Avro Canada C102 Jetliner by F-RSIN

1/144 scale
Kit No. FR14032
Price: $75.00 @ Aviation Megastore
Decals: One version – Avro Canada prototype
Comments: Limited run resin kit; detailed engine nacelles, crude landing gear; not for the impatient — be prepared to do a lot of sanding; aftermarket decals strongly recommended

History

The Avro Canada C-102 Jetliner, the first jet transport in North America, flew for the first time just four years after the end of World War II on August 10, 1949. The prototype would reach a speed of 500 mph early in its flight test program, and it cruised at 425 to 450 mph at a time when the comparable American airliner of the day, the piston-engined Douglas DC-6, cruised at 315 mph. From the outset, it was clear that the Jetliner had the potential to revolutionize commercial air travel in the 1950’s.

Origins: The Formation of Avro Canada
The Avro Jetliner’s origins can be traced back to the closing months of World War II, when Avro Canada was formed out of the remains of a Malton-based Canadian firm that had built British military aircraft under license during the war, Victory Aircraft Limited. With the approaching end of the war, Victory folded upon the wholesale cancellation of contracts for Lancaster and Lincoln bombers, and A.V. Roe Canada was formed with the financial support of the Hawker Siddeley Group in England. The plan was for Avro Canada to manufacture indigenous Canadian military and civil aircraft, despite fears of a limited market for them immediately after the war. The RCAF in particular had not enjoyed its wartime dependence on British aircraft manufacturers and licensing agreements, and the civil aviation industry in the form of Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA), hoped for locally produced aircraft as well. Work began on design concepts to fulfill TCA’s need for new aircraft in late 1945. Work on a jet fighter (which would ultimately become the Avro CF-100) quickly followed.

The first proposal for a civilian airliner was submitted to TCA at its Montreal headquarters on March 5, 1946, resulting in a decision to have the respective engineering staffs of TCA and Avro Canada meet and agree on aircraft specifications, which were outlined in a report to TCA management one month later. These included a payload of 10,000 lbs. and capacity for 30 passengers, range of 1200 miles, and a cruising speed of at least 400 mph.

TCA-Avro Contract: A House of Cards
A contract soon ensued, but would quickly come unraveled for several reasons. One was that TCA were determined to have a specific powerplant, the Rolls Royce AJ65 turbojet, despite the fact that it was a new, military-grade powerplant whose development was far from complete. In addition, it was still deemed “secret” by the British government and would not be available for civilian use for years; accordingly, the first design concepts for the Jetliner involved turboprop engines. Avro would eventually settle on Rolls Royce Derwent V engines similar to those powering the Gloster Meteor F. IV jet fighter.

A more pressing reason was a dispute over the per unit cost of the aircraft. TCA insisted upon a fixed cost per aircraft, despite the fact that the price of new, state-of-the-art components that would make up the Jetliner, including the engines and navigation system, had yet to be established and might not be known for some time. Nonetheless, development of the Jetliner continued swiftly even as ongoing contract negotiations began to look grim. TCA would ultimately pull out of the deal, leaving Avro without a buyer.

 

April 1950: Jetliner’s Historic Debut
Just eight months after its initial flight, the Jetliner made history with another flight to Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy International) Airport on April 18, 1950, delivering the first air mail by the first jet transport ever to fly into the United States — prompting Air Trails Magazine, in its August 1950 issue, to run an editorial entitled “What Happened to the Great American Aviation Industry?” This article questioned how the Canadians could have gotten ahead of the U.S. in aviation technology, even as it praised them for the achievement.

Canadian Government Deals a Lethal Blow
However, back in Canada things were taking an ominous turn against the C-102. As Canada expanded its armed forces to meet its treaty obligations under NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and its assistance with the American effort in the Korean War, the government became concerned that that Avro’s military project, the CF-100 interceptor (Canada’s first designed and built jet-powered, all weather interceptor) enter service as soon as possible. The Canadian Minister of Reconstruction, Clarence Decatur “C.D.” Howe, made a unilateral decision in December 1951 to cancel the Jetliner project and ordered work on the almost complete second prototype halted so that it could be destroyed.

