Below is a "case study." Give me your opinion on these two questions:
In your opinion, would Mr. Vandivier be morally responsible for any "accidents" that resulted when pilots tested the brake?
Would this responsibility be shared with any others? Explain.
Case Study: The Air Force Brake
Note: the following case is copyrighted and may be copied and used only by current users and owners of the textbook, BUSINESS
ETHICS: CONCEPTS AND CASES by Manuel Velasquez.
On June 28, 1967, Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) Aerospace Corporation contracted to purchase 202 aircraft brakes from B. F. Goodrich for the A7D, a new plane that Ling-Temco-Vought was constructing for the Air Force. B. F. Goodrich, a tire manufacturer, agreed to supply the brakes for less than $70,000. According to Mr. Vandivier, a Goodrich employee who worked on this project, Goodrich had submitted this "absurdly low" bid to LTV because it badly wanted the contract.1 Even if Goodrich lost money on this initial contract, the Air Force afterwards would be committed to buying all future brakes for the A7D from B. F. Goodrich.
Besides a low price, the Goodrich bid carried a second attractive feature: The brake described in its bid was small; it contained only four disks (or "rotors") and would weigh only 106 pounds. Weight was of course an important factor for Ling-Temco-Vought, since the lighter the Air Force plane turned out to be, the heavier the payload it could carry.
The four-rotor brake was designed primarily by John Warren, an engineer who had been with Goodrich for seven years. As senior project engineer, Warren was directly in charge of the brake. Working under him was Searle Lawson, a young man of twenty-six who had graduated from engineering school only one year earlier. Warren made the original computations for the brake and drew up the preliminary design.
Using Warren's design, Lawson was to build a prototype of the four-rotor brake and test it in the Goodrich laboratories. By simulating the weight of the A7D plane and its landing speed, Lawson was to ensure that the brake could "stop" the plane fifty-one consecutive times without any changes in the brake lining. If the brake "qualified" under this indoor laboratory test, it would then be mounted on airplanes and tested by pilots in flight. Kermit Vandivier, though not an engineer, was to write up the results of these laboratory qualifying tests and submit them as the laboratory report prior to the test flights.
Upon testing the prototype of Warren's four-rotor brake in simulated "landings" in the laboratory, Lawson found that high temperatures built up in the brake and the linings "disintegrated" before they made the required fifty-one consecutive stops.
Ignoring Warren's original computations, Lawson made his own, and it didn't take him long to discover where the trouble lay--the brake was too small. There simply was not enough surface area on the disks to stop the aircraft without generating the excessive heat that caused the linings to fail. . . . Despite the evidence of the abortive tests and Lawson's careful computations, Warren rejected the suggestion that the four-disk brake was too light for the job. Warren knew that his superior had already told LTV, in rather glowing terms, that the preliminary tests on the A7D brake were very successful. . . . It would [also] have been difficult for Warren to admit not only that he had made a serious error in his calculations and original design but that his mistake had been caught by a green kid, barely out of college. (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
Lawson decided to go over Warren's head to Warren's supervisor, Robert Sink. The supervisor, however, deciding to rely on the judgment of Warren who was known to be an experienced engineer, told Lawson to continue with the tests as Warren had directed.
Dejected, Lawson returned to the laboratory and over the next few months tried twelve separate times to get the brake to pass the "fifty-one-stop" qualifying tests, using various different lining materials for the brakes. To no avail: The heat inevitably burnt up the linings. By April 1968, Lawson was engaged in a thirteenth attempt to qualify the brakes.
On the morning of April 11, Richard Gloor, who was the test engineer assigned to the A7D project, came to me and told me he had discovered that sometime during the previous twenty-four hours instrumentation used to record brake pressure had deliberately been miscalibrated so that while the instrumentation showed that a pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch had been used to conduct brake stops numbers forty-six and forty-seven . . ., 1,100 pounds per square inch had actually been applied to the brakes. Maximum pressure available on the A7D is 1,000 pounds per square inch. Mr. Gloor further told me he had questioned instrumentation personnel about the miscalibration and had been told they were asked to do so by Searle Lawson. (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
The thirteenth series of tests also ended in failure and the results could not be used to qualify the brake. Mr. Vandivier, however, was anxious to ascertain why Lawson had asked to have the instruments miscalibrated:
I subsequently questioned Lawson who admitted he had ordered the instruments miscalibrated at the direction of a superior. . . . Mr. Lawson told me that he had been informed by . . . Mr. Robert Sink, project manager at Goodrich, . . . and Mr. Russell Van Horn, project manager at Goodrich that "Regardless of what the brake does on test, we're going to qualify it." (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
Lawson then undertook the fourteenth and final attempt to qualify the brake. To ensure that the four-rotor brake passed the fifty-one-stop tests, Mr. Vandivier later testified, several procedures were used that violated military performance criteria.
After each stop, the wheel was removed from the brake, and the accumulated dust was blown out. During each stop, pressure was released when the brake had decelerated to 10 miles per hour [and allowed to coast to a stop]. By these and other irregular procedures, the brake was nursed along. (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
When the fourteenth series of test stops was completed, Lawson asked Vandivier to help him write up a report on the brake indicating the brake had been qualified.
I explained to Lawson that . . . the only way such a report could be written was to falsify test data. Mr. Lawson said he was well aware of what was required, but that he had been ordered to get a report written regardless of how or what had to be done . . . [He] asked if I would help him gather the test data and draw up the various engineering curves and graphic displays that are normally included in a report. (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
Kermit Vandivier had to make up his mind whether to participate in writing up the false report.
[My] job paid well, it was pleasant and challenging, and the future looked reasonably bright. My wife and I had bought a home . . . If I refused to take part in the A7D fraud, I would have to either resign or be fired. The report would be written by someone anyway, but I would have the satisfaction of knowing I had had no part in the matter. But bills aren't paid with personal satisfaction, nor house payments with ethical principles. I made my decision. The next morning I telephoned Lawson and told him I was ready to begin the qualification report. (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
Mr. Lawson and Mr. Vandivier worked on the curves, charts, and logs for the report for about a month, "tailoring" the pressures, values, distances, and times "to fit the occasion." During that time, Mr. Vandivier frequently discussed the tests with Mr. Russell Line, the senior executive for his section, a respected and well-liked individual.
Mr. Line . . . advised me that it would be wise to just do my work and keep quiet. I told him of the extensive irregularities during testing and suggested that the brake was actually dangerous and if allowed to be installed on an aircraft, might cause an accident. Mr. Line said he thought I was worrying too much about things which did not really concern me. . . . I asked Mr. Line if his conscience would hurt him if such a thing caused the death of a pilot, and this is when he replied I was worrying about too many things that did not concern me and advised me to "do what you're told." (Statement of Mr. Vandivier)
Eventually, Mr. Vandivier's superiors also insisted that he write up the entire report and not just the graphs and charts. Mr. Vandivier complied and on June 5, 1968 the qualifying report was finally issued.