Overlooked: James C. Floyd, 1914-2017

James C. Floyd (l) in 1996 with Owen Maynard, a fellow engineer who worked at Avro Canada and later at NASA. Chris Gainor photo

One of the most durable controversies in Canadian history surrounds the CF-105 Avro Arrow jet interceptor, which was cancelled by the government of John Diefenbaker in 1959. More than 65 years later, every time Canada needs new military jet aircraft or there are concerns about Canadian high technology, the Avro Arrow is raised in the discussion.

Despite the prominence of the Avro Arrow and many of the people involved in creating it, the person most responsible for designing and engineering the Arrow and other aircraft from Avro Canada died more than eight years ago without any notice or attention. James C. Floyd, a British engineer who spent much of his life in Canada, passed away in Ontario, likely in the Toronto area, on April 5, 2017, at age 102. We now know about his passing thanks to a researcher who found the date from official Ontario government records and posted the information a month ago in Floyd’s entry in Wikipedia.

I have written obituary articles for a number of people associated with the Arrow, and James Floyd certainly deserves recognition of his passing, even at this late date. As the man behind the successes and setbacks of Avro Canada, he is one of the most important figures in the history of Canada's aerospace industry, and his influence reaches beyond our borders.

I had many encounters with Jim starting in the 1990s when I began writing my first of two books about Avro Canada and the Arrow, focusing on the group of 32 engineers who worked at Avro for Floyd and then were hired by NASA after the Arrow was cancelled. The Avro engineers played important roles in putting the first humans on the Moon.

James Charles Floyd was born in Manchester, England, on October 20, 1914, and at a young age he began work at the A.V. Roe Company in the U.K. He earned a diploma in engineering during World War II and took part in designing wartime British aircraft at A.V. Roe. He moved to Canada and joined Avro Canada in 1946, and became Chief Engineer a few years later. At that time, Avro Canada was building the C102 Avro Jetliner and the CF-100 jet interceptor.

The CF-100 ultimately became Canada’s only jet interceptor to go into mass production, with 692 made in the 1950s. Some were sold to Belgium, and the CF-100 served in the Canadian Forces until 1981. But as jet aircraft were relatively new when it was designed, the CF-100 had to overcome a difficult development process before it went into production.

The Jetliner was the world’s second jet transport aircraft, behind only the deHavilland Comet, and well ahead of any similar American aircraft. Unfortunately, only one Jetliner was built, and despite interest from airlines in the United States, the Canadian government ordered an end to the Jetliner in an effort to focus Avro Canada’s efforts on the troubled CF-100, which was seen as a higher priority in those Cold War days.

Many people believe that the loss of the Jetliner was a bigger loss to Canada’s aviation industry than the Arrow. I suspect that Jim Floyd was one of them, since he wrote a well-illustrated book in 1986, The Avro Canada C102 Jetliner, that remains the best reference on that aircraft.

In the mid 1950s, Avro Canada and the Royal Canadian Air Force began work on the CF-105 Arrow, which was designed to fly more than twice the speed of sound, and incorporated many state-of-the-art features in its design. Its cancellation in 1959 came after only six Arrows had been built and flown, none of them equipped with the Iroquois engine designed for it. Floyd supervised the work on the Arrow as Avro Canada’s Vice President of Engineering.

Soon after the Arrow’s cancellation and the disappearance of Avro Canada and the thousands of skilled jobs that went with it, Floyd returned to the U.K., where he worked on advanced aircraft programs, including a study that helped lead to the Concorde supersonic jet transport.

As Floyd passed retirement age, he and his wife Irene returned to Canada in 1981 and settled in Toronto. At about the same time, the controversies surrounding the Arrow and the Jetliner were gaining new prominence in Canada. The first of a long series of books decrying the fate of the Arrow appeared in 1978, and in 1980, the CBC broadcast an hour-long documentary about the Arrow.

In January 1997, the CBC aired a two-part miniseries, The Arrow, starring Dan Ayckroyd as Avro Canada President Crawford Gordon, Christopher Plummer as cabinet minister George Hees, and other prominent Canadian actors playing other characters from the story of the Arrow. Nigel Bennett depicted James Floyd.

During those years, Floyd was busy responding to the many legends, both good and bad, that had arisen around the Arrow. He actively disliked the mini-series because some characters were changed for dramatic effect, notably those of test pilots Jan Zurakowski and Jack Woodman. In addition, the mini-series ended with the popular but untrue legend that one Arrow ‘got away’ from the government-ordered destruction of the six Arrows after the program cancellation.

In 1988, a group of former Avro employees founded the Aerospace Heritage Foundation of Canada after gathering for a 30th anniversary dinner for the Arrow, and Floyd assumed a prominent role in the foundation, speaking at many gatherings it held. The foundation also sponsored the fabrication of a full-scale replica of Arrow 203, which was first exhibited at the Toronto Aerospace Museum in Downsview until that museum closed in 2011. Today the Arrow replica is on display at the Canadian Air and Space Conservancy at the Edenvale Aerodrome near Wasaga Beach, Ontario.

The foundation appears to have halted operations at about the same time as Floyd passed away, which was also when many other former Avro employees also reached the end of their lives.

I last saw Floyd in 2007, when he was 93, at an event at the Toronto Aerospace Museum.

Although Floyd passed away without notice, his life is still noted in the form of the James C. Floyd Award given every year by the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada. Floyd is also enshrined in Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame in Calgary.

Floyd is also remembered in the many books written about Avro Canada and the Arrow, including two books that I have written: Arrows to the Moon: Avro’s Engineers and the Space Race (2001), and Who Killed the Avro Arrow? (2007).