Torpedo tube welding distortion control

Student-of-Tom anecdote. Balanced-weld procedure (alternating clock positions around the circumference) developed for ~40-foot-long torpedo tubes to control distortion.

You have to balance welds. If you weld a groove weld all from one side, then go fill up the other side, it never comes all the way back. You're better off welding partway on one side, flipping, welding partway on the other, and alternating. One of my students, John Galati, his first job at Electric Boat was developing ways to weld the torpedo tubes — about forty feet long. They had to weld several tubes together, and he balanced the welds on either side as he was going around the circle. You might do a weld at three o'clock, change, go to nine o'clock, balance the welds around the circumference to get rid of the distortion.