March 25, 1956
Avro Canada Facility Malton (Present Day Pearson International Airport)
Representatives from the RCAF, RAF, Israeli Air Force, RSAF, and JASDF are sitting in chairs on the tarmac, chitchatting and enjoying the day. Even so, their eyes were all fixed on the plane sitting a few hundred feet away. RL-201 was being readied for the first ever flight of the Avro Arrow. Chief Test Pilot S/L Janusz Żurakowski was getting ready for this momentous event. Outside of the fences, there were crowds of people and reporters, awaiting the sound of the J57 turbojets and the sight of Canada's newest interceptor in the sky.
At 11:09:28 AM, the Arrow Taxis onto Runway 05, with the sound of its engines causing cheers from the crowd.
At 11:10:47 AM, RL-201 is given the go-ahead from Air Traffic Control. The Aircraft's engines roar even louder, and the aircraft begins to accelerate. In the rear seat, one of the senior engineers of Avro Canada was monitoring the dials and readouts. As the plane accelerated, S/L Żurakowski started to pull up on the joystick.
The Aircraft employed the world's first "Fly-by-wire" system, using transducers to detect pilot input and send signals to an electronic control servo that operated the hydraulic systems which move the flight control surfaces. The aircraft also had artificial feedback, an innovation that was lost on the competition until decades later.
The plane gently pitched up, the nose almost completely off the ground. Soon, the rest of the plane left the runway, and a legend took its first flight. The aircraft made some basic maneuvers, a few tests, before landing on the ground to the jubilation of the spectators. The top brass were stunned, amazed that a plane made in almost record time, had that level of performance. The head of the RAF dropped his cigar when the plane flew past, the roar of its engines permeating the airport. After the flight, he looked at the Relations officer from Avro and said, "My Friend, you've got a winner here. I don't know how the hell is Britain going to match that!"
Tidbit from wikipedia:
The Arrow's thin wing required aviation's first 4,000
lb/in2 (28 MPa) hydraulic system to supply enough force to the control surfaces, while using small actuators and piping. A rudimentary
fly-by-wire system was employed, in which the pilot's input was detected by a series of pressure-sensitive transducers in the stick, and their signal was sent to an electronic control servo that operated the valves in the hydraulic system to move the various flight controls. This resulted in a lack of control feel; because the control stick input was not mechanically connected to the hydraulic system, the variations in back-pressure from the flight control surfaces that would normally be felt by the pilot could no longer be transmitted back into the stick. To re-create a sense of feel, the same electronic control box rapidly responded to the hydraulic back-pressure fluctuations and triggered actuators in the stick, making it move slightly; this system, called "artificial feel", was also a first.