MMS 1227 is a BOEING specification for 6Al-4V calling for “TITANIUM ALLOY PLATE, PREMIUM GRADE Ti6Al-4V, BETA ANNEALED”
MMS specifications originate from Boeing’s St. Louis facility under D1-4426 Approved Process Lists. MMS1227 / MMS 1227 originated at the St. Louis facility, therefore it is widely used for Boeing’s aircraft manufacturing in relation to Defense, Space, and Security products.
Why does your project callout specification MMS 1227?
As a Tier 1 Aerospace company, Boeing holds its subcontractors to the same standards by ensuring they source 6Al-4V per AMS 4911 / MIL-T-9046 from approved sources. This creates accountability and ensures the highest quality standards are achieved in the manufacturing process. An excerpt from Boeing’s quality website states the following:
HISTORY OF BOEING ST. LOUIS
What does the history of Boeing have to do with the MMS Specifications? It provides a road map for why Boeing still uses these specifications. Founded in July of 1939 by James Smith McDonnell, the McDonnell Aircraft Company was best known for its military fighters including the F-4 Phantom II and manned spacecraft during the Mercury and Gemini programs.
James McDonnell founded J.S. McDonnell & Associates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1928 to produce a personal aircraft for family use. The economic depression from 1929 ruined his plans and the company collapsed. He went to work for Glenn Martin for a number of years. He left in 1938 to try again with his own firm, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, based in St. Louis, Missouri in 1939.
World War II was a major boost to the new company. It grew from 15 employees in 1939 to 5,000 at the end of the war and became a significant aircraft parts producer, and developed the XP-67 fighter prototype. McDonnell Aircraft suffered after the war with an end of government orders and a surplus of aircraft, and heavily cut its workforce. The advent of the Korean War helped push McDonnell into a major military fighter supply role.
McDonnell St. Louis = Boeing Military
McDonnell made a number of missiles, including the pioneering Gargoyle and unusual ADM-20, as well as experimenting with hypersonic flight, research that enabled them to gain a substantial share of the NASA projects Mercury and Gemini. The company was now a major employer, but was having problems. It had no civilian side, and was thus vulnerable to any peacetime downturn in procurement. The lack of commercial aerospace operations led to talks of a merger with Douglas Aircraft. In 1967, the two companies merged to form McDonnell Douglas and complemented each other in the production of both Commercial and Defense Aircraft. Through a series of aircraft cancellations on the commercial side, McDonnell Douglas was eventually merged with Boeing in 1997. Boeing’s defense and space division is based at the old McDonnell facility in St. Louis, and is responsible for defense and space products and services. McDonnell Douglas’s legacy product programs include the F-15 Eagle, AV-8B Harrier II, F/A-18 Hornet.
