Titan submarine implosion hearing: OceanGate sub was 'being built by children' says whistleblower on second day of explosive hearing

Lochridge told the hearing that due to all the problems he found on the Titan submersible 'there was non way I was signing off' on it.

He also said that his team had been getting scaled back as people left, which according to him was due to the problems with the submersibles.

Lochridge also told the hearing that the rate of turnover in staff was 'incredible'.

The hearing was shown images of a home-made oxygen scrubber unit, an integral part of a submersible.

Lochridge told the hearing: 'Stockton liked to do things on the cheap', as they were shoown a picture of 'Stockton's idea' of a scrubber unit.

The image shows the scrubber unit which is made up of a box from Home Depot and a computer fan that is crudely glued to the top of it.

Lochridge said that the scrubber was integral in maintaining atmospheric pressure in the submersible.

He added: '[Stockton] decided not to use a known manufacturer. It's a plastic box and a computer fan.

'He wanted to do a test on it, I humoured him and it didn't work.'

Lochridge said he had been made aware that everything on the Titan submersible that imploded had been repurposed from the original vessel.

He said: 'They reused these domes, they reused these sealing faces, they reused the acrylic, they reused the interior. Everything was reused.

'It's all cost. I wasn't there for that, but I know firsthand that everything was reused. I am sure that will all come up as part of the investigation.

'How the hell they managed to get the carbon removed will be an interesting topic'.

Lochridge told the hearing that he had 'no confidence whatsoever' in the Titan submersible.

When asked if he had confidence in the way Titan was being built, he told the hearing: 'No confidence whatsoever, I was very vocal about that and I still am'.

Lochridge said he believes they dismissed his concerns due to 'costcutting', 'engineering decisions', and the desire to get to the Titanic.

He added: 'A lot of steps along the way were missed, it was pretty evident.'

Lochridge said that the COO of the company should have stepped in and described some of the people employed on the Titan as being 'children'.

He added: 'Some hadn't even been to University yet that Tony Nissen had employed, none of them were experienced submersible operators. There was no experience across the board.

'That was the appeal of me going across and making something good. It was nothing, it was all smoke and mirrors, they always had issues with their expeditions.

'I didn't know this at the time when I went across.'

Earlier in the hearing Lochridge said that from the outset it had been made clear that the company objective was to go to the Titanic wreckage.

He said that he was also told how the company 'wanted to be able to qualify a pilot in a day, somebody that had never sat in a submersible'.

Lochridge described this as a 'huge red flag', adding that there was no training in place for pilots and nobody was even qualified to man a sub.

CEO Stockton Rush and Tony Nissen, the former engineering director of OceanGate, kicked the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab (APL) from the project to design the Titan vessel themselves.

Lochridge said: 'Stockton decided to do all project engineering in house. He said he had lost confidence in APL. I think it was mostly a time thing.

'He introduced Tony Nissen and brought him in for the Titan build, they'd already put everything online that the vessel was going to Titanic.'

Lochridge said that Nissen took over and phased everyone out of the project including the team at the University of Washington.

He said: 'I said to Stockton I wasn't happy we were phasing out APL. It got to the point that Tony and Stockton told me I was never to speak to Dave Dyer again.'

Dyer is the Principal Engineer at the APL team.

Lochridge said that neither Nissen or Stockton were happy with APL and wanted them off the design and build of Titan.

He said the decision to kick the team off the build was down to 'arrogance', adding: 'They think they could do this on their own without proper engineering support.'

According to Lochridge, Nissen also had no previous experience in building submersibles - something which he also raised concerns about but was shunned.

Lochrige told the hearing that the basis behind OceanGate was to make money.

He said: 'There was very little in the way of science', adding that they had strong media team that could sell the seats aboard the submersibles.

The former director of the company said it wasn't scientists onboard but rather 'people who had money'.

According to Lochridge people would pay up to $35,000 to dive on the Alcatraz vessel.

Lochridge described an incident on the Andrea Doria in which he was supposed to take four paying clients to the wreck of the ocean liner that sank in 1956.

He said he was to drop down over several days and keep his distance from the deteriorating wreck while aboard one of the OceanGate submersible's.

Lochridge said: 'Unfortuantely the CEO [Stockton Rush] decided he wanted to take it down, I objected. He told me I was staying out, I objected again.

'I was sort of reigned in at the time, "just remember I am the CEO you are just an employee", he said. I eventually persuaded him to let me come on the dive.'

Lochridge said that Rush took the helm of the sub which was controlled by a Playstation controller.

Despite the plan to drop over several days, Lochridge said that Rush said 'don't tell me what to do' and went straight for the wreck.

Lochridge added: 'He came straight down hard on the bottom, smashed straight down - visibility went everywhere.

'We could see metal plates, we could clearly see the starboard side of the bow of the Andrea Doria. It was an absolute mess.'

Lochridge said that Rush continued to argue with him in the sub despite him offering him help as to how to get out - with two paying clients onboard.

The CEO then went full speed into the portside of the ship, causing it to crack. Which caused him to panic, according to Lochridge.

After one of the customers shouted at the CEO to hand over the controls Rush threw the the controller into the side of Lochridge's head, causing it to break.

Lochridge then managed to get the sub away from the wreck and back to the surface within 15 minutes.

It was this incident that Lochridge said left the CEO embarassed and led to him being phased out of programs with OceanGate.

OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush is seen here on May 27, 2023

At the start of the hearing Lochridge laid out his work history, telling officials that he had been a navy diver before earning his qualifications in underwater inspection offshore, and as a commercial diver.

Lochridge told the hearing that he then became involved in submarine rescue in 2001, with his wife seeing an advert for OceanGate in 2015.

He said the company and him ‘seemed like a good fit’ after spending two weeks with the company in May of that year where he was informed of the plan to visit the wreckage of the Titanic.

DailyMail.com will be providing live updates today as the second day of the OceanGate Titan submersible hearing continues.

Key witness David Lochridge is to testify before Coast Guard officials, Lochridge had previously branded the submersible that imploded ‘unsafe’.

He wrote in a 2018 report that the craft needed more testing and passengers may be endangered when it reached ‘extreme depths’.

Follow our coverage as we bring you the latest news from the hearing in South Carolina.