KABAR2, your observations could be dead on target; reading about the drives, it seems like some of the materials that were asked for weren't really in all that short a supply. Hopefully more historic ordnance will turn up in scrapyards across the country, unfortunately there's also the fact that there are always going to be war profiteers, some of whom probably owned some of these yards, and after the war was over had some of these irreplaceable guns melted down for scrap and pocketted the filthy lucre they made on the sales, instead of trying to return them to the municipalities that they got them from.
"Iron and steel were a different story. These metals could be easily melted down and used for munitions. It's not as if the U.S. lacked domestic sources of iron ore, though. The real challenge was gearing up American industry for war production. That meant everything from increasing steel-making capacity to building more factories and designing better weapons. Recycling of steel and iron unquestionably helped. One campaign netted five million tons of steel in just three weeks, and scrap-metal drives continued for most of the war.
Useful though recycled steel and iron were, some scrap drives went overboard. In addition to old streetcar tracks, wrought iron fences, church bells, and the like, people carted off relics of previous wars, including cannons, park statues, and other memorials. When the memorials were being rebuilt after the war, many wished they hadn't been so hasty."
