Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck
The Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck was a two-seat, all-weather jet interceptor designed and built in Canada by A.V. Roe Canada Ltd., and the only Canadian-designed fighter to enter mass production. First flown on 19 January 1950 and powered by Canadian Orenda turbojets, it was built to a total of 692 aircraft. Canucks defended North America under NORAD and served with NATO in Europe, and 53 were sold to Belgium, the type's only export customer. Known to its crews as the "Clunk", it ended its career as an electronic warfare trainer, the last example retiring in 1981.
Why It Mattered
The CF-100 Canuck is the only fighter designed in Canada ever to reach mass production: A.V. Roe Canada built 692 of them, with manufacture running from 1950 to 1958. It answered a Royal Canadian Air Force requirement for a two-seat, all-weather jet interceptor able to patrol the far north against Soviet bombers. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum, which displays one, judges that its long range and powerful radar made it probably the best all-weather fighter of its time. Its intended replacement was the CF-105 Arrow; when that programme was cancelled, the American-built CF-101 Voodoo took the Canuck's place instead.
Design Notes
The Canuck seats two, a pilot and a navigator, both on ejection seats, and its interception rested on radar and fire-control systems the National Air Force Museum of Canada calls excellent. Production aircraft flew on two Canadian-built Orenda turbojets, the Mk V on Orenda 11s. The Mk 3 carried a pack of eight .50-calibre machine guns mounted under the nose. The Mk V carried unguided rockets: 29 of them in each wingtip pod in its earlier versions. That final mark also gained wingtip extensions, added to improve its high-altitude capability. Its crews gave it two enduring nicknames: the "Clunk", after the noise its retracting landing gear made, and the "Lead Sled", for its heavy controls.
Operational History
Avro Canada flew the prototype in January 1950, four years after the RCAF issued its requirement. In December 1952 the company's chief test pilot, Janusz Zurakowski, dived a Mk 4 to Mach 1.1 from 45,000 feet; the Canadian Museum of Flight records the flight as the first time a production straight-winged jet broke the sound barrier. At its peak the RCAF had nine squadrons of Canucks stationed across Canada, flying North American air defence under NORAD. Four more squadrons were based in Europe between 1956 and 1962, serving with NATO against a Soviet attack from the east. Belgium was the type's only export customer: it bought 53 Mk 5s to replace its Meteors, and flew them until 1964, when the F-104 Starfighter replaced them. At home, squadrons began trading their Canucks for CF-101 Voodoos in 1961. The type spent its last years as an electronic warfare aircraft, training fighter pilots and radar operators and flying NORAD exercises, until the phase-out began in 1981 and the last CF-100 retired that September.
Afterlife
The Canuck survives in numbers its Arrow successor never had the chance to match: the Canadian Museum of Flight counts 30 preserved examples in Canada, Belgium, the United States and the United Kingdom. Most are held by museums, while others stand mounted on poles as memorials. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum's Mk 5D is one of the museum examples, an aircraft that spent its last service years as an electronic warfare trainer with a unit at North Bay before being flown to the museum in 1979. Officially the type was the Canuck, but the museum notes the name never caught on; in service it was simply the Clunk.