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The determination here was

dismissal

by the judge, based on the fact that the

alloy under discussion was already well

known and in production prior to any

alloy suggested or invented by Crucible.

Rather than “leaving the invention of

the Ti-6Al-4V unsettled” as concluded

in the article, the patent granted to

Watertown Arsenal (No. 2,906,654)

was indeed a composition patent, and

not a process patent as implied. This

too is well documented in the mono-

graph and includes data derived from

arc melted ingots produced for Water-

town by purchase orders to National

Research Corp. in Cambridge, Mass.

This confused history evolved as

a result of the widespread announce-

ment of the Watertown development

in 1954 followed by five years of quiet

regarding any government patent

application. During that quiet time,

Ti-6Al-4V production and application

grew tremendously, boosted by imme-

diate use in the J-57 engine for the

highly secret U-2 spy plane. Because

there was no word regarding any gov-

ernment patent application, both Bat-

telle (Rem-Cru) and ARF thought they

may have fallen upon rights to this

valuable alloy. Both claimed ternary

alloys of Ti-Al-V and each tried to reach

back to earliest conception. Their com-

peting conception dates were close and

neither had produced an alloy contain-

ing 6Al-4V. The earlier work and patent

application at Watertown displayed

data that any higher Al would not

produce the required ductility for the

application, and any higher V would not

offer the necessary weldability; lower

content of either would not achieve

optimum strength. Original data from

the patent application is reported in the

monograph.

The failure to mention the U-2

project and the related Pratt & Whitney

J-57 engine that enabled its success is a

major oversight. Chapter 8 of themono-

graph—A Short Drive to East Hartford,

Connecticut—tells of the top secret

program funded by the CIA to Lockheed

and onto P&W for a new jet engine that

could reach the high altitude required

for the U-2 designed by Kelly Johnson

at the Lockheed Skunk Works. This

endeavor was a top priority and also

top secret. In 1953, I was instructed

to visit P&W to present our complete

results on Ti-6Al-4V alloy and to indi-

cate that we had ordered production

ingots of this alloy from Mallory Sharon

and Titanium Metals Corp. and that a

mil spec had been prepared. It was the

J-57 that made the U-2 possible and it

was the Ti-6Al-4V alloy that made the

J-57 possible. That interesting U-2 story

still has segments that remain secret to

this day.

In my research for further facts

after my startling visit to P&W, I deter-

mined that a top secret program had

existed involving President Dwight

Eisenhower, president James Killian

of MIT, president Edwin Land of Pola-

roid, and CIA director Allen Dulles along

with Lockheed Skunk Works director

Kelly Johnson and P&W. This working

group was called the Killian Panel. It

was the Lockheed design that required

an improved J-57 engine to achieve the

altitude necessary to meet the mission

requirements that would allow Land’s

cameras to photograph the ground

below. And it was the prompt switch at

P&W to Ti-6Al-4V alloy for key compo-

nents that permitted the first real test

flight in August 1955 and the first fly-

over of the Soviet Union in 1956.

This historical note helped me to

better understand why I was instructed

to visit P&W and present the data per-

sonally, while GE, GM-Allison, Boeing,

Lockheed, and others got to review the

detailed Ti-6Al-4V data from the Metal-

lurgical Advisory Committee on Tita-

nium (MACT) report P-13. This relayed

the technical information in response to

their direct letter inquiries prompted by

the press release. I drafted the response

to all of these inquiries, which are also

documented in the monograph.

Now comes the difficult part of

my comments on the history presented

in the April article—the Hickey letter,

which Simcoe describes as “the final

word.” The reader is not told that this

letter was written in 1987, well over

30 years after the invention at Water-

town, yet 12 years before my mono-

graph was published. I researched this

letter as well, but out of respect for

Hal Kessler did not address it in the

1999 monograph. I will now explain

its occurrence. I called Charlie Hickey

and asked how he could say to Kessler

that he was the inventor. Hickey apol-

ogized and explained as follows: In the

course of presenting a technical paper

at a Titanium Development Association

meeting (now ITA) at Annapolis, Md., in

1987, Hickey credited Watertown Arse-

nal and myself as the inventor of the

Ti-6Al-4V alloy. This resulted in a letter

to Hickey from Kessler claiming that

ARF and Harold Kessler invented the

Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Hickey said he avoided

responding to the letter and to repeat

phone calls from Kessler because the

occurrence was so many years before

he or his current colleagues were at

the Arsenal and much was still under

security classification. With the calls

demanding a response becoming both-

ersome, Hickey said he went to his boss

and asked what he should do. His boss

replied, “Tell the pest what he wants

to hear and get him off your back!” On

Kessler’s next call, Hickey did just that

and then got the unexpected request to

put it in writing.

Even the three-sentence Hickey

response (which exists with my mono-

graph files) does not resemble the

description presented in the article

stating that “he (Kessler) was indeed

the inventor” of the alloy. The brief

Hickey letter vaguely referred to the

developers as Watertown and ARF and

references a later contract initiated in

July 1953 and completed in August 1955

from work directed by Don McPherson.

The letter does not even mention Kes-

sler or include the words “indeed” or

“inventor.”

The JOM Monograph entitled “The

Emergence of the Titanium Industry

and the Development of the Ti-6Al-4V

Alloy—Collections and Recollections”

is available from ITA for $10 per copy,

reduced from $45. However, I will per-

sonally cover the costs for the first 50

requests. To obtain a free copy, call ITA

at 303.404.2221.

—

Stanley Abkowitz, FASM*

*Abkowitz received the 1993 ASM William Hunt

Eisenman Award and the ASM Distinguished

Life Membership Award in 2005.