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A DISTURBING transcript claimed to detail final communication between the Titan sub and its mother ship has been revealed as fake.
Almost a year ago, five men were killed when the doomed submersible imploded on the 12,500ft dive down to the Titanic wreckage.
AP
AP
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Businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were killedReutersAn alarming transcript emerged at the time claiming to document the crew’s desperate attempts to go back to the surface.
It suggested the five men were frantically trying to deal with glitches and malfunctions onboard before they died.
The bogus transcript laid out supposed minute-by-minute correspondence between Titan and its mother ship, the Polar Prince.
Littered with technical jargon, the sham log claimed the hull alarms were going off inside the sub before communication abruptly ended.
A faux troubling final message claimed to be from the mother ship read: “Please respond if you’re able”.
But after a year-long probe, the log has been disregarded as fake.
A thorough investigation into the fateful voyage found no evidence indicating those on Titan had any warning a catastrophic implosion was impending.
Captain Jason D. Neubauer, a retired US Coast Guard officer and chairman of the Marine Board of Investigation, said: “I’m confident it’s a false transcript. It was made up.”
Experts said the use of technical language and acronyms unique to the Titan made it seem authentic – prompting thousands to circulate it last year after it emerged late in June.
Neubauer added: “Somebody did it well enough to make it look plausible.”
He said the false log made it look like the men on board were “panicking”.
It is unclear who made the transcript – or why.
Dr Alfred S. McLaren, a retired Navy submariner and submersible pilot, told the New York Times: “It may have been done to embarrass OceanGate.
“It certainly was guaranteed to stir up the relatives.”
Businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate boss Stockton Rush and French Navy veteran Paul-Henri Nargeolet were on the sub when it vanished.
Contact was lost with the £200,000-a-head voyage, run by OceanGate, on June 18, 2023, as it made its way to the ruins of the Titanic – which sits 12,500ft under the water.
When the sub failed to surface after contact was lost, a frantic search was launched.
The world watched on with bated breath as rescue crews raced against the clock to find the vessel.
Multiple agencies from several countries sent boats and specialised equipment to search thousands of feet under the ocean to try to rescue those onboard the Titan.
Haunting audio of knocking sounds underwater kept hopes alive as many believed it could be an SOS call from the vessel.
But after days of waiting in the hope of a miracle, a robot deployed to the Atlantic Ocean floor uncovered debris belonging to the sub.
It was concluded the sub had imploded – with the crew on board unlikely to have known anything of the disaster.
In October, the US Coast Guard said more evidence and presumed human remains from Titan had been salvaged.
It is thought the exact location and cause of the implosion will never be fully determined, however.
Reuters
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AFP
The crew were going 12,500ft under the ocean’s surface to view the Titanic wreckageGetty
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