Enter Howard Hughes
But with the collapse of the TCA contract, the project’s future was in doubt, even as development work continued and the Jetliner began making a series of demonstration flights. Enter Howard Hughes, billionaire industrialist and aviation pioneer. Discussions between Avro and Hughes were underway on another Avro project, the CF-100 jet fighter, for the installation of the Hughes MG-2 fire control radar in the CF-100 Mk. 4. It was suggested that the Jetliner would prove a useful tool for testing the new system, in part because its speed and service ceiling were similar to that of contemporary jet fighters, and it had sufficent room to house all the test equipment proposed by Hughes, along with a number of engineers’ stations.  The parties agreed in early 1952 that the Jetliner would be flown to Hughes’ airfield in Culver City, California for the appropriate modifications. Avro executives were pleased with this arrangement, as it would bring the Jetliner to the personal attention of Hughes himself, and his enthusiasm for new technology, especially that which was aviation-related, was well-known.

It was not long before Hughes flew the Jetliner himself and came away favorably impressed. Hughes’ interest was far from cursory; on one ocassion he grilled Jim Floyd, Avro’s Chief Engineer, on various aspects of the Jetliner’s systems and capabilities all night long, wrapping up at dawn. Hughes and Avro soon entered discussions with Convair to build the Jetliner under license for TWA, in which Hughes held a controlling interest. Convair made a detailed study of the matter and reported that with specified powerplants (Rolls Royce Nene or Pratt & Whitney J42 turbojets, both of which were available), the Jetliner could operate at the same cost per seat mile as their slower propeller-driven counterparts on the Chicago-to-New York and Chicago-to-Kansas City air routes that Hughes envisioned for it.

Uncle Sam Blocks the Plan for a Fleet of TWA Jetliners
Convair followed up with detailed report on its plan to manufacture the Jetliner, with deliveries to TWA projected to begin in May 1954, and submitted this to Hughes on August 6, 1952. Hughes and Convair then approached the U.S. government for its approval of the plan. But the U.S. government decided that all of Convair’s production capacity was needed for Convair’s commitments to the U.S. military, which took priority. In fairness, in 1952 Convair was under contract to the U.S. Air Force to develop the F-102 interceptor, a major project that was having its share of teething difficulties.  It could well be that the Pentagon disliked the idea of Convair dividing its efforts.  But it is interesting that a similarly worded directive was issued to Avro Canada by C.D. Howe one year earlier — only it was more pointed.

In a December 1951 letter to Avro Canada President Crawford Gordon, C.D. Howe, who among other duties was then Minister of Aircraft Production in Canada’s Defense Ministry, had stated: “I have heard rumors recently that you are planning to use part of the space in the Avro plant for further work on the C-102 civilian airplane, or for other work for private customers. Having in mind the colossal investment of government funds in Avro at the present time, any such use of your floor space cannot be tolerated…the C-102 is to be moved out of any useful manufacturing space in your plant and put aside until such time as the Government investment in your facilities has been brought down to a reasonable figure.”

With production of the Jetliner blocked in Canada and America alike, a remarkable, cutting-edge aircraft at least a decade ahead of its time became a footnote in history. One wonders why Howard Hughes, with all his resources, did not enlist the aid of another aircraft manufacturer.  It may have been that Hughes realized there were other political pressures that would have blocked production of the Jetliner in any event.  Regardless of the reason, the Jetliner was dead, and in a final indignity, the lone flying prototype would ultimately be dismantled.  The first American jetliner, the Boeing 367, would not take flight until 1954, five years after the Avro aircraft, and the first American jetliner to be commercially successful, the Boeing 707, would not enter service until 1958.

Construction

This was a kit that could not be rushed. It was over a year in the making and ran concurrently with at least two other projects which I completed in the interim (the Mirage F.1C and the Lockheed Orion). I made a conscious choice to build it at a leisurely pace, in part because of the dear price I paid for it — 65 Euros at Aviation Megastore, roughly $75.00 at the time including shipping, not a fortune exactly but a princely sum for what is a rather crude limited run resin kit in 1/144 scale. It can, however, be worked up into a fairly professional looking model — with patience.

It is both a rare and historic aircraft, so I was happy to pay for the privilege of getting my hands on an Avro Jetliner. It has held a fascination for me ever since I saw the movie The Arrow with Dan Ackroyd, a film about the ill-fated Avro Arrow interceptor that makes a passing reference to the Jetliner. Nearly a decade before the events in the film, the Jetliner — the first turbojet powered airliner in North America — shared a similar fate that was a harbinger of what would happen to the Arrow.

