Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

STOP PRESS I work for a press agency in Northampton and I've just been told that a certain GAW plc has been bought by Unilever for an undisclosed sum.

The details are to be announced later today but it's expected to make the national news.

Unilever are more famous for making detergents say they believe they can wash the crap off anything.

Apparently there is a large cross over between margarine and orks.

Nurgle is not gonna be happy about this.

April Fools/10

Obvious troll is obvious.

Roll up, roll up.

It's an april fools, but if you want proof of peoples stupidity look at my own country and the Avro Arrow. An extremely advanced airplane that would have jump started another jet for out country better than what we have and made tons of money for us. It was completed and then a train/bus/civilian aircraft company got all of their assets and specialized military workers, destroyed the two finished planes, and as much of the work as it could find.

It wasn't an april fools. -_-

Learn from us stupid Canadians what not to do world. Please.

 Xerics wrote:
Obvious troll is obvious.

Hey I'm no Troll!

( Hang on Isn't it Trolling to say it's Trolling? ^^)

*Looks at Date posted*
GG OP
*Waits for someone to actaully believe this*

 Gamgee wrote:
It's an april fools, but if you want proof of peoples stupidity look at my own country and the Avro Arrow. An extremely advanced airplane that would have jump started another jet for out country better than what we have and made tons of money for us. It was completed and then a train/bus/civilian aircraft company got all of their assets and specialized military workers, destroyed the two finished planes, and as much of the work as it could find.

It wasn't an april fools. -_-

Learn from us stupid Canadians what not to do world. Please.

It wasn't "Canadian stupidity", it was one man's gutlessness who wouldn't stand up to the ******-off Americans who'd gotten their collective superiority complex put in its place for once, because lowly little Canada had managed to build what they (and the Soviets) couldn't.

Can we have more details about this Canadian story, please ? What was the ariplane's name ? Curious to know more.

 godardc wrote:
Can we have more details about this Canadian story, please ? What was the ariplane's name ? Curious to know more.

If you'd really like to know, the quickest way to tell you is start from the very beginning: once upon a time they didn't have ICBMs. They had to drop nukes. Olde Skool.

Back in the last 50s The Russian Tupolev TU-95 was the Daddy. It was an enormous plane made in 1952 and it flew so high conventional NATO aircraft could not climb high enough fast enough to shoot it down before it left Russian airspace and dropped nuclear bombs on America.

Contrary to popular belief the fastest way from the USA to USSR isn't across Europe but across the North Pole: namely via Canada.

Canada wanted to make an aircraft that could get high enough fast enough to intercept this new breed of Tu95 (aka "Bear") the Canadians developed the Avro Arrow the Americans developed the F104 and the British developed the (truly jaw droppingly incredible) SR.177. Which was 40% space ship and yet worked. The American one was rubbish the British and Canadian ones were not.

Trouble is the Americans were the primary target. In order to secure funding focus on improving their F104 and remove temptation from their own Senate and House of representatives the US Air Force covertly forced the UK and Canada to shut down their competition on the basis that the US A would be the one doing the real fighting anyway if a cold war erupted.

Oddly (or as a stroke of genius) the British and Canadians agreed that Americans F104 should be allowed to remain in the lead and allowed to then defend them (for free) and closed their highly exceptional solutions overnight.

Canadians, of course, were highly excited about the prospect of nuclear weapons flying over our country in large numbers, and were not at all concerned about that situation.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
It's an april fools, but if you want proof of peoples stupidity look at my own country and the Avro Arrow. An extremely advanced airplane that would have jump started another jet for out country better than what we have and made tons of money for us. It was completed and then a train/bus/civilian aircraft company got all of their assets and specialized military workers, destroyed the two finished planes, and as much of the work as it could find.

It wasn't an april fools. -_-

Learn from us stupid Canadians what not to do world. Please.

It wasn't "Canadian stupidity", it was one man's gutlessness who wouldn't stand up to the ******-off Americans who'd gotten their collective superiority complex put in its place for once, because lowly little Canada had managed to build what they (and the Soviets) couldn't.

Bullcrap.


The USAF and DoD didn't have a problem with the Arrow program. All the crap spouted about underhanded U.S. involvement is just a conspiracy theory among some Canadians, who don't care for their cousins to the south, and like to blame us for everything. The USAF only had concerns about the compatibility of the Arrow with U.S. systems after the NORAD agreement was signed ( the Arrow incorporated unique native and British technologies in it's systems). Other than that, it wasn't an issue. In fact, the United States was prepared to supply compatible equipment for the Arrow and allow use of Edwards AFB for testing.

There was strong opposition to the Arrow Program among Canadian Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff going back to 1953. The Diefenbaker government wanted to kill the program, but Avro Canada's parent company, A.V. Roe Canada had it's tentacles in a huge portion of Canada's domestic industry and had massive political clout.

What really killed the program finally was fears of a missile gap with the communist bloc, and Canada being able to afford the Arrow and still maintain it's commitment to the NORAD agreement by instituting the SAGE system and Bomarc missile system. The fact that the DoD killed it's own advanced interceptor programs, and Britain's notorious 1957 Defense White Paper, also had some influence on the termination of the Arrow program.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

ConanMan wrote:

 godardc wrote:
Can we have more details about this Canadian story, please ? What was the ariplane's name ? Curious to know more.

If you'd really like to know, the quickest way to tell you is start from the very beginning: once upon a time they didn't have ICBMs. They had to drop nukes. Olde Skool.

Back in the last 50s The Russian Tupolev TU-95 was the Daddy. It was an enormous plane made in 1952 and it flew so high conventional NATO aircraft could not climb high enough fast enough to shoot it down before it left Russian airspace and dropped nuclear bombs on America.

