Page 76 - MY STORY

Restricting the aircraft to only overwater flights would

never pay off financially for the carriers. Even the
beautiful Mach 2 Concord fell victim to this reality.

FALSE FRIENDS

One sunny morning I got a call from one of my old bosses
at Douglas to come in to give a brief on some of the newer
titanium alloys. When I showed up at the gate I was

ushered into an office attended by Joe W (the inviter - also
my old boss), Charlie H (chief, production design) and
Robbie R (senior buyer). I knew these guys very well,

and they knew me very well. This meeting had nothing to
do with briefing anything.

Douglas had ordered precision machined Ti-6Al-4V bar
stock from TIMET that was used to build external bomb
racks for the A-4D fighter/bomber at the El Segundo plant.

The delivery of that bar stock was way past the scheduled
delivery date, and the line was being shut down for lack
of material.

The Douglas buyer was not getting anything but promises
from the TIMET sales staff and did not have contact

points at the TIMET manufacturing sites for this product.