF accepted the Avro proposal and gave the go-ahead to start a full design study under the project name CF-105. $27 million, or 310 today, was allocated in December of that year, but then the Soviets decided to up the ante. In August of that same year, the Soviet Union dropped its first hydrogen bomb, which achieved a detonation force of 400 kilotons.
00:33:02
Speaker
Which to use as horrible anecdote is 20 times stronger than the bomb that the United States used on Nagasaki. To put a little better context in, if that bomb by the Soviets was dropped in downtown Vancouver, Tamarik and I would be dead and about two thirds of the city would be on fire. And for those of you in Toronto, everything between the edge of Scarborough and somewhere around Etobicoke would be gone. If you're Laura Secord. Laura Secord, if she was alive, she'd be okay. she's or Or in Toronto, how many ghost stations would you still be able to ride to? A lot of them, actually. Most of the ghost stations are outside of Toronto. there's like um I can only think of like maybe six or seven stations that would be gone. If you don drop your mic over like the CN Tower or something.
00:33:46
Speaker
The debut of the, oh my god, I can never, I'm gonna say some Russian here, the Maschev. miasish miasechev yeah The M4, we'll just say the M4, of the M4 bomber did not help this either. While this was not a supersonic plane, it was designed to fly 9,500 kilometers. This slow-moving aircraft was capable of carrying such nuclear weaponry and was the perfect target for an interceptor-type aircraft. The Soviets playing around led to Canada revisiting the contract in March of 1955 with an upgrade of five CF-105s, now arrows, test aircraft, followed by 35-arrow production planes to the tune of $260 million, dollars or $3 billion today.
00:34:28
Speaker
It's still a bargain considering the 88 F-35 fighter jets we're buying is going to cost us about $74 billion dollars over the next 40 years. Yeah, like Canadian military weirdos, we'll quote this at you as to the reason why we should like make a new arrow rather than buying the F-35. We don't have the ability to do so, but we're going to discuss why in a moment. no No, we do not. This is the arrow that you will see if you're watching. your you Actually, i i want to I want to correct that. We also clearly didn't at the time either. We're going to get to that. Put a pin in it.
00:35:01
Speaker
So Tamarack, you'll see this plane here. It looks rather handsome. It is a pretty plane. I will give it to you scale modelers. It is a beautiful plane. So by 1954, testing began with production drawings issued and work in wind tunnels plus computer simulation studies. That's pretty advanced for the 1950s doing the wind tunnel, especially that's cutting edge shit. Yeah, like, again, Canada was really pushing above its weight. When testing would occur, changes would be incorporated into the jigs as Avro adopted the Cook-Crakey plan, chosen because the USAF, the US Air Force, excuse me, found it worked to quickly design and deploy aircraft into service. However, one of the problems with the approach was that the prototype planes often would be mutants in contrast to what was intended for production, and this can lead to engineering problems.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, because you if I remember correctly, this is where basically like your you're adjusting a physical model's aerodynamics without necessarily redrewing redrawing all the like all the like pattern diagrams and everything. So then you have to reverse engineer those changes afterwards to produce the engineering drawings to actually build the damn thing. you know I was just thinking about this when I was writing the notes, is that imagine trying to build an airplane using the waterfall method. To be fair, that's kinda how it worked before.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, but it wasn't like a complicated computerized aircraft. It was, you know, you could just do this inside of like a shed. Yeah. And like some of them were. That's that's true. They were done in the shed. You could try doing it through Agile. Agile would be a very funny way to build a plane. I really, I really would like to be the scrum master on the fucking like CF-10, what would that be? 106. Uh, after like nationalist weirdos get their way. Could you just imagine sprints for ah for doing parts of the plane? Like today I'm going to do the wings. Yeah. No, today I'm going to do one wing. Oh, that's right. you're not You can't do both. No, it doesn't fit within a two week span. Rockets modeled around anti-aircraft weaponry called Nikes were used to test models of the plane. During tests, they were flown to a maximum speed of Mach 1.1 and then crashed into the water.
00:37:12
Speaker
Two of the models were tested at a NASA facility in the United States, but the first two tests were pointed at Point Petra on the shores of Lake Ontario, not far from Belleville. They weren't pointed at pet at Point Petra. they They were tested at Point Petra. Did I say pointed at Point Petra? Yes. Oh, whatever. The first two models were used in a terror attack. I mentioned Point Petra because it's in fake Milford as the real Milford is in the county of Surrey, east of London. ah Yes. Any opportunity to mention all the fake places in Ontario?
