The U.S. Coast Guard has officially announced the demise of the Titan submarine’s crew following a catastrophic implosion. A remotely controlled vehicle from Horizon Arctic found the tail cone of the submarine around 1,600ft away from the Titanic’s bow.
“The debris aligns with a catastrophic failure of the pressure chamber,” stated R Adm John Mauger, the commander of the first coast guard district.
Five individuals were inside the vessel when communication was lost during a dive to the Titanic wreck on Sunday.
The destruction of the submarine was verified on Thursday following an extensive search operation.
The spokesperson disclosed to CBS News that the U.S. Coast Guard had utilized their information about the “acoustic anomaly” to refine the search zone.
As per CNN’s reports, the data was labeled as “not definitive,” and thus, the search and rescue operation persisted.
Earlier on Thursday, Rear Adm Mauger of the Coast Guard confirmed the death of all five individuals aboard the Titan, attributing it to a probable “catastrophic implosion”, inferred from patterns in the discovered debris.
However, he clarified that no sounds indicating such an event were identified during the search operation.
“We’ve had sonar buoys in the water nearly continuously and have not detected any catastrophic events when those sonar buoys have been in the water.”
On Wednesday, confirmation came from the U.S. Coast Guard that a Canadian P-3 aircraft had picked up “underwater noises” within the search area for the missing submarine.
This detection rekindled hopes of locating the crew of the Titan alive and triggered a repositioning of Coast Guard operations.
CBS reported that these sounds are currently believed to have originated from other vessels in the vicinity.
Paul Hankin, an undersea specialist, indicated that the first sign of a possible implosion emerged when a substantial debris field was discovered on Thursday.
“Essentially we found five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan,” he stated.
The process of mapping the debris field and surveying the sea floor around the Titanic remains ongoing.
Communication with the submarine ceased roughly an hour and 45 minutes into its dive almost a week earlier. The Titanic wreck is located about 435 miles (700km) south of St John’s, Newfoundland.
Among the passengers in the vessel was the British billionaire businessman Hamish Harding, who had previously posted on social media about the dive, stating it was possible due to a “weather window” that had presented itself,
He mentioned that due to the “worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years,” the expedition was “likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023”.
Also part of the crew were British father and son, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, members of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, along with former French navy diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet, also perished on the Titan.
