`LNG carrier tail shaft fracture`

Mid-1980s, Philippine Sea. One of the Quincy-built LNG ships had its tail shaft fail mid-voyage between Indonesia and Japan with a full LNG cargo. Offloaded onto a returning empty ship; Learjets flew fittings halfway around the world; out-of-the-way Philippine harbor; nobody hurt. Fatigue crack grew from a casting flaw the Seattle steel shop's inspector had found and the manager had suppressed by throwing him out of the office. Crack grew over five years until shaft broke in two. Pelloux brought in for forensic analysis.

There are entire books written about fracture analysis, and it helps to have someone who's been looking at it for ten or fifteen years show you how to do it. Professor Pelloux, who passed away, came from France, got his PhD in this department, went to work at Boeing, came back after three or four years, became a faculty member here, and taught fatigue and fracture. I remember in the mid '80s I had a tail shaft fracture on a liquid natural gas carrier, one of these same ships that was built down at Quincy, that I worked on the steel for the skirts twelve years before. They had a tail shaft fail in the middle of the Philippine Sea. They were going from Indonesia to Japan, full of LNG. When you've got a container ship full of a hundred thousand tons of LNG, that LNG is going to be boiling off, and you would like to have power so that it doesn't blow up. They had to offload it on a ship that was coming back from Japan that was empty, and they had Learjets flying halfway around the world with the right type of fittings. They did the transfer in an out-of-the-way harbor in the middle of the Philippines, and nobody got hurt. It took them a couple of days to offload the cargo. They wanted to know why the tail shaft fractured. I remember bringing in Professor Pelloux because he had a lot more experience.