Aluminum Spot

Along with its many other ills, the U. S. defense program last week suffered from elephantiasis. Like the $12,000,000,000 already voted, and additional billions soon to be voted, defense was too big to be seen whole. More contracts for more munitions, more factories, more shoes, more everything; an amorphous new Navy, measured in hundreds of thousands of non-existent tons; a new Army with millions of men as yet uncalled, unhoused, untrained, in scores of unfinished cantonments--all these were paper monsters, as vast and vague as the future itself. Still lacking was a point of focus--a fact, an incident, a report sharp enough to be seen, simple enough to be grasped.

Unhappily for defense (and for the millions who worried about it), most of the points of focus were in places where something was wrong. Many things were indeed wrong with the hastily conceived, prodigiously swollen, still disorganized defense program. But not everything was wrong.

The lag in aircraft and engine production was easier to see than the intricacies of such production, the technical strivings to make better planes and make them faster. Delayed Army camps made headlines, exposing stupidities and mistakes; the camps that ran on schedule were as unnoticed as the majors, colonels, contractors, carpenters who somehow surmounted Army bureaucracy, bad weather, bad unions, bad luck, and got their particular jobs done on time. Many a "lag" was in fact no lag in actual production or planning, but a confession that somebody had promised the impossible.

Collared Bottles. One point of focus last week was on the U. S. aluminum supply. This spot gleamed like a skillet in the sun. As usual, 1) something was wrong, 2) the immediate point was a small spot on a large fact. The fact: the U. S. must have more aluminum (for airplanes, engines, ships, trucks, many & many another defense item) than it has ever before produced.

What people actually saw was a statement about aluminum. Said tiny, independent Northrop Aircraft Inc.'s General Manager Lamotte T. Cohu (in Los Angeles): "There simply isn't enough aluminum available. . . . [It is] bound to affect other aircraft concerns." Mr. Cohu was explaining why he had just cut his factory working day from 20 to 16 hours (in two shifts). His explanation shortly stirred up a rumpus.

Sensitive to such reports were two potent but obscure brothers: Edward K. and Arthur V. Davis, respectively president of Aluminium Ltd. of Canada and board chairman of Aluminum Co. of America, which has a near-monopoly of the production and fabrication of aluminum in the U. S. and Canada. Also touchy was Defense Commissioner Edward R. Stettinius. Reason: instead of trying to stimulate emergency competition, he has preferred to recognize the facts of aluminum life, deal with ALCOA for defense.

The Brothers Davis kept their customary silence. A subordinate barked that the trouble, if any, was not with the aluminum supply but with little Northrop's inability to plan its orders, stock up in advance. Commissioner Stettinius harshly denounced Northrop for reporting "shortages which do not exist," declared that the company had already resumed a full working schedule. Mr. Stettinius was less explicit when he said: "[There are] no serious shortages in aluminum . . . now required for national defense. Certain temporary delays in delivery will doubtless occur. ..." That ALCOA could supply defense demands without curtailing its ordinary commercial business, Mr. Stettinius noticeably failed to promise. Guns already had priority over butter knives.

If a sufficient supply were only a matter of extracting aluminum from bauxite ore, Mr. Stettinius would not have had to hedge so carefully. Raw aluminum is just the starter: the basic metal must be alloyed, then shaped into different sheets, forgings, castings, etc. for each of aluminum's thousand-&-one uses. Aluminum Co. of America thus may have to supply one kind of tubing for an airplane wing strut, another for the landing gear, yet another for the rudder. Up to now the company has borne this cross with profit and equanimity, has also managed to retain its corner on most of the preliminary fabrication.

Aluminum's quirks by last week had produced some very special, very tight bottlenecks in aircraft production. To do its fabricating job on ALCOA schedule, ALCOA demanded orders far in advance of delivery, frankly declined to promise prompt action on short-term orders. Well-run, well-financed aircraft and engine companies presumably had the brains to plan ahead, the money to keep big aluminum stocks on hand for current use. But, as the U. S. aircraft industry is at present organized, long-term supply alone simply did not fill the bill. Even the biggest companies (Boeing, Douglas, Curtiss-Wright, et al.) had a lot to learn about mass production and mass planning. So did the Army, the Navy and the British, whose frequent (and often necessary) changes in specification forced the manufacturers to alter their aluminum orders, further delayed delivery by ALCOA. Many a peewee aircraft maker was still in industrial kindergarten, where ALCOA was bound to look more like an arrogant giant than a beneficent mentor.

Ordinary, anxious citizens could only conclude that in aluminum-for-aircraft, as in many another weedy sector of U. S. defense, the principal bottlenecks wear collars.

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