Arrow Again

I love this quote from the CBC archives:

At 9:52 a.m. on March 25, 1958, Arrow RL-201 roars into the skies above Malton for the Avro Arrow's first test flight. Three kilometres below, all non-essential Avro staff pour out of the plant to watch their plane circle overhead. Some 35 minutes later, the Arrow touches down and comes to a halt, braking parachutes trailing behind. Test pilot Janusz Zurakowski, who is given a hero's welcome, complains only that the cockpit has no clock.

I've read some books on the Arrow, and many included excerpts from logs that had survived the mass destruction, and many had included interviews with the pilots who all survived those days. The massive undertaking that was the Arrow was incredible in so many ways. New materials, new design processes, new contruction processes. And still, the first flight of the Arrow, reportedly, had only 4 non-critical switches written up as malfunctioning in the snag sheets. That's something to be proud of to this day.