.png)
2 months ago
7
ARTICLE AD BOX
A CHILLING new video of the doomed Titan sub wreckage strewn across the ocean floor shows the dome the crew may have peered through before the implosion.
It comes as part of a two-week-long hearing into the tragedy that killed five people held in Charlestown, South Carolina, by the US Coast Guard.
AP
AP
CBS News
AP
More than 3,700m down on the seafloor lays the remains of the Titan submersible.
A new harrowing video of the remains shows “the aft dome, aft ring, remnants of the hull and carbon fibre debris”, the US Coast Guard said.
This could mean the five men on board may have peered out of the dome before tragically dying in the horrific implosion.
OceanGate’s former operations boss David Lochridge revealed earlier this week that the viewport and elements of the dome ceilings deviated from standard design processes.
Lochridge claimed said he was “appalled” by the O-ring – a type of seal.
He said: “There was so many laminations, so many voids. The imperfections were incredible.
“There was glue runs everywhere. And that’s a red flag.”
He described the hull as “porous paper. It was disgusting”.
He added: “Everything was reused.
“They reused these domes. They reused these ceiling faces. They reused the acrylic. They reused the interior. Everything was reused. It’s all cost.”
Lochridge was fired from the company in 2018 and had signed a non-disclosure agreement, preventing him from talking about OceanGate.
The former employee said he was glad he had been subpoenaed for the hearing so he could talk about the issues he had raised.
He also told the panel how the OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush allegedly threw a controller at his head in a heated disagreement after crashing the doomed sub.
The world was captivated when the sub vanished from sonar and failed to resurface from a dive 12,500ft down to the Titanic wreckage in the north Atlantic.
The hearing is exploring what went wrong on the day and the processes operator OceanGate went through when building the Titan.
It was revealed in the hearing that the last words from crew to the support ship Polar Prince said everything was “all good here”.
Audio became more spotty as it descended, with the Polar Prince asking if the Titan could see the Titanic on its display.
The Titan was still able to send one message when the submersible was 3,341m deep – an hour-and-a-half after it began its journey.
How the Titan tragedy unfolded
Five men plunged beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in a homemade sub in the hopes of exploring the Titnaic wreckage last year.
Four passengers paid £195,000 to go on the sub, with the fifth member of the trip being a crew.
But what was supposed to be a short trip spiralled into days of agony as the doomed Titan vanished without a trace on June 18, 2023.
The daring mission had been months in the making – and almost didn’t happen at the hands of harsh weather conditions in Newfoundland, Canada.
In a now chilling Facebook post, passenger Hamish Harding wrote: “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.
“A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
It would be his final Facebook post.
The following morning, he and four others – led by Stockton Rush – began the 12,5000ft descent towards the bottom of the Atlantic.
But as it made its way down into the depths, the vessel lost all contact with its mother ship of the surface, the Polar Prince.
It sparked a frantic four day search for signs of life, with the hunt gripping the entire world.
There was hope that by some miracle, the crew was alive and desperately waiting to be saved.
But that sparked fears rescue teams were in a race against time as the sub only had a 96-hour oxygen supply when they set out, which would be quickly dwindling.
Then, when audio of banging sounds were detected under the water, it inspired hope that the victims were trapped and signalling to be rescued.
It heartbreakingly turned out that the banging noises were likely either ocean noises or from other search ships, the US Navy determined.
Countries around the world deployed their resources to aid the search, and within days the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle (ROV) was sent down to where the ghostly wreck of the Titanic sits.
The plan was for the ROV to hook onto the sub and bring it up 10,000ft, where it would meet another ROV before heading to the surface.
But any hopes of a phenomenal rescue were dashed when Odysseus came across a piece of debris from the sub around 1,600ft from the Titanic.
The rescue mission tragically then became a salvage task, and the heartbroken families of those on board were told the devastating news.
It was confirmed by the US Coast Guard that the sub has suffered a “catastrophic implosion”.
The message read: “dropped two wts” and was sent at 10.47am.
Six seconds after the message was sent the Titan was pinged for the final time at a depth of 3,346m.
There was no communications between it and the Polar Prince mother ship the indicated any trouble or emergency on board the sub.
The Polar Prince began to realise the worst had happened when it sent a message to the Titan at 10.49am saying it had “lost tracking”.
They continued to message the doomed sub every two to three minutes, but by 11.15am they told the Polar Prince’s master there had been a loss of communication.
US authorities said a “catastrophic implosion” occurred, killing all on board instantly.
On board were British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush and French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The coast guard were eventually called at 6.27pm after the Polar Prince had spent three hours searching.
“Presumed human remains” were recovered from the ocean floor in two recovery operations.
The remains were taken ashore and were matched with the profiles of the victims on board the submersible.
The hearing also heard that in 2018 the vessel was struck by lightning which left a “significant blow to the structure”.
That caused it to fail a test by a wide margin.
Rapid decompression also occurred during testing phases of the project years earlier, the hearing heard.
A bombshell new lawsuit claims the explorers knew they were going to die after a failed last bid to save themselves.
OceanGate, the company that built the Titan, released a statement offering their “deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died”.
The spokesperson said: “There are no words to ease the loss endured by the families impacted by this tragic accident.”
The hearing is scheduled to last two weeks.
AP
AFP
AP
English (US)