Metallurgist Admits Falsifying Steel Strength Data on Parts Used in US Navy Subs Over 30-Year Period

Military submarines require very careful testing of the quality of steel components used in their production, given the tremendous pressure they are subjected to while operating underwater.

A former director of metallurgy at a foundry providing steel castings to contractors building submarine hulls for the US Navy has pleaded guilty to falsifying test results on metal strength hundreds of times over three decades period, the Department of Justice has revealed.

In a press release, the DoJ indicated that Elaine Thomas – a 67-year-old former director of Metallurgy at Bradken Inc., a Tacoma, Washington-based steel fabricator – faces up to 10 years in jail and a $1 million fine for willfully falsifying strength test results on over 240 steel castings which fell below the Navy’s prescribed standards.

Thomas’s fraud is estimated to have impacted up to half of all of Bradken’s production, with the scheme said to have included altering the first digit of test results, increasing the amount of dynamic force a particular steel component could withstand by 10 or 20 foot-pounds.

Bradken provides its castings to General Dynamics Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding, Connecticut and Virginia-based warship builders whose production includes nuclear-powered submarines, among them the Los Angeles and Seawolf-class attack subs and the Ohio and Virginia-class missile-firing subs.

US Navy Virginia-class attack submarine SSN 774 USS Virginia (US Navy photo)

© US Navy photo

The court trying Thomas’s case determined that she acted alone and that company management did not find out about the fraud until May 2017, when a lab employee was said to have discovered altered test cards and other issues with records.

Bradken agreed to pay $10.9 million in damages to Navy contractors last year for the provision of “substandard steel components” in connection with Thomas’s case, with the Navy assuring the public that it took all the necessary steps to continue the safe operation of the affected vessels.

Thomas is expected to be formally sentenced in February 2022.

Bradken acquired the Tacoma steel foundry in 2008 when it swallowed up Atlas Castings & Technology, which is now its subsidiary. Thomas began working at the company in 1977.

Government testing of the delivered submarines apparently didn’t indicate any threat to their structural integrity.

Thomas’s case is not the first time US sub builders have been caught in scandals related to steel quality. In 2007, the Navy discovered that workers at Newport News Shipbuilding used the wrong type of metal to weld pipes and joints together. Before that, in the 1980s, Electric Boat suffered a hit to its reputation after it was revealed that the company deliberately falsified inspection records to conceal structural welding defects to subs, which delayed their delivery and forced some finished boats to be almost completely dismantled and rebuilt.