December 5, 2004
AND YOU WONDER WHY WE SAW MEDICARE AS PROGRESS
Canada's Flying Saucer (International Herald Tribune Archives, December 4th, 1954)
Canadian Defense Minister C.D. Howe said here yesterday that his country has abandoned a multi-million-dollar flying-saucer project that almost reached the flying stage. Mr. Howe confirmed reports current for months that Canada had been attempting to build a flying saucer at a Toronto aircraft plant, but he said the project was abandoned "because it did not seem to have any useful purpose." He said engineers and scientists worked more than a year on the saucer prototype, "but it never left the ground." "We did engineering on it and proved to ourselves that it would fly," he said on arrival here aboard the liner Queen Mary. "I doubt if any country in the world has a flying saucer," he added. Canada's experimental saucer was oval-shaped, with exhaust pipes not unlike some of the drawings of saucers seen in magazines.
Building a sense of national purpose is hard work.
Posted by Peter Burnet at December 5, 2004 8:02 PMThey must be talking about the Avrocar, which Pentagon contracts allowed them to work on until 1961. It was supposed to be supersonic, then fast but subsonic, but it turned out to be unable to get more than about six feet off the ground.
Posted by: PapayaSF at December 5, 2004 9:44 PMNo useful purpose?!
You could park it on a flagpole or radio antenna, as long as you keep it spinning fast enough.
You could line the outside edge with rubber and install a ballast to overbalance one side in emergencies, so that instead of crashing, it lands on its edge, then bounces a couple times and rolls for a few miles.
...oh, wait, it's oval-shaped. Never mind. Nice SAUCER, guys.
Snotty remarks aside, though, some things are just nifty for their own sake.
Posted by: Guy T. at December 5, 2004 9:51 PMCanada did have the Avro Arrow jet in development, by all accounts 15 years ahead of its time. But after a few very successful test flights, the goverment of the day quashed the program and had the planes destoyed.
Posted by: Philip at December 5, 2004 10:34 PMThe saucer really wasn't the problem. It was the teacup that wasn't aerodynamic enough.
Posted by: Randall Voth at December 6, 2004 3:39 AMI've read that if they had placed a rubber skirt on the bottom of the Avrocar the Canadians would've had the first practical hovercraft. It needed more work then that of course but still...
I saw the miniseries "Arrow" about the Avro Arrow. To say that project had problems, not technical ones but political, is an understatement! The company fired 14,000+ workers when the government canceled the project so as to 'force' them to reinstate it. The gov ont he other hand then ordered the blueprints and planes to be burned and scrapped. Weird. I would like to think that the one operational plane was hidden away like what happened in the miniseries...
Posted by: rps at December 6, 2004 8:48 AM