*THE WONDER METALS

Key to Air Supremacy

THE cold war has created a new kind of industrial battlefield. Obscure and little-known, it lies behind closed laboratory doors. There, researchers for industry and Government are tackling the problem of developing and perfecting wonder metals"--those metals capable of meeting the unparalleled strains and stresses of the jet and atomic age. Aircraft builders have already laid down this axiom: the nation which first masters the use of wonder metals will rule the air.

Jet engines often reach temperatures3,700DEG Fahrenheit at the core of their blast hot enough to burn ordinary steel like paper. The planes themselves are approaching speeds at which aluminum aircraft skins would lose their strength, then melt. Nor is heat the only problem. Building of the first atomic reactors disclosed the fact that most metals absorb or "eat up" the atomic neutrons needed to provide the fission and motive power.

The great metals search explores a field that is relatively new. Some of the new metals were little more than laboratory curiosities until the air age created new needs. Gradually these curiosities were found to have enormous possibilities.

Two of the best-known "wonder metals, aluminum and magnesium are now commonplace, although a few decades ago they were prohibitively high priced. Aluminum and its alloys are still the basic materials of all aircraft. But magnesium, which is one-third lighter, is encroaching on aluminum's domain (Douglas's 1,238-m.p.h. Skyrocket has a magnesium-sheet fuselage). In the field of atomic power the most important metal, next to uranium, is zirconium. Reason: it is one of the few metals yet found which will not absorb atomic neutrons. But it is a frightening metal to process; in powder form it is so unstable that it will ignite from the motion of just being transferred from one dish to another. Its ores are more plentiful than tin, but the metal itself is still scarce.

Until recently, one of the scarcest and hardest-sought metals was columbium. Although not extraordinarily tough in itself, it mixes with steel, nickel and other metals to make alloys that can withstand the tremendous jet heat. The U.S. must depend on Africa, however, for 95% of its limited supply. Accordingly, a big hunt was started for substitutes and yielded the most promising wonder metal of all-titanium.

Titanium, the world's ninth most common element, is almost everywhere in the earth in minute quantities. It has been used for years in a powdered, oxide form to make paints whiter and make them cover better. But titanium combines so readily with any other element that for years it was considered impossible to refine as a pure metal (scientists call it "the streetwalker" because it will pick up anything).

In 1946, the Government's Bureau of Mines announced it had found the first practical way to refine it into commercially pure form. The Government subsidized experimental pilot plants to process small batches of titanium into sheets, rods, etc. and commercial production of titanium was started by Du Pont and Titanium Metals Corp. But the Air Force wanted titanium desperately not only in its pure state but as an ideal substitute for columbium as a hardening agent in alloys. It pressed for a huge program to boost production to 22,000 tons by 1955 (current production: 3,400 tons a year). A long fight ensued. Some defense officials argued that with sheet titanium costing as much as $20 a lb., such a program, with a guarantee to buy all the titanium produced, might cost the Government $500 million a year. Air Force men argued back that all titanium is being sold as fast as it is produced, regardless of price.

Defense Secretary Charles Wilson has now bought the Air Force argument. He has approved a new $10,000,000 loan for Titanium Metals Corp to expand its pilot plant, and a $26 million loan for Chicago's Crane Co. to build the biggest titanium plant yet planned, near Nashville.

Other battles are fast being won Originally, titanium proved incredibly difficult to machine and work. But dozens of steel companies have been working with the metal, and have found ways around the difficulties. Titanium, only half as heavy as stainless steel and four times as strong as most aluminum alloys, is now replacing both steel and aluminum in aircraft for skins, parts and struts.

The promising field of powder metallurgy is rapidly enlarging its horizons: jet rotor blades of exceptional hardness and heat resistance are now being made at of powdered titanium carbide and a metallic binder fused under tremendous heat and pressure. The big unsolved problem is cost: an incredible $30,000 per ton v. $780 to $1,020 for stainless steel. But as Wilson's program expands production, nobody doubts that U.S. ingenuity and research will whittle down the cost, just as magnesium's cost has been whittled from $5 in 1915 to 27-c- a pound in 1953. In that prospect glows the promise of a great new U.S. industry.

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