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Eight Hours at Sea. Howe's impatience led him into a dangerous spot in late 1940. When war orders were delayed by the reluctance of British firms to release patent rights, Howe sailed for Britain on the liner Western Prince to break the bottleneck. In the North Sea the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. One of Howe's chief aides, Gordon Scott, was killed at his side. Howe and other survivors drifted for eight hours in a lifeboat before being rescued. At the dockside in Britain, a newsman asked Howe whether his whole life had flashed before him as he faced death. "Hell no," barked Howe. "I was too damned busy bailing the boat." Howe landed, apparently unshaken by his experience, went straight after what he had come for and got the orders he wanted.
During the next four years, Howe geared up the high-speed expansion that is still going on in Canadian industry. New factories were built to turn out more than $10 billion worth of guns, planes, ships and shells. Canadian aircraft output rose to 4,000 a year. The shipyards took on 122,000 men and built more than 8,000 ships.
Uranium for Bombs. From the outset, Canada was a close partner with the U.S. in the atomic-bomb program. Howe took over the subArctic Eldorado mine and stepped up its output to provide uranium for the first bombs. His production skill and quick thinking won him high regard in Washington, even though he was a notably tough bargainer for Canada. "What a quarterback C. D. Howe would have made," said F.D.R. "If one play fails, he always has another one up his sleeve."
Howe's gift for improvisation was taxed to the limit when the war ended. Canada had gone into the struggle a raw-material-producing nation, and had emerged from it with a fully manned industrial machine dominating the country's economy. Since the machine was largely government-owned, the government had to decide whether to shut it down, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless, or try to keep it running for peacetime purposes. Prophets of doom were sure that the factories would be deserted, that a heartbreaking depression would sweep the country. Taking over as Minister of Reconstruction, Howe thought otherwise. Said he: "If there is any country in the world where unrestrained optimism is justified, that country is Canada."
Propellers into Boats. One by one, Howe carefully sold off the government-owned plants to private industries that could run them. A Winnipeg factory that had been turning out airplane propellers switched to making trappers' boats. Aircraft plants began producing Canadian-designed planes: Beavers, the Avro Jetliner, and an all-weather jet fighter, the CF-100. In Quebec City, 140 acres of factories were converted to a privately owned industrial center. By 1948, practically all the government plants, except some unconvertible explosives factories and the $75 million Polymer synthetic rubber plant at Sarnia, Ont, had been sold. The explosives plants are useful now in the rearmament program; the Polymer plant has been earning a steady profit for the government since 1944.