Word: columbium
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Violent Reaction. U.S. military production desperately needs titanium as a substitute for columbium, a rare metal which makes steel fit to stand the 1,600º hellfire inside a jet-engine combustion chamber. Almost all the world's supply of columbium ore comes from primitive mines in Nigeria; the U.S. was able to get only 1,727,000 Ibs. last year. Since world production of columbium cannot be stepped up for another three years, the U.S. has turned to titanium. Luckily, it is one of the most abundant minerals in the earth's crust, and the U.S. abounds...
...production has not even doubled. In 1951, it will not exceed 5,000 planes (about the 1939 rate) v. World War II's peak of 96,318 (see chart). Engines are the bottleneck, and there are two main reasons: shortages of machine tools and of critical metals (cobalt, columbium and tungsten). Moreover, engines are so much bigger and more complicated than World War II's that it takes more time, more skill and three times more labor to build them...
...gain in engine production will come then. But the crucial test is whether, by the time these plants come into production, suitable substitutes can be developed for the critical metals now desperately short. If they cannot, the engine program will fail because there is not enough nickel, columbium, etc. in sight now to build the engines scheduled...
Pratt & Whitney has already made big gains in solving the problem.lt has worked out high-alloy mixes which eliminate the use of columbium completely in the J-48. It has also reduced the use of other critical metals to a mere fraction of a pound per engine. Others have developed substitutes which permit existing supplies of the critical metals to be stretched 15 times farther...
Without any precise goals set for war production, the Government began to cut back civilian production by stepping up the stockpiling of such vital materials as cobalt (for radar), copper, columbium (for jet motors) and aluminum. Since the size of the stockpiles is a military secret, no one except the stockpiles knew whether they were too big or too small. But they had already brought about some fairly deep cuts in civilian production-and would obviously bring many more...