Jet Tests Not Done, Says Ex-Officer

A former Air Force official said Thursday that the service, despite orders from Congress, failed to carry out a 1986 inspection of potential defects in some of Lockheed’s C-5B cargo jets, raising new questions about whether the planes are safe to fly.

The Air Force had reported to Congress--supposedly after conducting a detailed investigation--that there were no flaws in the jets. At the time, the finding allayed doubts created by whistle-blowers’ assertions that some of the huge jets had defective frames.

But Thursday, Lawrence B. Welborn, a retired lieutenant colonel, said in an interview that Air Force inspectors tested only “a small fraction” of the aircraft structures they later claimed in the report to have reviewed. Welborn said he was in charge of preparing the C-5B aircraft for inspection in 1986 at Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

A Lockheed spokesman strongly denied that the C-5B is flawed but said the company has “no firsthand knowledge of the details” of the Air Force’s special inspection. Other tests, he said, show the aircraft do not contain structural defects.

The C-5B aircraft are the largest cargo carriers used by the Air Force and have played a critical role in supplying material to Operation Desert Shield. The structural frames in question are so critical that their failure in flight could cause the aircraft to crash.

The assertions by Welborn prompted a demand Thursday by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), whose subcommittee on oversight and investigations requested the special inspection in 1986, for the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate whether the Air Force misled or submitted false documents to Congress. Dingell’s call came after he obtained a copy of an affidavit taken from Welborn by attorney Herbert Hafif in connection with a Los Angeles civil lawsuit.

An Air Force spokesman said that as a matter of policy he would have no comment on a matter that may become the subject of investigation by the inspector general.

In a harshly worded letter to Deputy Inspector General Derek Vander Schaaf, Dingell said Thursday that the Air Force or its top officers “attempted to deliberately mislead the subcommittee by submitting misleading or false documents to the subcommittee.”

At a hearing called by Dingell on Dec. 3, 1986, former Air Force Gen. Lawrence Skantze, who had been the Air Force’s procurement chief, testified that the service had not accepted flawed aircraft parts.

Nonetheless, Skantze pledged to thoroughly inspect the C-5B and report back to the subcommittee.

The report submitted Jan. 5, 1987, stated that 24 suspect forgings installed in three C-5Bs and one C-5A aircraft had been exhaustively inspected. Diagrams of the main frames--circular structures up to 20 feet high that bear the planes’ load in flight--showed that hundreds of points were inspected.

But in the affidavit obtained by Dingell and in an interview Thursday, Welborn said he was in charge of removing the acoustic and skin panels of the three C-5B aircraft that provided the inspectors with access to the main frames. Only one area of one C-5B was exposed for testing on Dec. 6, 1986, he said. No information is known about inspections of the C-5A, which apparently occurred at Lockheed’s Marietta, Ga., plant the next day.

Yet the report to the subcommittee stated conclusively: “Structural integrity of the 24 suspected forgings was confirmed.”

Interviews with attorneys, company officials and congressional sources provided no information showing that Skantze himself knew that the tests had not been completed, even though he signed the report.

In a telephone interview late Thursday, Skantze said: “At the time I signed the letter, I had been assured that the inspection had been done. Given the gravity of the issue, I am appalled that our people would have assured me the job was done correctly, if indeed it was not done.”

The C-5B controversy appears to be escalating.

Only last month, a Los Angeles jury imposed a $45.3-million judgment on Lockheed in a civil case in which two former auditors and a quality assurance representative asserted that they were fired after trying to alert management to the C-5B defects. It was these employees who initially brought the alleged defects to Dingell’s attention in 1986.

The judgment is believed to be the largest in history against a defense contractor. Lockheed has asked for a new trial, claiming errors by the judge and jury misconduct.

Separately, it was learned Thursday that the three former Lockheed employees have also filed suit against Lockheed under the federal False Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue defense contractors on behalf of the government.

Hafif, the Claremont attorney representing the former employees, obtained a sworn affidavit from Welborn to support allegations in that suit. “We have the proof that the inspections were never done,” Hafif said. “The track record of these aircraft shows there were problems from birth.”

The three former Lockheed employees have alleged that 26 forgings used in the main frames were improperly heat-treated and that they now contain metallurgical flaws. Two of the main frames were not used.

Because of a defective oven, the main frames were overheated, resulting in a technical condition called “eutectic melting,” in which certain metals inside the aluminum alloy melt and cause voids and cracks, the former employees said during the Los Angeles trial.

Lockheed asserted at trial that the employees had lied about the problem and that they were fired for falsely claiming that there was a management cover-up of the problem. Jurors later said in interviews that they were shocked by Lockheed’s practices and wanted to send a message to the defense industry with the huge award.

But throughout the case, Lockheed has strongly defended the aircraft. The company renewed its defense Thursday, amid the latest revelations.

“We have no firsthand knowledge of the details of AF testing of C-5B main frames following Gen. Skantze’s testimony before the committee,” the Lockheed spokesman said. “We understand that Gen. Skantze advised the committee that tests did not disclose any metallurgical defects in the main frames.

“In any case, the tests previously performed by Lockheed and validated by Air Force metallurgists established the metallurgical soundness of the main frames. We have absolutely no reason to doubt the general’s testimony or the soundness of the C-5B.”

In the telephone interview, Welborn said the whole incident “bothers me tremendously,” even though at the time he did not know precisely what the investigators from Air Force headquarters were looking for.

Welborn said that to inspect as many points as were indicated in the 1987 report, it would have required that several aircraft be inspected for a period of two to three days. But the investigators spent only an hour or two on the one aircraft, he said.