PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY, Ont. -- A four-week submarine mission has begun in Lake Ontario to find nine models of the Avro Arrow -- the advanced Canadian jet fighter that was controversially cancelled in 1959.
An autonomous underwater vehicle from a company called Kraken Sonar Inc. has been busy exploring an area just off Point Petre in Ontario's Prince Edward County -- where the missing free-flight prototypes are believed to be -- since 9:30 a.m. Friday.
The expedition dubbed Raise the Arrow is being led by John Burzynski, head of OEX Recovery Group Inc., which created the search-and-recovery project as part of Canada 150 celebrations and in collaboration with several Canadian mining companies.
Burzynski says a five-person crew is following the programmable submarine on a boat to make sure no one navigates over it.
Richard Mayne, director of the Royal Canadian Air Force History and Heritage, which provided research for the project, says the Avro Arrow left many Canadians with a sense of "what if" when the all-Canadian aircraft program was shut down by the federal government.
If the test models, which are an eighth of the size of the full CF-105 Arrow, are recovered, they will find new homes at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa and the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ont.
