FORBES: The U.S. Navy heard days ago what it thought to be the Titan submersible’s implosion, according to multiple reports—the newest development in the confirmed loss of the submersible and its five passengers.
The “anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” was heard by a secret military acoustic detection system the Navy uses to track down enemy submarines, according to officials interviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
The sound was picked up just hours after the submersible began its dive Sunday and came from a location within the vicinity of where the submersible was when communications went down between the sub and a vessel on the surface.
The Titan submersible disappeared Sunday a few hours into its voyage to observe the R.M.S. Titanic’s wreck, which is around 12,500 feet below sea level. It was estimated to have 96 hours of oxygen for its five person crew. Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, was aboard the vessel, which is owned and operated by his company. As days passed in the search for the Titan submersible, reports about its safety issues began to spring up online.
A former employee of OceanGate reported significant concerns about the vessel in an inspection report from 2018. He claimed in a filing against the company that he was unfairly fired following his critiques. By Thursday, the Coast Guard identified a debris field containing external parts of the submersible and confirmed that the passengers aboard it suffered a “catastrophic implosion.” A debris field containing the submersible’s nose cone and the front of its pressure hull was discovered first by researchers, an indication of a “catastrophic event,” according to Paul Hankins, the director of the U.S. Navy’s salvage operations and ocean engineering for the U.S. Navy.
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