WWII armor plate stress-relief welding

Brief reference — 17-inch-thick WWII armor steel required slow welding partly because stick electrodes were slow anyway, but also because hydrogen had to be allowed to diffuse out. Used as the historical precedent for the Fore River advice.

When they were doing some of the foundation welds on GE turbines, they could put in half an inch of weld metal, then they had to stop and keep the preheat on for three or four hours just to allow the hydrogen out before you put more on top. If you're doing armor steel back in World War II — that's 17 inches thick — they had to go slow. They went slow anyway because of stick electrodes, but if you didn't allow time for the hydrogen to diffuse out, you had a problem.