 Now facing the nation is how to produce in extraordinary quantities a light, tough, silvery metal known in one form or another to every man, woman and child in America. Aluminum. Once precious and rare as gold, aluminum today is precious for another reason. This pig aluminum, first drawn off as molten metal from huge parts, soon will be transformed into the bodies and wings and parts of engines of the planes we're sending from factories into the skies. To build the air power of a nation racing now against time, it's meant we read a grim lesson. Only yesterday the world's greatest producer of aluminum ore was France. Next came Hungary and Italy and Yugoslavia and Greece. Now over these vessel states we trace the march of conquest. For the conqueror no longer buys, he takes. But out of the west, in Dutch and British Vienna in South America, lie vast and rich deposits of aluminum ore. In this hemisphere are the Bauxite mines from which come three quarters of all the ore we use for United States production of aluminum. Nearly 50 American ships, some old, some new, and others building night and day in our shipyards are hauling Bauxite from the shores of our neighbor continent to the docks of our Gulf and Atlantic ports. Relentlessly we must guard these vital lifelines of supply. Without Bauxite, we have no aluminum. Without aluminum, we have no wings. Without wings, we have no defense. Plam shell buckets over conveyors to growing storage piles, the Bauxite flows. Most abundant of all metallic elements in the Earth's crust, yet never is aluminum found in pure metallic form. And so we must break the Bauxite down. Shortages in our aluminum supply are the result primarily of the lack of plant facilities for producing the finished metal. In order to process the enormous amounts of aluminum we need, we are feverishly building new structures side by side with the old. We are throwing up factories where cornfields flourished a few months ago. We are bearing down on a construction job that sometimes would be in itself a major achievement. Chemical solution. At regular intervals the operator weighs charges of Bauxite and lime into which a stream of caustic soda liquor is carried. This after process at high temperatures removes impurities and speeds the chemical changes. Red mud is washed away and the liquor flows on beneath through filter presses and coolers until eventually it is precipitated in great tanks five stories high. In these giant kettles and corns, chemical solutions are working slowly to develop those qualities and properties which have helped make aluminum the outstanding 20th century metal blinds lightness with strength. That's why it is indispensable for the manufacture of aircraft and has been used for countless purposes in industry. When we were building only a small number of aircraft, we could afford to make trains, trucks and cooking utensils out of this valuable metal. In fact, a year ago more than 85% of the aluminum we produced went into transportation and other civilian industries. In our building, we are taking 20 years of normal plant expansion and crowding it into 18 months. Even this is not enough. So we are creating completely new plants, building from the ground up. We are trying to make effective every kind of mechanical, physical, chemical, structural and financial facility we need to do the job. To white-hot temperatures to remove the water. It has reached the end of the first stage of production. Here is aluminum, ready to be conveyed or shipped to the pot mills. To change the powder aluminum into the metal aluminum, the magic of electricity must be applied in the furnace. Millions of kilowatt hours are consumed. In the second stage of production, the vital necessity is cheap electricity in enormous quantities. Thus we find plants must be located close to the great hydroelectric developments of the nation. With the shortage of power and 24-hour shifts on those rivers whose vast energies already have been harnessed. The great public power developments in the Tennessee Valley and on the Colorado are straining to capacity, or soon will be. Elsewhere, private plants and other systems are working close to peak loads, and still we need more power. The more we pile up metallic aluminum, the more we must push expansion of the plants to fabricate it. More than 2,000 feet in length and itself only a part of a larger structure. From such a mill as this, will come the rolled sheets worn by great pressure to thicknesses measured in thousands of an inch. In all its various forms, aluminum comes out of the northwest and southeast and northeast and midwest and far west to supply the aircraft plants of America. Because we are building not dozens, but thousands and tens of thousands of airplanes, we are facing a shortage of aluminum. Nearly three-fourths of the total weight of an airplane is aluminum or aluminum alloy. Hours is a gigantic task. In 1939, we put 40 million pounds of aluminum into military aircraft. Next year, we must put into aircraft and other military uses an estimated billion and a half pounds. Even these estimates of our military needs may be low, and they make no allowance whatever for filling civilian needs. Into these eagles of defense, we will put our old pots and pans in spread so that we can help make sure aluminum will not fail The essential relationship of man to man, material to material, nation to nation and continent to continent can be symbolized in the making of this faithful man. For this, we now know. We must have aluminum to fly, and fly we must. High and fly and fast.