The Immortal Beaver. Sean Rossiter

      KA 117 was one of 338 solid-nosed, eight-gun FB.26s built at Downsview. These versatile machines could also carry 2,000 Ib of bombs. By early 1945 many Canadian-built Mosquitos had logged 50 sorties over Europe. Photographed in England in November 1945, KA 117 had been converted to a dual-control trainer. PETER M. BOWERS

      The first Canadian-built Mosquito, RAF serial KB300, flew on September 23, 1942. One month later, Geoffrey de Havilland Jr. demonstrated it at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, the USAAF’s flight test centre; then at Boiling Field, Washington D.C., handy to the Pentagon; and then, that December, at the U.S. Naval Air Station at San Diego. The original Mk.IV pattern aircraft from Hatfield, DK 287, was then made available for intensive evaluation at Wright Field in March 1943.

      For the most part, despite Hap Arnold’s enthusiasm, the Americans were unimpressed. Most of the American aircraft industry had long since ceased building with wood. The most influential American Mosquito exponent was Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, who had flown a Mk.IV on reconnaissance in North Africa. By the time the Americans saw potential in a fighter-bomber that was both faster and longer-legged than their P-38, production at DHC, the North American source, was falling far behind schedule. Lee Murray returned from Hatfield in November 1942, this time to stay.

      Garratt was able, nevertheless, to address an upbeat message at 1942’s year-end to “the DH Family,” as he habitually referred to the company, reporting that during the past year “we have produced 362 Ansons, 550 Tiger Moths, overhauled 119 aircraft and 209 engines; all of this on top of the development work on the Mosquito.”⁸ That same December, though, only four DHC-built Mosquitoes took to the air.

      The problems were not entirely of DHC’s or Garratt’s making. Twice batches of drawings documenting Mosquito variants were lost at sea. Parts from England were being used to substitute for non-arrivals from subcontractors; when Boeing of Canada was late with horizontal stabilizers, or tailplanes, John Slaughter at Downsview built a couple of sets to keep the project moving. Although the original contract with Britain’s Ministry of Aircraft Production called for Mk.XX bombers, the contract was altered to include fighter-bombers, with six-gun noses and different windshields, among other changes. Downsview was also required to engineer its own dual-control trainer version. Then yet another change in the order occurred: aircraft on the line were to be converted as F-8 USAAF recon machines. (Only forty F-8s were ever delivered.) By mid-April 1943 only a dozen Mosquitoes had been produced, with fourteen more on the line.

      The aspect of the Mosquito production gap that was unquestionably internal was the issue of who would run a single production line amalgamated from the Tiger Moth (Plant One, under Bill Calder and Frank Warren) and Anson (Plant Two, under George Burlison), with Dick Moffett as overall production manager. Harry Povey’s status put him in charge of “all production departments,” but neither Moffett nor Burlison approved of his production methods—in particular, the wood jigs that wing man Bob McIntyre of Massey-Harris had already refused to work with.⁹

      Meanwhile, the demand for Mosquitoes grew, Hotson notes, “daily.” Ottawa was becoming concerned. Ralph P. Bell was a dollar-a-year man installed as Director-General of the Department of Munitions and Supply on whose desk the buck for aircraft production in Canada stopped.

      Bell sent his assistant to look the operation over and—surprise!—found three different men claiming to be in charge of production. In reply, the DHC board of directors expressed its confidence in Garratt’s management. Bell told the directors he was holding them esponsible for the production holdups.

      Two weeks later, lawyer J. Grant Glassco, a government-appointed director of DHC since early 1940, reported his assessment of DHC’S board to Bell. The two men went to see C.D. Howe, Minister of Munitions. Howe, the most powerful man in Canada at the time, appointed Glassco controller of de Havilland Canada by a secret order-in-council June 8, 1943.¹⁰ Phil Garratt was out.

      Howe brought in as DHC works manager a thin, intense ramrod from his home riding of Fort William, Bill Stewardson. Stewardson “just lived, ate and slept aircraft production.”¹¹ He had spent six years with Canadian Car and Foundry at the Lakehead, most of that time as shop superintendent on CCF’s licensed Hawker Hurricane production program. Soon after, Dick Moffett and George Burlison resigned to take other positions in the war effort. That October, Harry Povey was asked to return to England.

      It took until the fall of 1943 before Downsview’s subcontractors other than Massey-Harris began to produce reliably. The events of that year were hard on morale, and a series of bitterly-fought elections brought the United Auto Workers into the company as bargaining agents. During December 1943, Mosquito production hit twenty per month for the first time.

      So popular was Phil Garratt with DHC’S oldtimers that his departure was not announced to the workers for nearly a year. In the May-June 1944 issue of The de Havilland Mosquito, which appeared ten months after he was replaced by Grant Glassco, an item appeared on the second-last page headlined “CHANGE IN MANAGEMENT.” That same month of June 1944 Mosquito production was up to fifty-one, the figure Garratt had agreed to be turning out at the beginning of 1943.