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6XX  AVIATION-AUTOMOBILES  THE NEW [?]  February 8, 1942

ALONG THE WORLD'S AIRWAYS - AU'

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First of three transocean flying boats being built for the American Export Airlines at the Vought-Sikorsky plant, Stratford, Conn., the Excalibur proved its airworthiness in its initial test flight.
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JAPAN LACKS ALUMINUM

Air Strength Impaired by Industry Problems - Ore Won in Johore

By LEONARD ENGEL
Although Japanese warplanes have scored impressively in the last two months, their success has been due more to Allied default than to inherent Japanese strength in the air. Tokyo's air forces are small. On Dec 7 they used only 2,500 first line planes. The industry that built them is weak, with a present output of only 3,500 to 5,000 craft a year.

There are several reasons why Japanese planes are few and, as a rule, not qualitive equals of corresponding foreign aircraft. Among the most important is a limited output of aluminum.

Last year Japan produced 45,000 tons of aluminum, though aluminum production on a commercial scale was not begun in Japan until 1934. The United States turned well over 200,000 tons of the silvery metal, the British Empire not much short of 200,000 tones and Germany probably almost 300,000 tons in 1941. Russia did not turn out much more than Japan, 70,000 tons or thereabouts, but the U.S.S.R has ample supplies of alternative materials of which it makes extensive use.

Short of Goal
In 1938 a five-year plan to give the Island Empire an annual output of 130,000 tons a year by 1943 was launched. The next year this goal was doubled. At no time have Tokyo's ambitions aluminum schedules been in danger of fulfilment. 

At the root of the continued Japanese expansion difficulties has been a lack of high-grade ore, as well as shortages of electric power and the high-grade coke needed for the electrodes that go into the extraction cell. Each pound of aluminum requires 10-kilowatt hours of current - enough to light a standard lamp for more than 150 hours. 

Areas Japan controlled before moving southward contain only one important deposit of bauxite, the most widely used ore. This is on Palau, at the western end of the Japanese mandated Caroline Islands. When working of this deposit began in 1937, it was estimated that the annual yield would reach 100,000 tons of bauxite by 1939, when it actually yielded 40,000 tons, enough for less than 8,000 tons of aluminum. Fifty thousand tons a year is probably the most that Japan can mine and ship from Palau.

Other Ore Sources
Japan, Korea, Manchuria, and occupied China have extensive deposits of aluminum-bearing minerals. Between 1934 and 1937, when the important Japanese plants were just getting started, an attempt was made to use them. The costs were too high and extraction processes tried frequently required chemicals Japan had to import. Since then Japan has relied mainly on imported bauxite.

Two years ago, under Army pressure, a renewed attempt was made to use empire ores. Only the Manchuria Light Metals Company, which uses alum shale mined in South Manchuria, has any success with non-bauxite ore. The company has two alum shale plants, one at Kirin, the other at Fushun, site of the famous open-cut coal mine thirty miles from Mukden.

How much of the light metal Japan produces thus depends on how much bauxite she can afford to import. Which, as any one familiar with the Japanese financial position in the last ten years knows, has never been enough.

Now the empire's armies have already captured one of Japan's chief bauxite sources, the Malay state of Johore, and are almost within gunshot of the other, Bintan Island in the Dutch Indies. Bintan is a few miles of Singapore. Capture of Bintan and Johore will not solve the Japanese problem by any means. 

How much bauxite Japan can now secure from Johore and could secure from Bintan depends on how much the workings can produce, how effective a job of sabotage is done in the case of Bintan and how much shipping Tokyo can make available.

Equals Imports
In 1940 Bintan produced 274,000 tons of bauxite, probably close to the limit of annual production. Johore's yield is under 100,00 tons a year. This is thus not much  more than Japan had been importing before the Allied embargoes were slapped on her last July. In 1940 Tokyo imported 240,000 tons from Bintan and 60,000 from Johore. Sabotage plus shipping difficulties may reduce even these totals. 

During the last four years Japan has been building up a stockpile of bauxite which probably totaled 300,000 tons on the outbreak of the Pacific war. Production this year will probably total 60,000 to 65,000 tons.

Japan produces less than half of the copper it needs and its mines, the only ones of importance in Asia, are nearly exhausted. Consequently, a large slice of aluminum output has gone into electrical equipment as a substitute for copper. Ninety per cent of the transmission lines erected in Japan in the last five years, for example, are aluminum. At least 60 per cent of Japanese aluminum production must go into non-aeronautical uses. The probable total aluminum available for aircraft production this year is not more than 30,00 tons, perhaps a good deal less.

Lacks Electricity
The power shortage, reports of which have crept into the newspapers from time to time, has served also as a brake on aluminum production. While Japan is an important coal miner, coal supplies are anything but unlimited. Hydroelectric sites, of which there are many, for Japan is a country of mountains and short but swift rivers, were nearly all harnessed to other essential industries before the aluminum industry got under way. A power expansion program, launched four years ago and completed last year, was recognized as inadequate even before it was begun.

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