# Global Map for Global War and Global Peace (1943), Alcoa's aircraft wall chart

Global Map for Global War and Global Peace is a 1943 folded wall chart from the Aluminum Company of America. Panels of plane silhouettes, formations, service insignia and aircraft construction photographs sit beside three globes, and the copy credits Alcoa Aluminum for the strength of U.S. bombers (NAID 514406).

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      Global map for global war and global peace

      Global Map for Global War and Global Peace (1943), Alcoa's aircraft wall chart
      Alcoa's 1943 folded wall chart pairs plane-spotting silhouettes and Army, Navy and Marine insignia with an ad for the aluminum in U.S. bombers. NAID

## Techniques named on the archive record

Transfer
      Date1943Made byAluminum Company of America (Alcoa)MediumAdvertisementCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514406; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Aluminum Company of America. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-901 (NAID 514406).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Global Map for Global War and Global Peace is a 1943 folded wall chart from the Aluminum Company of America. Panels of plane silhouettes, formations, service insignia and aircraft construction photographs sit beside three globes, and the copy credits Alcoa Aluminum for the strength of U.S. bombers (NAID 514406).

## What is on the chart

This is a long folded sheet, set out in blue frames. Most of it is reference material a reader could actually use: silhouettes for telling friendly planes from enemy ones, flying formations and stunts, and the insignia of the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps. Two panels show photographs of the inside of a bomber's fuselage. The title panel ties all of it to the company that made the metal.

[...] Seventy-five per cent of the total weight of an airplane is aluminum, because it combines the lightness and strength, the workability, and the dependability of Alcoa Aluminum.

[...]

GLOBAL MAP

for GLOBAL WAR and GLOBAL PEACE

In 1872 it took 80 days to circle the world. In 1903, 54 days. In 1938, Howard Hughes flew 'round the world in 3 days, 19 hours, 8 minutes, 10 seconds. The three globes show how the airplane has shrunk our world.

We now have to look at the world with new eyes . . . and new thinking, too.

ALCOA ALUMINUM

[imprint:] © Aluminum Company of America. All data included were the most complete available on April 1, 1943

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; the archive leaves the smaller captions untranscribed. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514406, local id 44-PA-901, Record Group 44.

## Who made it

The chart is copyrighted by the Aluminum Company of America, and the archive classes it as a corporate advertisement. A copy sits among the World War II posters of Record Group 44. The record gives no print run and no account of where the chart was hung or handed out. The figures on the sheet, such as the seventy-five per cent claim and the Hughes flight time, are the company's own statements as printed, and this page repeats them only as quotations.

## How to read it

Transfer is the tag here, rated faint. The company's name rides on the prestige of the services' insignia and the aircraft. The chart gives the reader something useful and asks for nothing except attention to the brand.

The kind of speech still matters. A government poster asks a citizen to do something. A sheet like this one asks a citizen to think well of a company, using the war as the setting. Nothing in the record suggests the claims were false, and a company is free to advertise. The line "new eyes . . . and new thinking" can be read as a suggestion about the peace to come. If so, a private firm made it in its own name, which is the open way to do it.

The Ladies' Home Journal's Lippmann digest is another 1943 corporate sheet about the postwar world. The Production lines are battle lines poster shows how the government's own production publicity looked, and the Roosevelt administration essay sorts the period's posters by what they asked.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Global map for global war and global peace, 1943. Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-901, NAID 514406, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/global-map-global-war-global-peace-alcoa-1943/