00:37:46
Speaker
Yes. These and other experiments showed the need for little design changes, mostly focusing on wing profile and other exteriors. The airframe was constructed using conventional methods using a semi-monocoat frame. Think of a like how an eggshell works. Any multi-spar wing. Think skin on bones. The materials used included magnesium and titanium on the fuselage. Although the titanium was limited to the area around the engine and the fasteners um as working with the metal at the time was rather difficult, because of the thin wings requiring a lot of force to control, the plane made use of a fly-by-wire system, making it the first non-experimental plane in the world to use the system and would remain so until the Concorde was built a decade later. Again, punching above our weight.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah, for real. Again, like this this plane was extremely advanced, which has to make you wonder, how is this small, barely industrialized country going to make this extremely advanced plane? Stay tuned! However, Avro came into a problem.
00:38:47
Speaker
The RB106 engine from Rolls-Royce was no longer available due to a program cancellation. This then led to the decision to use the right J67, but this engine, too, would find itself canceled. Cancel culture just gets the best of us. Gee, yeah. Gee, if only we had our ability to make our own engine and these engine companies or these engines saying transphobic things on Twitter. Oh, Jesus. Aber made the decision to use the Pratt & Whitney J75 for his test models and then would adopt the Arenda engine for all production aircraft. Foreshadowing is a literary device, where? On October 4th, 1957, world history would be made and 13,000 people were invited to Malta, Ontario to what would be the grand unveiling of the CF-105 Aero, or RL-201. But instead, well, this happens. Commander!
00:39:42
Speaker
You've reigned on my glorious parade. For this, I'm sending everything I've got at you. But I won't let you have the satisfaction of catching me. I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism.
00:40:02
Speaker
Space!
00:40:06
Speaker
that's tim curry in red alert three ah god I wish the game was better as a side note is so good as a side note. So in the Austin Powers clip, the guy who is like introduced as the Russian commander I thought that he was Tim Curry this whole time. And I went to look looked him up and it's like, yeah, no, nothing like Tim Curry. He looks a little bit like Tim Curry if you look at it from the right angle. But anyway, his name was Elia Baskin, and he defected from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. But in this other clip that I just played here, Tim Curry was like a character in a video game. Yes. Playing a Russian Soviet premier, if I remember correctly.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't played Red Alert in so long, and I barely remember all this stuff. But the Soviets had beaten the Americans into outer space with the launch of Sputnik, the world's first- And we need to have a Red Alert land party. Got it. Yes. We're not gonna, we're not gonna, I'm just, we're not doing a land party. Let's have a land party! Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. For three weeks, the satellite would orbit the earth at a rate of eight kilometers per second or 28,800 kilometers per hour. Which would then be added to the spec sheet for the afro arrow.
00:41:24
Speaker
At this point, you'd start to wonder, right? You'd start to wonder. Foreshadowing is a literary device. Oh, it gets worse for the upper arrow here. Other setbacks for the arrow upon its unveiling were that the Pride Whitney engine was slightly heavier than the Arenda and required ballast to be placed at the plane's nose. Also, fire control systems were not ready, so they were replaced with ballast. Don't worry about getting incinerated, everybody. So on March 25th, 1958, no Soviet news of note was recorded. In fact, I went and checked to see what was in the news, and it was fairly boring that day. However, the RL-201 Aero took its first flight with chief development ah test pilot, Jana Zarkowski, at the helm. I am so sorry to all my Polish listeners.
00:42:07
Speaker
These test flights were limited to assessing flight characteristics and no serious design faults were found. On its third flight, it achieved supersonic. On its seventh, it broke 1,600 kilometers an hour at 15,000 meters while climbing, a top speed of Mach 1.98 or 2,400 kilometers per hours recorded, and it was suggested that it was not the peak of its performance. And while no major faults were found, it did have some problems with its landing gear and flight control system. By the February of 1959, the majority of the testing was done, and it was handed off to the ah RCAF for acceptance trials. I'm just looking at the spec sheet here. It looks like they mostly did it?
