Page 74 - MY STORY

titanium. The bad news was that the alloys selected by

GD were, at best, highly problematic. When asked for
my comment on alloy selection at the end of his brief, in
my inimitable direct fashion, I pointed out the following.

I said: “the relatively new beta-titanium alloy they
selected certainly had the capability to be more easily

formed and could be aged to very high strengths when
compared to legacy alloy systems. However, this alloy
selection for welded assemblies and primary hot wing and

fuselage structure was not a great idea. The problems
associated with the use of that alloy were 1) it was not

weldable, and 2) it suffered from metallurgical instability
under stress at the projected operating temperatures
which would have, over time, caused the alloy to become
brittle and possibly structurally dangerous.”

I continued, “The second alloy selected for

high-temperature use up to 800-900 degrees F, a high
aluminum content alloy, was still developmental and even
though it exhibited much better strength at high

temperature, we had found problems with brittle behavior
at ambient temperature and were still trying to figure out
the embrittlement mechanism.”