There was no shortage of TiO₂ in the US. It's used everywhere. They were specifically importing the refined metal because the soviets had the only viable production capacity.
This is the case for many materials. The raw material itself is not rare, the bottleneck is the refining/processing capability and thus the refined material is scarce.
- The shortage of lumber in US a few years was due to lack of saw mills, not trees
- Shortage of semi-conductor grade Neon due to lack of plants that can refine the gas to the required purity
- Shortages of oil derived products due to constraints on refining
- "Rare earth" shortages as few countries refine. China is one of the few countries willing to tolerate the pollution generated from the refining processes.
“Back when they were building the airplane the United States didn’t have the ore supplies – an ore called rutile ore. It’s a very sandy soil and it’s only found in very few parts of the world.”
Also, the Wikipedia link above doesn’t show the US to be major producer. It does show ex-Soviet block countries to be major producers.
I mean, you might be right about importing the metal rather than ore. I’m commenting only about whether the ore is widely available in the US.
There's plenty of titanium in the us. They opened a mine in the Adirondacks just for this purpose in WW2, and there's tons of untapped ore. Chances are that it was cheaper to get from the USSR than to make it ourselves