Contrary to popular belief the fastest way from the USA to USSR isn't across Europe but across the North Pole: namely via Canada.

Canada wanted to make an aircraft that could get high enough fast enough to intercept this new breed of Tu95 (aka "Bear") the Canadians developed the Avro Arrow the Americans developed the F104 and the British developed the (truly jaw droppingly incredible) SR.177. Which was 40% space ship and yet worked. The American one was rubbish the British and Canadian ones were not.

Trouble is the Americans were the primary target. In order to secure funding focus on improving their F104 and remove temptation from their own Senate and House of representatives the US Air Force covertly forced the UK and Canada to shut down their competition on the basis that the US A would be the one doing the real fighting anyway if a cold war erupted.

Oddly (or as a stroke of genius) the British and Canadians agreed that Americans F104 should be allowed to remain in the lead and allowed to then defend them (for free) and closed their highly exceptional solutions overnight.

The SR.177 was killed by the recommendations in the 1957 Defense White Paper that proposed that missile technology made manned aircraft obsolete. This sounded good during a time when U.K. defense spending was getting smaller in scale (despite the fact that previous RAF manned interceptors, such as the Javelin, were mostly funded by the United States under the Mutual Defense Assistance Act's MAP revisions). Only the Lightning survived the cull because the program was so far along, nobody wanted to kill it. The United States didn't have anything to do with that. More conspiracy theories.

The F-104 was a dead horse before it got started. The USAF didn't want the thing, and it had a short service period in the Air Force, being an interim platform until the F-106 came online. The F-101 and F-106 were found to be superior as interceptors, and met the needs of NORAD and the U.S. Air Defense Command. Thus, what Starfighters didn't get passed off to the ANG , were sold overseas. USAF interests in the Starfighter ended there. There was no elaborate conspiracy by the military to pawn off the F-104 on Britain and Canada.

The only real bit of dirty play related to the F-104 were underhanded deals between Lockheed and friendly governments known as the "Deal of the Century", and it didn't just involve the Starfighter. Lockheed got busted when the Federal Government bailed them out in 1971, and the Government Emergency Loan Guarantee Board started finding juicy stuff on shady deals made under the State Department's nose. This led to the Church Sub-Committee uncovering Lockheed's bribery of foreign officials between between the late 1950's through the early '70's, totaling 22 million dollars. Canada and Britain were not among the countries listed as being involved in the scandal.

would this really be the worse thing for the company? any idiot knowing anything about a game (or not) would see the need for balance among models and a large corporation like unilever might decide they want to sell more models using capitalist techniques of.... supply and demand... realize they can make more models, lower the prices and then sell even more models. That and distribution would be better than the current GW system, it would pretty much have to be.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:


Bullcrap.

Well If it is, please explain why everyone still says there was massive corruption, risking far too much. Bud when the stink lasts still after more than 50 years.. it is a stink.. no believed it wasn't dodgy then and they still don't. .. the German orders .. the millions in bribes there.. the lack of explanation (nothing to do with missiles was ever mentioned) and the fact that you regurgitated what was fed then at the time? Despite all the German stuff.

ConanMan wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:


Bullcrap.

Well If it is, please explain why everyone still says there was massive corruption, risking far too much. Bud when the stink lasts still after more than 50 years.. it is a stink.. no believed it wasn't dodgy then and they still don't. .. the German orders .. the millions in bribes there.. the lack of explanation (nothing to do with missiles was ever mentioned) and the fact that you regurgitated what was fed then at the time? Despite all the German stuff.

Not everyone is saying that. And just because people say it, doesn't make it true.

Talk of conspiracy tends to last longer than you realize. People have been accusing the Rothchild banking dynasty of controlling the world through economic manipulation, and using anecdotal evidence to support their claims, since the 19th Century. Doesn't mean any of it is true.

The same thing with the whole Arrow debacle. Talk of conspiracy has been going on since the early 1960's, when Canada ended up procuring the CF-101, and licensing the CF-104 for joint production between Lockheed and Canadair. The truth is far more mundane and involved Canadian politics, and people exercising 20/20 hindsight, at the time. Not some conspiracy by "THE EBBIL 'MURICANS". In fact, if the Arrow program had been completed, and the equipment/facility deal with the DoD had gone through, the CF-105 would have been a huge boon to NORAD. The United States had no vested interest in seeing the Arrow fail, and a lot to gain by it entering service.

The "Deal of the Century" scandal with Lockheed involved the Germans, Italians, Dutch, and Japanese, who were looking for new fighters, and among the offerings were American aircraft from Lockheed's competitors. If the Federal Government was involved in some sort of conspiracy to undermine allied domestic aerospace industries, in order to pawn off a SINGLE tempermental lightweight point defense fighter on these countries, then you wouldn't have had other U.S. companies hawking their wares. It was a scandal between a underhanded private corporation and crooked foreign officials. Nothing more.

The Starfighter deals with Canada, Pakistan, and Taiwan, from all indications, were above board and were not part of the "Deal of the Century" scandal. It focused on countries that were undecided on the F-104, involved grey-area commissions agreements between Lockheed and Saudi Arabian freelance arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi , and the crooked L-1011 deal with All Nippon Airways via the Yakuza.

After killing the Arrow, some in the Canadian government, unofficially, acknowledged that there was still a potential Soviet bomber threat, and killing the Arrow program was short sighted. But by then, in the interests of preventing technology leaks, the gutting of the program had been thorough. The Canadians had no choice but to go with the lower cost proposals from the United States that would still meet RCAF needs, and mission obligation to NORAD.

This is by far the most informative April Fools thread I've seen today.