H

UNDREDS OF additional air-

planes are being constructed

monthly from the millions of pounds

of salvaged scrap swept up from the

floors, collected in trash cans and

otherwise "recovered" from the

aircraft manufacturing plants of the

United States. Long before civilians

ever heard of a "salvage drive,"'

aircraft manufacturers recognized the

importance of their scrap material and

took steps to collect and resmelt it.

Today it is literally true that hundreds

of combat planes are being made out

of scrap that was once thrown away.

At one plant alone, it was discovered,

for example, that enough aluminum

scrap was unavoidably created during

the construction of. two of its giant

bombers to furnish an aluminum skin

for a third one. At another plant

enough scrap aluminum to build 64

dive-bombers was salvaged within a

period of thirty days.

It has been written of the Chicago

stockyards that they are so efficient

that the only thing the operators

haven't been able to salvage and use is

a pig's squeal. It might perhaps more

truly be said of today's average

airplane production plant that the only

thing which hasn't been saved is the

whine of the machines and the racket

of rivet guns, as new planes roll off the

production lines to join those which

have previously taken to the air.

Statistics reveal that battling the

Axis with scrap is a battle fully as

realistic as any being waged in the

front line trenches„ though of course not as sanguinary a

one. If you have the idea that the salvaging of miscellaneous

and formerly wasted material is just a joke, a lot of "hooey"

engaged in because somebody started a "drive", and that

soon it will be dropped or forgotten, you' re wrong. Ponder

for a moment such facts as these: Within a period of only 30

days enough scrap aluminum was gathered at the Long

Island City plant of Brewster Aeronautical Corporation to

build sixty-four Brewster dive-bombers, and enough scrap

steel to construct seven 27-ton tanks or twenty-one 8-inch

antiaircraft guns. The thirty-day recovery included 145 tons

of aluminum scrap, 105 tons of steel, 3 tons of stainless

steel, 1,000 pounds of copper and 700 pounds of rubber.

Over at Douglas Aircraft Company's plant in Santa

Monica, California, they' ll tell you that literally hundreds of

combat planes are being "swept up off the floors." Last year,

for example, enough dural was reclaimed from scrapheaps

to furnish the entire aluminum content for a huge fleet of

Douglas attack-bombers. Speaking of aluminum,

Westinghouse Electric thought it did a pretty fair job when

it reclaimed 120,000 pounds per month for an annual total

of around one-and-one-half million pounds. Yet that total,

big as it was, amounts to only one-half of that salvaged by

Douglas Aircraft. Westinghouse also reported an additional

salvage of 1,180,000 pounds of other non-ferrous metals per

month ― so much in fact that at the year's end it took 3,000

freight cars to haul it away. Had all those cars been hooked

up to one engine and a caboose, it would make a train 25

miles long. And anybody will admit that is a lot of scrap.

Even the largest manufacturers now look upon "waste"

materials as money on deposit. Take

Buick, for instance. During 1941 it is said

to have piled up a scrapheap of

244,000,000 pounds. In fact Buick is so

stingy of its leavings that it even

recaptures exhaust steam, uses and reuses

it, and then. converts it back into water.,

before calling the job done.

At Boeing Aircraft Company the stuff

that is swept up from the floors is

adjudged worth more than a million

dollars a year. One government bureau has

figured out that just the sheet scrap from

the nation's aircraft p1ants alone, if

properly segregated, would save enough

aluminum to build 250 B-17s a month and

in addition save enough magnesium to

make 50,000 incendiary bombs monthly.

Though that may seem like a lot, you

must recall that every operation in the

primary shops, where the metal is cut

up, produces trimmings, ends and

metal "sawdust." For example, into

Boeing trash bins go, in the order of

their importance, aluminum, stainless

steel and plain steel scrap. Steel and

dural borings, or metal sawdust, is

swept up around the routers and

milling machines, taken to the salvage

yard and sifted through a screen. Dural

tubing, valuable for its magnesium

alloy, is another important gift to the

melting pot. Strips of sheet metal from

the punch presses and brass borings

from the lathes are also important

items. Still others include clamps,

rubber and metal caps for tubing,

bolts, nuts, screws, rivets, metal and

iron washers, short pieces of insulated

copper, burlap, wiring, etc. Personal

tools appear occasionally and one

week two small electric motors are

reported to have been discovered amid

the "trash." Even old rags, once

headed for the incinerator, now go to

the laundry, where they are washed,

baled and returned to the factory.