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, they made we need to worry about range and stuff like that. But if it was able to. Well, it's. Wait a second. Oh, yeah, it's it's. Oh, because it that's its top speed, not its cruise. Never mind. Yeah, I wasn't. I didn't note down and I didn't know if it was recorded anywhere, what the maximum range of it was. But the plane kicked ass. Yeah, if I remember, the range and everything was good. I think there was some some weird stuff about, again, the fire control system being ah gone. And also the I think there were some issues with its speed. Well, and one thing you might have noticed is that I haven't mentioned much of the politicking around the RCAF and its desire to have a home built plane. However, this plane was hated by the Progressive Conservative Party at the time in June of 1957. So prior to the testing,
00:43:38
Speaker
The liberal government led by Louis Saint Laurent fell to the John Diefenbaker Tories. you We're going to be talking about Diefenbaker all over the place. Oh, we're going to be talking about Diefenbaker in a couple of episodes. Again, bunkers only Cold War policy. This led to over 20 years of liberal rule, starting with the election of William I. Mackenzie King's government in 1935. Mackenzie King actually was in power for much longer than that, but that's another story. Two months after the election of the Tories, Diefenbaker signed the NORAD agreement with the United States, making Canada partner
00:44:13
Speaker
with the Americans in controlling air defense in North America. Which is nice talk for signing over any sort of like sovereignty of our own airspace over to the fucking yanks. Well, this agreement also offered the country the opportunity to be part of the SAGE project, which was involving ground radar, and in turn the possibility of Beaumarch nuclear-tipped anti-missile systems being installed in Canada's north, something that would prove to be very popular. Yeah, like we've gotten we've gotten this far into it, but it's it's important to note, we're doing all this anti-Soviet prepping, right? And like any good prepper, there wasn't actually any legitimate threat until we did this. Yes. Studies at the time indicated that the cost of installing these missiles would run to the tune of $167 million, dollars or $2 billion today, which was two-thirds the cost of the Avro program.
00:45:04
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's the that's the other fun part. ah ah Trump was not the first to do it. ah the americans were literally going to put their there The Americans were literally going to put their nuclear missiles in Canada and make us fucking pay for it. Yeah. And well, it was going to consume an additional 25 to 30% of the defense spending every year. And it was pointed out that Canada could afford one or the other, but not both. It would ah foreshadowing this literary device. Well, we're, we're, we're getting to this here. Minister of Defence, George Perks. Perks? Perks? Who cares? Made a recommendation to the Cabinet Defence Committee in August of 1958 that the ARO program be cancelled.
00:45:46
Speaker
So just after some of the testing had been done, they were saying, no, this, this is, this is a piece of shit. We don't want to deal with it. And, but this was refused in the following month. He requested again in favor of the Beaumarch system, which was accepted, but only sort of the committee wanted to wait for review in March of the following year, but February 59 rolls around and the program was just canceled. And the arrow was no more. Yes. So now we had no interceptor and no nuclear missiles. Well, we were about to lose the nuclear missiles here. The committee wanted to wait for review in March of the following year, but by February of 1959, the program was canceled and the era was no more. And then eventually we just wanted to have the nuclear missiles at some point. Yeah.
00:46:29
Speaker
good good job Good job, George Purix or whatever the fuck your name is. he has the hope baker and Now Yeah, ah also Diefenbaker. Again, bunkers only pro policy. Fast, new, high-tech interceptor? No. Don't need that. Nuclear missiles? No. Don't need that either. Bunkers. We're going to talk about the bunkers. So the aftermath, sorry, the effects of this were that 14,528 employees at Avro, along with, you know, around 15,000 in the supply chain were out of work immediately. um Executives at Avro knew that this was going to happen, but we're actually thrown off by the untimely decision. Like they just didn't know it was going to happen in February. They expected it to happen in March.
00:47:14
Speaker
Avro tried to supply the completed arrows to the National Research Council. That's the NRC. But the NRC refused stating that there would just be no sufficient parts, maintenance options or appropriate pilots. By April of that year, all aircraft engines, tooling and technical data were ordered scrapped. This was due to fears by the RCMP. The Soviet mole had infiltrated the company, which likely has some truths due to notes uncovered in the Mitrokin archives. Oh yeah. ah the The Soviets had infiltrated the fuck out of Canadian industry. Well, we knew that through the Igor Gorzenko affair as well. So like, this is just an ongoing saga. Many of the engineers were approached by NASA and ended up working in key roles in the Mercury Gemini and Apollo space programs. Some ended up working for the space shuttle as well. Plus a number of engineers went on to become involved in design studies, which led to the design of the Concorde.
00:48:08
Speaker
Um, this led to like a complete fear over brain drain. Something Canada is really good at is, um, actually Canada inherited something from Great Britain that I always kind of shit on, uh, the UK about. And that is the UK is unaware of when it actually has a good thing. And in the case of Canada, and this is described in one of the books that I have stick it it up, like one of the books I have kicking around, it's called, um, a country nourished on self-doubt and that is a concept that I feel exemplifies Canada's habits of being like a post colony country like it is still a colony country but like that's another topic. It's interesting to see us just completely go like yeah you know what fuck this and then just lose a whole bunch of valuable people that could have you know done other interesting things in this country but hey that's the Canada way and we saw it play out again with Bombardier not too long ago.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah, ah we we always like it becomes a government program to like it becomes somebody's hobby horse basically to like kickstart an industry. We kickstart that industry, a bunch of people move, move here, rescale and everything. and election cycles turn around, and and and then that no longer becomes the new hotness. So halfway through, a bunch of people's lives get upturned as this no longer becomes the priority. The industry fallows, people move away. And then a few decades or later, like, hey, why don't we have this industry anymore? Well, gee, I wonder why.
