Page 43 - MY STORY

BORON STEELS (LEO S.)

It was exceptionally rare for a senior manager to interact

directly with a junior engineer, but one fine day Leo S
appeared at my desk with a request (forced assignment).

He was a key member or officer in the American Institute
of Aeronautics (or something equivalent in the day) and
had a “small” problem he would like me to solve.

For many years the aircraft industry had been using
medium carbon, low alloy steel at very high strength

levels for landing gear. It seemed that there might be a
potential shortage of the expensive alloying elements (Ni,
Cr, Mo) so the aircraft industry elected to evaluate the

high strength steel alloys using boron (B) in place of these
alloying elements to achieve the required strength levels
at lower cost.

Most the existing aircraft manufacturers were involved
with generating experimental data for this assessment,

with Douglas Aircraft as the collecting source for the data.
Douglas was therefore charged with the responsibility of
collating the data and disseminating the assembled data as

a report. Leo’s assignment to me was to take all this