Posted on 06/23/2023 5:28:05 AM PDT by Red Badger
A U.S. Navy acoustic system detected an "anomaly" on Sunday that was likely the fatal implosion of a private submersible vehicle carrying five people to tour the wreckage of the Titanic, according to a senior military official.
Coast Guard officials said during a news conference Thursday that they've notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which had been missing for days, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.
Despite an international search and rescue effort, the Associated Press is now reporting that the Navy likely knew the search was futile soon after the sub was lost.
After detecting the sound of the implosion just 500 meters from the Titanic shipwreck, the Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data.
They found that anomaly was "consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost," according to the senior Navy official.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the U.S. Navy's sensitive acoustic detection system.
The official said the Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search until the time had passed that the Titan would have sustained its passengers with breathable air.
From the beginning, the odds were overwhelmingly against the occupants who were lost more than a mile below the sea with no way to communicate with the surface and no signs of life for days.
38328904- RMS Titanic wreckage (Atlantic/Magellan) A debris field, which was a sign of massive damage, was found about a third of a mile from the bow of the Titanic.
"The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger.
The implosion collapsed the Titan, instantly resulting in its violent breakup and scattering as it descended to the sea floor. That would also explain the sudden loss of communication, inability to automatically resurface, and absence of floating debris.
Almost certainly, there would have been no warning; the destruction massive, and the resultant deaths instantaneous.
It did not collide with the Titanic, according to search officials.
"It's in an area where there is not any debris of Titanic. It is smooth bottom," said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution undersea expert Carl Hartsfield.
With its oxygen reserves depleted, the four tourists and the company's CEO pilot, would not have survived, but always, the effort was to save them.
"This was an immense support, and we had the right gear on the bottom to find it" said Mauger.
The Admiral was asked about prospects for the recovery of bodies but did not say what the next steps would be in the recovery effort.
"This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor. But, I don't have an answer for prospects at this time," said Mauger. "Right now, we're focused on documenting the scene."
The debris is a treasure trove of information about what went wrong. But getting down to the depths where Titan or the Titan sub wreckage is located will pose a new challenge for recovery teams.
"We're going to continue remote operations on the sea floor and I don't have a timeline for when we would intend to stop remote operations on the sea floor," said the Admiral.
"It is a difficult day for all of us, and it's especially difficult for the families. And our thoughts are with the families today. But this was an immense support, and we had the right gear on the bottom to find it," he said.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that developed the submersible, released a statement that said, "These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these fie souls and every member of their families during this tragic time."
Passenger Shahzada Dawood had Bay Area ties. The prominent Pakistani businessman was also on the Board of Trustees at the SETI Institute in Silicon Valley. In an email, CEO Bill Diamond mourned the loss of Shahzada and his 19-year-old son Suleman. He wrote, "I am certain that he would not have knowingly put his son’s life at any risk and was seemingly convinced of the safety of the submersible and its crew. He told me at our April Board meeting in Mountain View that he was going on this expedition, and he had childlike enthusiasm and excitement for what he felt would be a lifetime experience to share with his son."
Also presumed dead are 58-year-old British businessman Hamish Harding and 77-year-old French Navy veteran Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The CEO of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, was piloting the submersible. His bio said he graduated from UC Berkeley in 1989.
"This was preventable," said Will Kohnen, chairman of the Marine Technology Society’s Submarine group. He said concerns were raised with OceanGate during a conference in 2018 because the submersible bypassed certification rules for its planned expeditions. "At the end of the conference the general consensus in people were saying you know this looks awfully, awfully risky and what do we do? Should we say something? And we did."
Kohnen said parts of the vessel need to be recovered and studied to know exactly what happened.
"The ocean is a very complex harsh environment," said Reza Alam, Director of Ocean and Coastal Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley. He said the hull was under crushing pressure while diving to extreme depths of 13-thousand feet and any implosion would have been instant.
Alam said many materials do not handle salt water well, which is one of the biggest issues for underwater exploration.
"Number one is no wireless communications. Number two is extreme pressure so it needs a whole different set of technologies and expertise and dangers. And that’s why we know very little about our oceans, the depths of our oceans," said Alam.