As the Jetliner is a series of cast resin pieces, some more crude than others, you begin by cleaning up the two fuselage halves. There is a fair amount of material to be sanded away from the area where the wing center section will be cemented into the bottom of the fuselage, as well as an assortment of pinholes, raised striations and other imperfections requiring puttying, sanding, and smoothing. The interior surface of the two fuselage halves where they will be cemented together is smooth as glass – I made a point to rough these surfaces up with coarse sand paper to assist adhesion when I joined them together with cyanoacrylate.

Once the fuselage halves were cemented together, work began in earnest on removing the imperfections all along the fuselage exterior surface. There were large gaps between the two halves along the ventral surface, and I filled these with a combination of Milliput and Mr. Resin Primer Surfacer by Mr. Hobby. There were similar but much smaller gaps along the dorsal surface, and these were cured with the same materials.  Next I turned to the wings, which represent the most detailed molding in the kit, as the twin pack of engine nacelles for each wing was molded as an integral part of the center section. The wings generally required less clean-up, consisting of three parts: the center section with the nacelles, and two outboard wing sections bearing engraved detail for the ailerons.

The major sanding to ensure a good fit was on the fuselage itself, for the wing center section as well as the wing tips were crisply molded.  They were not perfect, as they had their share of imperfections requiring putty and sanding, but it was minor compared to the preparation that was necessary to get the fuselage into presentable shape.  Milliput once again was used to cure any gaps, the benefit being that Milliput, once hardened and dry, nearly always adds to a kit’s structural strength — a key benefit with any resin kit. I left the tail unit until last because it was the least robust, with the elevators cast of particularly thin resin, unlike the vertical tail to which they were attached.

I decided early on that I would build the Jetliner in flight, partly because after one look at the mold’s crude treatment of the nose wheel well, I concluded it was best filled with putty and sanded smooth.  For some reason, the wheel wells for the main landing gear were molded with far greater precision, not detailed at all but impeccably neat.  This is one of those aircraft that looks a lot more aesthetically appealing in flight, anyway.  In addition, the white metal landing gear did not look especially detailed, and to top it off, no landing gear doors were provided and these would have had to be fashioned from scratch.

Painting

The Avro Jetliner’s wings, horizontal stabilizer, lower fuselage and upper engine nacelles are airbrushed in Alclad II Polished Aluminum (primed with Alclad’s Gloss Black Primer beforehand and sealed with Gloss Klear Kote afterwards). The primer stage took longest because I forgot to thin Alclad’s Gloss Black Base with alcohol to reduce its thickness, so it took the better part of a week to fully dry. The next stage of painting was the yellow flash on the fuselage, nacelles and the entire vertical surface of the tail. After re-masking as needed, I airbrushed these areas in Mr. Hobby acrylic Gloss Yellow, H329. Finally after a third re-masking came the uppermost surface of the fuselage, airbrushed in Tamiya Gloss White, X-2.

A note about Alclad Gloss Klear Kote: this is the manufacturer-recommended sealant for Alclad’s metallic paints. For some reason, they do not recommend Future floor polish or any clear lacquer other than their own. Alclad II Polished Aluminum is usually pretty shiny if not downright reflective, and I was disappointed by the somewhat dull sheen of most parts of the Jetliner’s aluminum surfaces once the Klear Kote was dry. I followed it up with a light coat of Future, with very good results.

Markings

I decided not to use the kit decals once a close examination revealed that the markings for the cabin windows were nowhere close to being in register. After an Internet search, I discovered that an excellent aftermarket set was available from Vintage Flyer Decals, Set No. VFD144-112, for a very affordable $14.99 — since this was an aftermarket set for a limited run kit, I’d expected to pay $5.00 to $10.00 more. These decals are of very high quality and I strongly recommend them. They depict the lone prototype of the Jetliner about midway through its brief career, complete with the authentic registration letters and Avro Canada logos.

Conclusion

This kit was many, many months in the making, but the end result was quite rewarding, not the least because of its enormous historical significance to commercial aviation. If you are not afraid to tackle resin kits, I highly recommend it.

Reference

The Avro Canada C102 Jetliner by Jim Floyd; Copyright 1986 The Boston Mills Press, Edin, Ontario.