Page 124 - MY STORY

the hell was the Douglas Aircraft Company doing in

Boeing’s and the USAF’s business?!!!!!”

Sid B had called for a meeting of the B-52 vertical

stabilizer failure analysis team in Dayton to present his
newly discovered findings. According to Howard Z,
Sid’s opening words when presenting this new

information was “This is what the failure analysis experts
at Douglas Aircraft Company found out!!!” So much for
Sid’s agreement to being discreet and keeping the source

of this new information buried.

I tried to point out to Howard Z that our findings were
technically sound and might be examined in a somewhat
more objective environment, especially in terms of
preventing any future B-52 vertical stabilizer failures, but

I felt like I might as well have been trying to save the
Titanic after hitting the iceberg.

This was a serious problem. I knew that our competitive
proposal for the Electron Fractography Handbook effort

was in the hands of Howard Z’s staff and that they were
still in the evaluation throes of selecting a winner —
which was obviously not going to be us after this episode.

Aside from the utter discouragement, I was not exactly