During, actually.
Nickel, Chromium, Vanadium, and Molybdenum were strictly allocated by the WPB, in that order, as early as mid 1941 through Dec 1941. When that wasn't sufficient to control the use of these vital elements, on January 1, 1942, Nickel, Chromium, and Molybdenum were limited to .6% in steel production, and Vanadium was eliminated completely (0.00 %), wrecking all the favorite pre-war recipes (and branding!). With the writing on the wall in 1941, a consortium of scientists assembled by the WPB, including the WPB, industry, academia, and SAE/AISI, had been working on so-called "New Emergency" steel compositions for months. In the metallurgy labs, they cooked up the triple alloys (Nickel-Chrome-Moly) in the AISI 86XX and 87XX series that dominate alloy steel to this day, discovering that using less of each with another added in was actually stronger, lighter, more durable, and less expensive to manufacture. Or they dropped back to other alternative steel mixes, such as AISI 1340, Carbon-Manganese (see Herbrand), AISI 4000, Mang-Moly (see Bridgeport MQ), or increased production of improved AISI 1000 series Carbon Steel wrenches (see Williams Superior line).
Everyone had to comply, and everyone that used the composition (Chrome Molybdenum, Chrome-Vanadium, etc) in their branding, had to switch to something else, typically just ALLOY, as you alluded to, ALLOY STEEL (see Vlchek), or nothing at all (see Bonney, which moved their name to the face of the jaw, dropped the "(CV)" symbol, and left the shank blank) on new dies, so as not to make their tools suspect of violation.
Herbrand went one better, forging the acceptable AISI numbers into their tools, so there could be no mistake.
And a couple Mfgrs, it should be noted, were probably ahead of the curve - in my analysis. Billings VITALLOY M-1xxx series and Bonney -ZENEL- wrenches were being made before the war (with each company boasting new better secret recipes at that time without revealing what the recipes were to the rest of the industry), and continued without change in markings during the war. My hunch is they were triple alloys.
Anyway, the drop dead leniency date for using high-content pet formula double-alloy steel the Mfgrs already had in stock was Nov 1942. (When you see Bonney wrenches with CV markings and 1943 date codes, they're almost certainly either examples of the last of Bonney's stock, or mistaken dies.)
The point is that by mid 1943, all those proud pre-war double-alloy rich markings were gone.
And I agree, it is supremely ironic on the imports (e.g., "Cr-Mo")
