Soviet titanium electroslag welding technology

Tom realizes mid-conference at David Taylor Annapolis that the Soviets used electroslag (not submerged arc) for heavy-section titanium. First free-world titanium electroslag weld made next door to Tom's lab. US Navy later acquires foreign technology samples (shipyard scrap), confirming electroslag welds in Soviet construction.

I was at one of these conferences, David Taylor, listening to other people's presentations and thinking back about papers, the background on Gurevich. All of a sudden, on about the second day of a three-day conference — Gurevich, in '79, had published a lot of work on electroslag. This is a welding process that had been perfected back in World War Two for steel at the Paton Institute by Paton's father — Boris Paton's father — who was a hero of the Soviet Union. You've seen his pictures, because he used to weld the Soviet tanks back together to get them back to the Russian front. He had created a lot of welding technology, successfully welding the armor steels in World War Two — they didn't have enough tanks to keep the Germans away.