Page 138 - MY STORY

engineer got a very poor pay raise that year since I

believed that he did not perform his duties and
responsibilities at a level of competence I expected from a
senior engineer. He complained that he had put in many,

many hours of unpaid overtime to support the program,
and I pointed out that competence was a much greater
factor in my assessment of performance than hours

expended.

I did not relish the performance review that accompanied

that pay raise, This issue got exacerbated significantly
when I received a phone call from his irate wife about his

“lousy pay raise in spite of all the hours he had generated
to benefit the Douglas Company.” All I could do was to
listen patiently and hang up my heated phone. Joys of
management.

BOOM!

In 1968 the fully fueled Douglas manufactured 3rd stage
(S-IVB) of the Saturn-Apollo launch stack exploded 100
seconds before acceptance test firing at the Douglas

facility in Sacramento, CA which destroyed the test
gantry and scattered pieces of the S-IVB up to a mile
away. The failure was traced to a 25” diameter titanium

alloy pressure vessel, installed in the aft skirt, that