As you have heard, and as we have reported, the OceanGate Titan was lost at sea after a “catastrophic implosion” resulted in the deaths of all five souls on board. See our reporting here:
Unfortunately, I was on vacation while these tragic events transpired, ironically meeting with my best friend, who served with me on my first submarine, USS Guardfish (SSN-612), from 1983 to 1986.
Before I say anything about the OceanGate disaster I want to express my deepest sympathy to the family members of those lost. It is incredibly tragic to lose someone before their time, but especially when one of those lost is only 19-years-old, and especially when the whole world is watching. Nothing I can say will assuage the pain those grieving family members are feeling.
For those who have not read my bio, I am a 31-year Navy veteran who spent his professional life on submarines, ultimately serving as Commanding Officer of USS Toledo (SSN-769), an improved, Tomahawk-capable, and totally awesome, Los-Angeles class attack submarine, from June 1998 to April 2001. I also had the good fortune to be the submarine liaison officer to an aircraft carrier battle group staff, deploying on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CV-59) to the Mediterranean immediately after the Persian Gulf War, and to the Navy’s Sixth Fleet, based in Italy, with responsibility covering the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, and portions of the Arctic Ocean. So I’ve spent some time thinking about submarine stuff.
One other thing: my dad was a Master Chief Petty Officer enlisted submarine veteran, and I remember around age 5 descending into one of his submarines and eating ice cream in the Chief’s Quarters. That was the best.
First, in defense of OceanGate, the average lay person has no idea about the awe-inspiring destructive power of the world’s oceans, which I saw first-hand for many years. OceanGate was dealing with an incredible, almost god-like force, that can and has destroyed countless man-made contraptions through the centuries.
Professor Jacobson says “you may not be interested in culture war, but culture war is interested in you.” I would paraphrase that to say “you may not be interested in mother nature, but mother nature is interested in you, and if you do not follow mother nature’s commands and respect her power, you will die.” If you embark on the high seas, you have to KNOW your ship’s capabilities and only endure risks you know you will survive.
As to my analysis, you must understand that it is colored by my decades of serving in a program designed and run by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover (and his successors). If you don’t know about Rickover, aka “The Father of the Nuclear Navy,” you should. The stories about him are numerous and somewhat crazy at times, and I have a personal one about my interview with Rickover to enter the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, a prerequisite for submarine service, while I was a senior at the U.S. Naval Academy (short take: it didn’t go well, and no one was more surprised when I was accepted into the program than me).
Anyway, Rickover was an absolute beast about safety, yet took military necessity into account when necessary, in ways that I can’t discuss but that are a major reason why the U.S. Navy’s submarine force is such a force to be reckoned with. As Wikipedia says about the Cold War, “U.S. submarines far outperformed the Soviet ones in the crucial area of stealth, and Rickover’s obsessive fixation on safety and quality control gave the U.S. nuclear Navy a vastly superior safety record to the Soviet one.” Of note: Rickover had seven rules that seem mostly applicable to OceanGate. They are:
During my time, which was mostly after Rickover’s passing, another feature that became embedded in submarine culture was the concept of “forceful backup,” meaning that junior members of a watch team were empowered, encouraged, and required to speak up when something didn’t seem right, even if they were the newest person on the ship and the action being taken was the Captain’s. There is a natural impediment to speaking up, usually for one of two reasons: the supervisor is a jerk and/or hates bad news (the usual case, frankly), or is so respected for his prowess and competency that he is almost revered, and the natural inclination is to think that such a person can do no wrong (the so-called “halo effect”). Both are deadly.
Reading the dozens of stories about the OceanGate disaster, the things that stand out to me are that Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, employed personnel not based on merit, refused to have the Titan inspected by a third-party, and did not like to hear bad news. None of those are good.
First, and as we reported previously, Rush “Didn’t Hire ’50-Year-Old White Guys’ With Experience to Guide Titanic Sub Because They Aren’t ‘Inspirational.’” This decision shows that a woke mindset can be deadly:
Stockton Rush, 61, added that such expertise was unnecessary because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller.”When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have, uh, gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in a newly resurfaced undated Zoom interview.”I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, uh, you know, who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational,” he continued.