00:49:40
Speaker
Well, it's sort of like, um, was it, uh, atomic energy of Canada limited ACL had the whole candy reactors. And then once again, we have, uh, Tory government come in and they go and say, yeah, fuck this. We're not having a crown corporation do any sort of nuclear reactor designs and sold it off to S and C Lavalin, uh, famously, um, you know, non corrupt company that, uh, company. Yeah, now I had to change his name to, what was it? ah Atkins Rialis or whatever the hell their name is now. They still have S and C Alafelen at their Richmond office. Do they? I find that's wild because I know they had they ripped the name off of the building they had downtown. yeah Atkins Rialis, that is that's crazy. I was like, is it actually Atkins? It is Atkins. Yeah. Brand new name. Same old corruption.
00:50:28
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. While the original test planes were destroyed, some parts of the unbuilt 206 were smuggled out and now are now on display at the Canada Aviation Space Museum in Ottawa, and a full-size replica was revealed at the Canada Air and Space Museum in October of 2006. And in January, 2020, a year that had nothing bad happened, plans were found in the home of Ken Barnes, a senior draft person who after leaving ever went on to develop the cannon arm. hi He just ran off with the plans for the whole damn plane. Yeah, definitely not a sparrow that guy. In addition to the Beaumarks Canada purchased 66 McDonald F-101 Voodoo, which remained in use until 1984. So they lasted until I was born.
00:51:12
Speaker
However, the Beaumarks would become Diefenbaker's undoing as the having of nuclear weapons on Canadian soil alongside government finances being in disarray and the valid like the devaluing of the Canada dollar versus the American, because this is prior to the whole floating currency thing, would have him and his government turfed in 1962. We are going to be talking about Diefenbaker in a coming up episode. One legacy of Diefenbaker, which Tam is excited to talk about, which did stand the test of the Cold War, and why we've been taught saying this episode is called flying into a bunker, was the creation of sites intended for the continuity of government in the event of a nuclear war. These would be affectionately known as Diefenbunkers.
00:52:00
Speaker
Yes. So you see, the plan is that like you need to use your, you need to put in your, pi put on your defense, your defense brain to understand this plan. So we don't make a capable interceptor. We make ourselves a nuclear target by bringing in American missiles. We impoverish ourselves by paying for those missiles. And then we basically pull a vault tech and build a bunch of shelters so that the like the the ruling class will be fine.
00:52:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I have no response to that because I don't really feel like ah saying you're incorrect because it's generally correct. So one of them is ah for its for the federal government, there's a whole bunch like called CFP cart, there's tons of them scattered around. I think the one for um the British Columbia government was stationed outside of the NIMO, for example, they began constructing it in 1959 and completed by 1962. The original site that they had chosen for CFP cart had to be abandoned because groundwater kept penetrating the area and there was just no way to remediate. These bunkers were also poorly kept secrets during construction. As the media figured out that the large construction site with tons of concrete and HVAC systems were just being built for nuclear war. Like you don't go and build a giant pit, pour a ton of concrete, have giant HVAC systems being installed and not like have somebody notice. Like it was port it was a poorly kept secret. yes Carp was built to accommodate about 565 people across four floors, including a broadcast studio for the CBC and a place to store gold reserves. While these bunkers were effective against surface detonations, they would be absolutely demolished by anything that could do bunker busting. Yes, the final element of this being that they might have actually saved a lot of Canadians by making themselves obvious targets.
00:53:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, all I can say is that instead of a plane, we decide to stick our heads in the ground. And that didn't even work out because they eventually abandoned the um ah whole system pretty soon. Like it was it was a secret, quote unquote, until the 90s. I think it was the case, but they were absolutely useless. The term Deep and Bunker was colloquial to the time of their construction. It has stuck since, actually. It has stuck since. It has stuck since, mostly because of people like me and people like me and that one weird uncle who keep raving on about them. Yeah, if you're actually really interested in the Deep and Bunker itself, there is a Bobby Broccoli video, which I'll include in the show notes.
