You people think its easy to bend Titanium the way you want it?
Read the difficulty faced by Americans:
Unexpected difficulties arose from the metal fabrication stage. Titanium was equal to stainless steel in strength, but its virtues as an aircraft metal; light weight, strength, corrosion resistance and high temperatures tolerance were accompanied by new manufacturing 200,000 psi with an aging process of 70 hours to bring it to full strength. With careful aging and quality control, the time could be reduced to 40 hours but a serious glitch appeared with either process. The titanium being manufactured in the United States in those days that lacked the required purity. In technical terms, U.S. titanium was hydrogen embrittled. In simple terms, if a piece dropped, it would shatter. The purity problem became a major stumbling block in A-12 production. Initially, all of the manufacturing material secured from Titanium Metal Corporation had to be rejected on pure quality basis. The entire first batch of raw material ended up being tossed out, along with the exiting "pickling process". A source of purer titanium had to be found and it would be outside the United States. The outside source was located in the Soviet Union. Not only was Soviet titanium of the higher quality, but also the USSR had the only 25,000 lbs forging press needed to form the basic material. In a remarkable stroke of irony, the CIA was able to price titanium from the Soviet Union under covert conditions. The Soviet Union remained unaware that it was aiding in the development of an aircraft that someday might over fly them.
There were other problems with titanium. It reacted to just about everything that touched it. Cadmium, mercury, mercury amalgam, cadmium-plated tools, halogens (chlorine, fluorine, bromine, iodine. even ink form some pens and lead from pencils. Ink from felt tip pens could actually eat a hole in a sheet of titanium in just under 12 hours. Skunk Works fabrications, after much detective work found that the spot welds done in the summer were more prone to deteriorate than those done during the winter. They discovered that the deterioration was related to problem with algae in Burbank's water supply. To prevent it, municipal water wads heavily chlorinated during the summer. This water was used to wash the titanium plates; it would eat away the welds. The airframes could be assembled by conventional construction techniques, but it would take hand-jigging or one by one assembly to keep the airframe Construction process moving. Despite the costs and fabrication problems there was a distinct advantage in using the titanium in the A-12: the hotter it gets, the more it "recurs" itself. That means that as heat builds up when the aircraft flies at Mach speed, the metal makes itself stronger, much the way it does in the annealing process.
Burn in jealousy as much as you want.
