USS Sea Cliff titanium submarine welding

Counterpoint to Soviet titanium-welding success. ~1980 David Taylor Naval Lab in Annapolis had a small welding lab and could not weld the Sea Cliff (Alvin-class deep submersible) titanium hull despite their best technology; had to switch processes. Tom defers the full case.

And the same type of thing on titanium. For whatever reasons — it might have been a political-military reason — but they had this guy Gurevich who had all kinds of funding to weld titanium. In the meantime, David Taylor Naval Lab at Annapolis had a little welding lab and they were welding titanium. I can tell you the story when we get to it of building the Sea Cliff, which was like the Alvin submarine — this is about 1980 and how they couldn't do it. With all the technology that David Taylor had produced, they really couldn't do it. They had to go to another process.