The Wing and the Arrow

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
the author of Military Archives: International Directory of Military
Publications and The Bantams: The Untold St

Having myself been employed at Avro (A.V. Roe) during development of the
CF–105 “Arrow” fighter aircraft, I opened this book with
particular anticipation, but was sadly disappointed.

For a novel purporting to equally feature that legendary Canadian
airplane, it is exasperating to find absolutely no mention of the Arrow
until page 168, more than three-quarters of the way through the book.
Before that, one endures a befuddled tale of two U.S. Navy pilots in
Japan and California (far from the Arrow’s birthplace at Malton,
Ontario), who work on the USAF’s Northrop “Flying Wing” bomber,
speak a sort of Clancyesque patois, and are apparently involved in some
obscure plot or other with the CIA and the KGB.

Introductory photographs include the CF–100 Canuck, inaccurately
labeled as the “CF–101.”