McNaughton, General Andrew

McNaughton, General Andrew (1887–1966),Canadian electrical engineering scientist who devised new artillery techniques during the First World War and became, according to one British officer, ‘probably the best and most scientific gunner in any army in the world’. After the war he remained in the Canadian Army and in 1929 was promoted maj-general and appointed chief of the Canadian General Staff, a post he held until 1935 when he became president of the National Research Council. From December 1939 to December 1943 he was C-in-C Canadian troops in Europe whose size during that time grew from divisional to army strength. McNaughton maintained that his Canadian forces should fight together and disagreed with the piecemeal detachment of some of them to fight in the Italian campaign. This view brought him into conflict with the Canadian minister of national defence, Layton Ralston, and when both the CIGS, General Brooke, and McNaughton's immediate superior, General Paget, declared him unsuitable to command troops in the field he had little alternative but to resign. He returned to Canada and retired in October 1944 with the rank of general. The prime minister, Mackenzie King, wanted him to be the country's first Canadian governor-general but when the conscription crisis arose (see Canada, 3) he offered him Ralston's position in the cabinet. He was sworn in on 2 November 1944 but was unable to find the volunteers needed for service overseas and limited conscription had to be introduced anyway, to which the electorate reacted by rejecting him at a by-election. He also failed to win a seat in the general election of June 1945 and resigned that August.