This decision violated Rickover’s Rule No. 2, and elevated virtue signaling over a rational acceptance of risk and excellence. Additionally, Rush’s comment about the video game controller irritates me, not because of the controller, but because he had to know that merely “driving the sub” is a minor part of the task – more important is having the experience and capability to survive when things go haywire, something “50-year-old white guys” who are “ex-military submariners” are probably pretty good at — a 25-year-old with no experience? Not so much.
Second, the fact that Rush refused to have his vessel inspected by a third party is important, not because of the refusal per se, but because it shows he didn’t want to know about his own ship. As Liz Taylor, President of DOER [Deep Ocean Exploration and Research] Marine explains:
“Stockton felt like he was pushing the edge, he wanted to push the envelope, use some new materials,” she said.And that’s when Taylor specifically advised against the use of carbon fiber [to construct the pressure hull], as it’s still experimental and has not been tested over time in extreme depths of the ocean.”With the carbon fiber, it’s been shown to not be very happy when it’s being immersed first of all and then being hollow on the inside or just one atmosphere on the inside and then having the tremendous pressure of the ocean trying to push in on it, it’s not the right material,” she said.Then, in 2018, the manned submersible committee of the Marine Technology Society, backed her up, writing a letter also urging Rush not to proceed.Ignoring all warnings, he moved forward using carbon fiber on his submersible.”Where this really went kind of askew, was that he was like, I don’t need that,” she said. “I’ve done the math, I’m confident in my engineering and kind of just went down a path of really kind of thumbing the nose of the classing agencies.”Taylor says Rush cut obvious corners, like not building his sub in a pair to have self-rescue capacity or with what’s called an ROV.That’s a remotely operated vehicle that can serve as a self-rescue tool.”There was no capable ROV on board, there was no second submersible,” she said.
The idea of the second ROV is important, and if you look at pictures of the Titan, you don’t see much redundancy built in: U.S. submarines have (at least) two of everything, in case one fails. U.S. submarines still use, to my knowledge, sound-powered phones to communicate between compartments. These devices, which are glorified tin cans-connected-by-wire arrangements work, even with no power, or light.
A third-party inspection might have pointed all of this out. Which brings us to point number three:
When you lead an organization you have to have the ability to listen to bad news, and act on it appropriately. See Rickover’s Rule No. 3. There is evidence that Rush not only failed to listen to outsiders, as the Taylor report (above) shows, but Rush also fired his Director of Marine Operations and later sued him after the Officer filed a written report outlining dangers with the Titan: The missing Titanic sub would only detect hull failure ‘milliseconds before an implosion,’ company executive warned in 2018
A submarine pilot hired to assess the now-missing Titanic submersible warned in 2018 that its hull monitoring system would only detect failure “often milliseconds before an implosion.”David Lochridge, a submarine pilot and inspector from Scotland, said in court filings that he was fired after expressing concerns about the safety of the Titan — a 22-foot submersible that disappeared on Sunday while carrying five people to see the wreck of the Titanic.Lochridge was hired by OceanGate, the Washington-based company that runs tours with the Titan, as director of marine operations and started working with the firm in 2015…Lochridge said he raised “serious safety concerns” in his inspection report, including issues regarding the viewport’s design. His primary worry, however, was over a lack of testing on the Titan’s hull, Lochridge said in his countersuit…Lochridge warned that the system would “only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion,” and couldn’t detect if any existing flaws were already affecting the hull, the lawsuit said.”Non-destructive testing was critical to detect such potentially existing flaws in order to ensure a solid and safe product for the safety of the passengers and crew,” Lochridge’s lawsuit said.However, the submarine pilot said OceanGate told him that the Titan’s hull was too thick to scan for weak spots and adhesion issues.Lochridge said that after he submitted his inspection report, OceanGate fired him and gave the pilot “approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises.”
This is not the action of one who invites bad news and reacts appropriately to it.
In sum, this is a tragedy of epic proportions.
The opinions contained in this report are just that, opinions, and I look forward to reviewing the investigations that are in progress and will update my analysis as more facts are revealed to the public.
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