00:54:38
Speaker
where he goes and explores it. And he lives in Ottawa, so he had the ability to go visit it. And it's a wild place. So that is the story of the Avro Arrow in the entire Canadian aerospace sector. And now we can finally ask a very important question, Tamarack. What did we learn? i ah Taking a cursory look at Bombardier, nothing. We learned nothing. Yeah, the the whole like the whole story with what was it the um it's like the plane that was smaller than a 737 but was designed to compete with the like be a slightly larger and Breyer plane that Air Canada 10 sees.
00:55:18
Speaker
Oh, the Q 400 or the yeah yeah yeah, whatever the Q series planes. That was like probably one of the smartest things that Bombardier was attempting to build, but like its finances were just not there to support it. And it in the course, like Trumpism getting in the way, like once again, Canada is just incapable of you know pulling off anything good. And this was for better or for worse, like a good project in a lot of ways. I'm not saying that flying is great because I actually hate the whole process of flying. Like, I'm going to the UK in August, and I'm making it a point that once I land there, I'm only touching planes and ferries, and I'm holding myself to it. so You mean trains and ferries? You said planes and ferries. God damn it, that's what capitalism has done to me. Oh no, they've got you. Yeah, they're going to make me. And they just has you. now plane Trains are commie. Yeah, that's why they're good. that's That's the reason why the United Kingdom was one of the two communist countries that I mentioned earlier. Oh, God. Oh, I know.
00:56:16
Speaker
yeah like with this is this is ah like The Avro Arrow is probably the most Canadian industrial project. like this This also impacted our nuclear industry. It's impacted every like major national industrial project that we've ever undertaken. is We don't ever seem to go the whole way. like we We build aircraft, but not engines. We build cars, but not fucking exhaust systems or catalytic converters. we build like Hell, we have an entire oil industry that is fed by US-made parts, which are, again, fed by Chinese-made parts. like Globalism is kind of a scam when it comes to trying to provide jobs.
00:57:00
Speaker
and like constructing an industry within your country. You can rely on things to get started, but you need to you need to like have your supply chain in order if that is your goal. that one Unfortunately, that's against capitalism, basically, to do so. One of the things I always point out to people is that while I really do hate that um the liberals and They all of these projects have existed under them and whenever the Tories come in they always manage to shit up a storm and we saw this play with ACL we've seen this play play out with Afro and I'm certain that there are examples where the Liberals have kind of done this sort of thing too, but more often Oh, yeah for sure but more faith in the Liberals than the Tories to actually build anything in this country
00:57:44
Speaker
Well, because the the liberals are at least less likely to like cut these sorts of development programs programs, because I think at least on some level through their neoliberal brains, they understand that you can't grow by shrinking, ah whereas like conservatives are just in full fucking reality denial. Well, yeah, the the Tories have the mindset of um starving a horse by to make it run faster, and it doesn't work that way. Yeah, you just end up with a dead horse. Or at least a really impoverished one. Yeah, in this case, the Avro Arrow being the dead horse in this particular manner, but yes. Yeah. Well, what is our next episode going to be on? Our next episode is going to be on some good goo we put on our flag. Oh, dear. I don't know how I'm going to make an image for this on YouTube, so ah sorry for whatever is on screen right now. Just just find a ah screenshot from the episode of splat. Oh, sorry, the delicious splat.
00:58:41
Speaker
I was thinking I was thinking I was going to put like a little clip of like, oh, oh, oh, oh, Splat was the American one. Oh, it was the Canadian one. Wasn't it? ah Yeah. OK, I don't know. I don't know what the fuck Splat is, but i was maybe I'm thinking, oh, and I'm just forgetting. um One other thing is we and now have a website at she went again moments dot C.A. And if you want to send us comments or questions, we have an email address as well. It's mailbag at she went again moments dot C.A. If you have any hate mail, Um, send it to Pierre Poliev at parl dot.gc.ca. It makes her into CC, uh, Justin.Trudo at parl.gc dot.ca. And, uh, for good measure, include, uh, jagmeet.sing at parl.gc.ca. But, you know, don't, don't refer to us. We're not interested in your hate mail. Yeah, no, if we're not. Uh, also YouTube's, I will, I will put YouTube's episodes up more quickly than I have been. I am working through the backlog. I am almost caught up.
00:59:38
Speaker
Well, I think that's a podcast and thank God I don't want to talk about a plane forever. We almost did. I swore this would be a four, a four-parter. I think we did okay. We did okay. We're within budget. The next episode will be a lot sweeter than this. Yes. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. Shewinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, Stolo, and Tsawatuth First Nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.