Disturbing audio exposes Titan sub boss firing engineer who raised major safety concerns before tragedy
A harrowing clip in the new Netflix documentary about the Titan submersible shows late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush 'firing' a member of the team who expressed safety concerns.
The documentary, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, dropped onto the streaming platform on 11 June and focuses on what ultimately led to the sub’s implosion and deaths of five people.
In June 2023, the Titan submersible went on a voyage led by Rush to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, however, it lost contact with its mothership about 435 miles (700km) south of Newfoundland, Canada and a rescue mission was subsequently launched before it was discovered that the sub had 'catastrophically imploded', with everyone on board having been killed immediately.
And now, an eerie new clip of Rush letting an experienced engineer who raised alarm bells go before the disaster unfolded has been revealed in the documentary.
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The engineer in question was his former Director of Marine Operations, David Lochridge, who is an experienced diver and submersible pilot.
In the Netflix documentary, he detailed how Rush left it until the last minute before he announced that he wanted to be the one to pilot the sub.
In 2018, the Director of Marine Operations also expressed his concerns about the dangers associated with the vessel’s carbon fibre hull and submitted a report outlining the risks.
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On top of this, footage from inside the Titan also shows Rush almost crashing the sub into a field of debris during a test dive in the wreckage of the SS Andrea Doria, forcing Lochridge to take the wheel.
Lochridge claimed this moment was a ‘complete turnaround’ which then led to him being ‘out of the loop’, as he recalled: “He never really spoke to me the rest of the trip, the dynamic changed.
“After [the test dive] I started getting cut out by senior management from the Titan project. I was dropped from all email communications, verbal communications. I was totally out of the loop.”
Lochridge was then brought into a meeting with Rush, who criticised his concerns about the carbon fibre hull, saying anyone who said it couldn't work was ‘full of s**t’.
In the audio, you can hear the late CEO saying: “I don’t want anyone in this company who is uncomfortable with what we’re doing. We’re doing weird s*** here and I am definitely out of the mold.
“There’s no question, I am doing things that are completely non-standard and i’m sure the industry thinks I’m a f****** idiot.”
He continued: “That’s fine. They’ve been doing that for eight years and I’m gonna continue on the way I’m doing but I’m not going to force people to join my religion of they don’t want to.”
At this point, a woman on the team chimed in with: “We need David on this crew. In my opinion, we need him here.”
And Lochridge responded that he felt ‘let down’ and ‘pretty gutted’ with his boss’ comments.
In the audio clip, he’s heard saying: “This is the first time, on paper, I’ve ever put any health and safety concerns.
“And my God Stockton, you know, on every expedition we’ve had issues. And I’ve been with you on every single expedition. "Do you now want to let me go? That’s the question.”
In the haunting clip, Rush simply responded: “I don’t see we have a choice.”
“Why test something with people in it? I don’t understand that. To me it was just sheer arrogance,” Lochridge later said in a confessional, adding: “I didn’t know what to say but I was blown away by, at this point, they were willing to play Russian roulette.”
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Titan submersible, Titanic, World News, US News
Madison Burgess