“these guys got squished down to atoms in a matter of microseconds”.
We need to spend a few trillion dollars to recover those atoms, just to be sure....
;-)
Yep, 3 days of high level meetings to discuss the ramifications of national security, political ramifications i.e. can they divert attention from Hunter, etc.
“The hull should have been inspected carefully after each dive for signs of de-lamination. The entire hull should probably been x-rayed or at minimum been ultrasonically scanned.”
Absolutely. And I’ll wager none of that ever happened.
I saw a video clip where the CEO proudly stated he had purchased the interior lighting from Camper World.......if hed do that, what else was of substandard quality?
Sketchy doesn’t begin to describe this whole mess.
Doing ‘safety’ on the cheap will bite you in the a$$ every time..................
“We heard repeatedly the search area was twice the size the state of Connecticut. Why was that?”
My guess is that one of the big variables is ocean currents. If the sub lost power it might have been taken in any direction, and as time passed, the area got larger and larger.
Heard that....cutting corners and circumventing required processes and procedures will get people killed.....and sadly I suspect this is a perfect example.
The implosion of this carbon-fiber vessel would not produce anywhere near the same kind of sound that an almost 300-foot long steel submarine would produce. It's a bottle rocket compared to a Saturn V. I would not say the Ocean Gate vessel has much of a "known" acoustic signature, either. It's likely the SOSUS arrays detected something like an "anomaly consistent with an implosion" in the vicinity, but the ocean is big, and you can't go hunting down every little noise anomaly you might detect. It's possible the Navy didn't even know this expedition was going down.
I despise Biden and what he has done, but assuming this is some cover up for Biden when there is legitimate coverup evidence to be focused on is silly.
There are conspiracies out there, but everything is not a conspiracy.
Yes speculating on Biden’s motives. I am sure in my opinion that Biden knew, the US Navy knew very early into this which means Biden knew. Take that for what it is worth.
As for the motive, given all I have seen from his regime I see it as no stretch at all to presume he used it as a convenient way to distract from his son’s new cycle.
It is not as far-fetched as you seem to present it as.
Not that important now but it makes one wonder what the Canadian military surveillance aircraft picked up that was supposedly a tapping every half hour....
I agree.
A better design (and much more costly) would have been a flanged tube that was then wrapped with carbon fiber mesh.
The flanges would need to be fitted with double o-rings
Ideally the o-rings would have had a tap between them with a pressure sensor to detect leakage from the outside o-ring.
One of the issues with the glued fitting is that it is a single failure joint with no indication of impending failure. When it goes there is no warning.
With the depth this was intended to go to, a triple o-ring flange may be warranted.
But what we are talking about here is very costly. These people were intent on doing exploring on the cheap.
They paid with there lives. Not so cheap I would say.
True, but why didn’t they check the last known location of the sub before expanding the search? 1600 feet from the Titanic is where the debris was found. That area should have been searched first.
Triple O-ring, flange with a twist lock and a dozen stud bolts.......................
These two things we discussed are only the biggest failures of this diving vessel.
Also from what I have read is a complete lack of safety equipment and basic fail safe design.
I believe his decision not to hire 50 something expert white guys has less to do with his desire to hire inspiring young men but his desire not to deal with those who would want to build a more expensive but safer vessel.
He didn’t want people around that would tell him how wrong he is and how dangerous his submarine was.
I have worked with a lot of US Navy submariners my entire working life. I am not an expert by any means but I am aware of the basics.
I don’t think anyone I know would go down in that thing.
It was a patchwork design just waiting for a disaster...............
This guy reminds me of the Nuclear Boy Scout.
He knew what he wanted to do and was determined to do it regardless of what it took to do it and if anyone else was hurt.
But this guy was an adult and should have known better.
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/david-hahn-the-nuclear-boy-scout
The Gameboy controller is a horse of a different color!
Yeah, I think water could just pop that joint apart.
I don’t know. They were hoping to find an intact vessel, not a debris field. The intact vessel is a race against time, sorting out a debris field mixed in with the Titanic’s mess can wait.
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