Prior to 1939, as a part of National Steel Car of Hamilton, the concern was one of a number of "shadow factories" set up in Canada to produce British aircraft designs far out of range of enemy attack.

[2] National Steel Car produced Avro Anson trainers, Handley Page Hampden bombers, Hawker Hurricane fighters and Westland Lysander army cooperation aircraft.

National Steel Car Corporation of Malton, Ontario was formed in 1938 and renamed Victory Aircraft in 1942 when the Canadian government took over ownership and management of the main plant.

[3] Bob Leckie of the Royal Canadian Air Force was a strong advocate over many years, for a wholly domestic "end-to-end" industry, that would design and build aircraft (and their engines) in Canada.

However, the Department of National Defence, according to Avro's Roy Dobson, gave "a cold reception" to doing any more than the fabrication and assembly of aircraft and engines under licence.

[2] From the outset, the company invested in research and development and embarked on an ambitious design program with a jet engine and a jet-powered fighter and airliner on the drawing boards.

By 1958, A. V. Roe Canada Ltd. was an industrial giant with over 50,000 employees in a far-flung empire of 44 companies involved in coal mining, steel making, railway rolling stock, aircraft and aero-engine manufacturing, as well as computers and electronics.

By the time of the cancellation of the Arrow and Iroquois, aircraft-related production amounted to approximately 40% of the company's activities with 60% industrial and commercial.

It was considered an interim aircraft between the CF-100 and the more advanced C-104 project, and as such development did not progress beyond creation of a full-size wooden mock-up and separate cockpit.

[14] In 1952, two versions of a design for a delta-wing fighter known as C104 were submitted to the Royal Canadian Air Force: the single engine C104/4 and twin-engined C104/2.

Many "firsts" were included, such as fly-by-wire technology, and simultaneous development of a new weapons fire control system and the advanced Orenda Iroquois engine.

The sudden cancellation of the Arrow project by the Canadian government on 20 February 1959 led to a massive corporate downsizing and an attempt to further diversify.

Also proposed was a heat shield forming an ablative insulation made from carbon fibre or fibreglass in a honeycomb matrix, later used on NASA's Mercury and Gemini programs.

Images of the design show revised engine intakes projecting out from the fuselage to swallow the supersonic shock wave to reduce drag and increase thrust.

[17] The revised intakes of the Mark 3 were retained, but with smaller Curtiss-Wright ramjets, without the canards and nose extension, and with a titanium skin instead of a heat shield.

In its intense exploration of radical aeronautical design ideas and development of new technology, as well as security, the SPG resembled Lockheed's "Skunk Works".

[2] Design reports from early 1952 outlined key features of a new gas turbine propelled engine and disc-shaped vehicle: an inner disc with central eye intake with an outer, counter-rotating disc, with rear-directed thrust nozzles, later refined to include controlling the aeroplane by thrust vectoring and stabilizing the vehicle by having the large engine rotor act as a gyroscope.

[19] The aircraft was designed for vertical take-off and landing which was thought to be hazardous and required an electronic flight-stabilization system, then not-yet available.

[20] In late 1954, the USAF purchased the development rights to this saucer-shaped VTOL vehicle powered by more conventional engines than, and designed to avoid many of the problems with, the Y-1.

The design included eight Armstrong Siddeley Viper turbojet engines, a very large centre rotor/impeller with Lundstrom compressor turbines, with the cockpit mounted in the top/centre.

[21] Avro also decided to internally fund development of a radial-flow gas turbine engine vehicle, designated PV-704, which proposed no central impeller or exhaust, but rather a large spinning turbo-disc directing all thrust to the outer rim.

Both Avrocars were on public display, one in Building 22 of the Smithsonian Paul E. Garber facility, the other at the U.S. Army Transportation Museum, Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Developed by the Advanced Projects Group, a June 1958 report by Avro's Engineering Department described a Space Threshold Vehicle intended to "get a man into the threshold of space and recover him, flying back through the corridor", where winged flight was possible between maximum altitude that could sustain lift from a winged vehicle and maximum tolerable structural temperature.

[24] Avro's computer capacities provided capability in developing theories and methods similar to modern three-dimensional modeling of fluid dynamics.

The company continued building jet engines, under licence, for the Royal Canadian Air Force from Avro and Canadair in the 1960s.

In its first year, the plant produced more than a million precision forged turbine and compressor blades for Avro's Orenda engine.

[25] In 1954, the Canadian government decided to sell the plant and Avro Canada agreed to purchase it to maintain production of the Orenda and Iroquois engines.

[2] This facility located on the north end of Toronto Pearson International Airport (the village of Malton was incorporated into the City of Mississauga in 1974), was subsequently owned and operated by several others: By the late 1990s, Hawker Siddeley Canada had been diminished into a holding company after divesting itself of almost everything other than its pension fund.

One of Hawkery Siddeley Canada's last aerospace concerns the aircraft gas turbine repair and overhaul company Standard Aero of Winnipeg was spun off to British Tire and Rubber at the time (it is now part of Dubai Aerospace Enterprises, an international corporation with interests in aircraft leasing, MRO and aviation IT solutions).

[30] Some of the brickwork of the site's historic main "C" assembly building, next to the high-bay doors that the Arrow, Jetliner, CF-100 and thousands of other aircraft and major assemblies emerged from, was retained by the former Canadian Air and Space Museum in Downsview, Toronto, for future use alongside a number of their Avro displays, which include a full-scale replica of the CF-105 Arrow.