Every month Boeing sends two tons of

used tabulator cards, made from high

grade manila stock, to an out-of-town

pulp mill. Small stuff such as bolts,

nuts, screws, etc., are reclaimed and

returned to the shops from whence

they came, though huge quantities of.

the scrap are sold. Aluminum, of

course, is remelted and rerolled,

though its final destination is

determined by the War Priorities

Board.

OUT AT ONE of the new Wright Aero-

nautical plants, "somewhere in Ohio,"

they have developed a fast chip

handling system that collects tons of

steel, aluminum, magnesium, brass

and bronze chips every 24 hours. In

less than 40 minutes a miniature

haystack of long, curly shavings can

be removed from a machine to a

special metal container, dumped into a

conveyor train, crushed, freed of

machine oil and compactly stowed

away in a railroad gondola car. When

as many as 10 to 15 gondola cars are

loaded, a gasoline tractor hauls them

swiftly away to a chip processing

plant. Here the gondola: are dumped,

the metal cargo being tossed into drain

pans where a portion of the machine

oil still clinging to the chips is drained

off. Then the bunches of chips or

shavings are pulled apart so they can

more easily be stuffed into a hammer

mill crusher which presses them even

more compactly. Chips which have

been cut from oil coolants come from

the crusher to be dumped into a

standard industrial centrifuge. Whirled

at 780 revolutions per minute these

chips lose their last trace of oil which

spins oft to be drained and reclaimed.

Oil-free chips drop onto a belt

conveyor which hoists them into a 100-

ton storage hopper 40 feet above a

spur track on which railroad gondola

cars are waiting. A chute opens and

down hurtle 25 tons of metal into a

gondola, ready for shipment to a

processing plant for utilization again in

the war effort.

Enough rubber to completely equip

four B-17 Flying Fortresses was

located within a single week in the

New Jersey plants of Curtiss-Wright

Corporation's propeller division. From

long lines of machine tools used in

making propellers come ton upon ton

of. scrap steel shavings, turnings and

overage. Welders now toss butt ends of

expensive and now rare tungsten into

special receptacles. Copper from

electric wiring, brass from discarded

electric light bulbs, tin containers from

cafeterias and worn files, of valuable

carbon steel, are all being salvaged.

Cutting and lubricating oils and

solvents are being reclaimed by means

of filtration and distillation. Packing

cases are dismantled and the lumber

used for shipping Wright equipment.

Worn and useless burlap bags are

returned to the manufacturer so the

jute may be reclaimed and later

rewoven. Waste paper from offices and

shops is shredded and baled for use in

repacking.

Twice the tonnage of the famed

B-24 Liberator is rescued today from

the rubbish pile at Consolidated Air-

craft, according to executive vice

president I M Ladden. "Prior to Pearl

Harbor most of our scrap materials

were dumped or burned as not worth

the trouble of saving," comments Mr.

Ladden, "but today a salvage

personnel of 17 people sifts floor

sweepings and combs refuse waste

baskets. And what comes out? Well in

a single month, 35 tons of aluminum

shavings were saved, together with 11

tons of paper, 266 tons of scrap iron,

20 tons of neoprene and rubber, 45

tons of steel shavings, half a ton of

Plexiglas, 4,350 gallons of waste oil, 6

tons of stainless steel, 3,342 pieces of

3-ply panels, 515 barrels and drums, a

ton of wool fabric, 6 tons of shoddy

and burlap, 700 bearings, 670 pounds

of manila rope, 10 tons of lead dross,

848 electric drills, 2 tons of bronze

shavings, 1 ton of copper, 26,695

gallons of paint thinner and tons of

miscellaneous rags.

"Eight thousand, five hundred

gallons of waste crankcase oil, from

engines being tested, for which

Consolidated Aircraft used to get 3¢ a

gallon, is now being converted into

cutting oil worth 27¢ a gallon. Since it

costs about 20¢ to refine a gallon, the

company saves 7¢ a gallon instead of

3¢. Even yet we are not satisfied. We

expect to recrack the oil and reuse it in

engine tests. We had been selling our

scrap wood as such. Now we are

recovering two tons of bolts, nuts,

washers and screws from the wood

before it is sold and are seriously

thinking of converting the wood itself

into wood flour, from which roofing

paper and insulation can be made. It

takes 80 girls, working in two shifts, to

sort rivets, screws and nuts which are

swept up from the floor daily at a rate

of about a ton a day. During a single

recent month we salvaged 209,631

pounds of bomber parts which various

inspectors had rejected. We seek the

causes of the "rejects," try to have the

defects corrected and so finally

okayed. Four hundred tons of

aluminum are saved monthly by

cutting scraps into sub-standard sizes

― anything from two inches by six

inches to 36 inches square ― which

we use in building Consolidated

bombers. Our Salvage Director has

become so enthused over the results

accomplished by our salvage program

that he now personally saves string,

paper bags and old razor blades."

