The speech where President Franklin D. Roosevelt is shown asking Congress for 50,000 airplanes occurred on May 16, 1940. This was just six days after Germany's attack had begun on western Europe in WWII. It has become known as his "Ominous Days" speech.
A very young Robert Blake collects his mother's aluminum pot to be donated as metals fashioned into items for the war effort.
In addition to the keel-laying of the light cruiser U.S.S. Santa Fe (CL-60) on June 7, 1941 at the New York Shipbuilding Corp. in Camden, New Jersey, the launching of the destroyer U.S.S. Ellyson (DD-454) is seen at the Federal Shipbuilding yard in Kearny, New Jersey, on July 26, 1941.