The Arrow
from Not There Yet Hosted by Terence C. Gannon
The path not taken 60 years ago has a nation still wondering what might have been. On February 19th, 1959, Władysław ‘Spud’ Potocki was test flying the sparkling white Avro Arrow RL-201 in the fair but chilly skies near Malton, Ontario. On that particular flight, the World War II veteran fighter pilot was testing the Arrow’s roll rates at Mach 1.7. While fast, it was still well below the nearly twice the speed of sound the sharp, delta-wing aircraft had already achieved on previous test flights. As aeronautical engineers like to say, the Arrow had ‘flown off the drawing board’. The celestial expectations for the all-new, Canadian-designed and built supersonic interceptor were being met or exceeded with each passing day … * * * Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on BluFly 🛩️.
Embed this episode
No transcript yet.