Bombshell email about Titan submersible founder before doomed trip

A former OceanGate employee who was fired after repeatedly warning of the Titan submersible’s multiple safety issues made a grim prediction about the tragic fate of the company’s CEO Stockton Rush five years before his death.

In an email to project associate Rob McCallum soon after leaving in 2018, David Lochridge — OceanGate’s former director of marine operations — revealed the sub was “a lemon” and that he had been vocal about his concerns with management, The New Yorker reports.

“I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen,” Mr Lochridge told Mr McCallum, who also distanced himself from Titan over fears of shoddy construction.

Referencing Mr Rush, the engineer and submersible pilot for over 30 years told Mr McCallum: “I don’t want to be seen as a tattletale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego.”

Engineer's damning Titan sub report

One day prior to his dismissal, Mr Lochridge submitted a detailed report to Mr Rush and other executives after studying each major component of the sub. Its contents highlighted several flaws, including that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths", according to a lawsuit filed that year in a US District Court in Seattle.

“Verbal communication of the key items I have addressed in my attached document have been dismissed on several occasions, so I feel now I must make this report so there is an official record in place,” he wrote at the time, The New Yorker reports. “Until suitable corrective actions are in place and closed out, Cyclops 2 (Titan) should not be manned during any of the upcoming trials.”

OceanGate sued Mr Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

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'Potential extreme danger'

The engineer’s concerns primarily focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring — cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure — to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. He said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 12.7 centimetre-thick carbon-fibre hull.

“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull,” Mr Lochridge’s counterclaim said.

Further, the craft was designed to reach depths of 4,000 metres, where the Titanic rested. But, according to Mr Lochridge, the passenger viewport was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 metres, and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 metres.

OceanGate’s choices would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible,” the counterclaim said.

However, the company said in its complaint that Mr Lochridge “is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan". He was fired after refusing to accept assurances from OceanGate’s lead engineer the acoustic monitoring and testing protocol was, in fact, better suited to detect any flaws than a scan would be, the complaint said.

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