THE HUGE Glenn Martin plants in

Maryland discovered that about one-

third of the aluminum alloys used in

the construction of Martin planes ends

up as scrap in the form of clippings,

blankings, punchings, shearings,

turnings and borings. Thus, for every

two Martin bombers built, enough

scrap is unavoidably created to build a

third ― provided the eight different

alloys are kept separate. Segregation

of scrap is one of the secrets of salvage

operations. Mixing metals is like

mixing sugar and salt. When that

happens you get a substance that is

good neither for sweetening nor

seasoning. So with mixed metals.

Mixed, they cannot be turned right

back into production. Hence, at North

American Aviation, brightly colored

discs are hung above the machines,

each disc denoting a different type of

metal. Near the machines are barrels

painted in corresponding colors.

Salvage workmen clean the metal from

the machines and deposit it in the

various barrels, according to color.

At Bell Aircraft too, proper

segregation of scrap is regarded as

vitally important, as by keeping each

type of metal separate, the smelter is

saved the expensive, time-consuming

task of removing some elements and

adding others to bring the mixture into

a proper alloy. By Bell's segregation

process the smelter is able to convert

its scrap into "original specification"

aircraft alloys with little or no trouble.

Every week at least 1500 necessary

and hard-to-get Cleco clamps are

salvaged from sweepings at the Bell

plants. Elusive aluminum rivets,

dropped in the heat of production, are

saved and sent to a nearby vocational

school where they are used by students

in rivet practice, serving a highly

useful purpose in the training of future

aircraft workers.

How seriously the working

personnel of aircraft plants are taking

the salvaging of scrap as a means of

doing their bit toward winning the war

is well illustrated by an editorial which

recently appeared in the house organ

issued by Republic Aviation, out on

Long Island. It begins with the

explanation that an employee handed

the house organ editor an envelope

with the remark "Here's an editorial

for you." Opening the envelope, the

editor found it contained seventy-eight

3/16 flat-head rivets ― two good

handfuls of them. The editorial which

resulted read as follows: "Those 78

rivets had been picked up on the

Republic parking lot, picked up in an

area of six feet, where they had been

scattered by some clown who is lazy,

thoughtless and selfish, and in all

probability as un-American as any

Nazi saboteur. "Seventy-eight 3/16th

rivets cost Republic and the American

taxpayers ― us guys, brother ― about

50 cents. They are ten ounces of

aluminum. They are capacity for a

machine a half-minute or so, in an

overworked aluminum plant.

"Some bird took too many from the

rotobin. When the quit whistle blew he

still had them. He ducked for the

parking lot and when he got there he

felt the rivets in his pocket. He didn't

want to ride home with them there.

Too heavy. He'd only have to bring

them back.

"Conservation, saving materials?

Trying to win this war?

"He never had ideas like that. The

hell with the rivets, he thought.

"Some of us who have kid brothers,

or sons, or pals in Ireland, England,

Australia or Alaska ― or maybe in a

Jap prison camp ― would like to catch

up with that guy. Some of us who have

authority, would like to fire him right

out of Republic.

"Some of us who don't have any

gold on our badges but who have a

pretty fair right cross, would like to

poke him right in the nose.

"Keep it up, fellow. We'll catch up

with you."

While that sort of a spirit prevails

among the men who staff the big

aviation plants who can doubt that

victory lies ahead? By the thousands

and tens of thousands they seem to

have adopted the motto in vogue at the

Glenn Martin plants: "Aim straight at

the scrap bins and score a hit on the

Axis!"

Ingenious as our conservationists

have already proven themselves, we'll

be doing things yet undreamed of

before the fires of this war are finally

banked. We'll be doing them not

merely to save an enormous quantity

of basic materials in the present

emergency, but because no up-and-

coming, on-its-toes business can afford

to be unmindful of the era of peace

and commerce that will follow. And

perhaps, in the final analysis, we'll be

doing them not so much for financial

profit as for the Yankee joy of

plucking full-fledged bombers, trans-

ports and other aircraft out of the

ashcans. When even the "by-products"

of bombers are being turned into more

bombers, we are learning the very

practical lessons of thrift, a newly-

found virtue that Americans can

undoubtedly hold onto long after this

war is ended.

This article was originally published in

the February, 1943, issue of Flying

Aces magazine, vol 43, no 3, pp 16-17,

79-81.