A senior Navy official said the service does not usually make the information public until the search for survivors ends conclusively.
Erin Snodgrass,Lloyd Lee
Thu, June 22, 2023
An undated photo shows a tourist submersible belongs to OceanGate at sea.Ocean Gate / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The Navy detected the Titan's implosion soon after it lost contact, per The Wall Street Journal.
Defense officials told the outlet the Navy began listening for the vessel right after it went missing.
A top-secret detection system used to find enemy submarines registered the sound.
At least some in the upper echelons of the US military were aware of the Titan submersible's fate days before the rest of the world, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The US Navy first detected the sound of the Titan's likely implosion soon after the vessel lost contact with its mothership on Sunday while on an exploratory dive to the Titanic shipwreck more than two miles beneath the surface, The Journal reported Thursday.
A top secret acoustic detection system that is used by the Navy to identify enemy submarines first registered the sound of an implosion near the since-discovered debris site on Sunday, US defense officials told the outlet.
The Navy did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Navy officials began searching for sounds from the missing Titan almost immediately after it lost contact, according to the newspaper.
"The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost," a senior U.S. Navy official told the Journal. "While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission."
A senior Navy official told the Washington Post the service does not usually make the information public until the search for survivors ends conclusively. Until then, it's nothing more than a "data point."
The fact that the Navy detected the sounds — and withheld the information from the public for five days wasn't surprising given the US's decades-long history of using devices to detect underwater activity, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Post.
"I would be surprised if they hadn't heard it," he said."They suspected what happened but couldn't be sure. What you're looking at is just lines on a graph. And if you try to convince people you weren't doing a search because the lines on a graph indicated an implosion, that wouldn't be acceptable to many."
Coast Guard officials on Thursday said the Titan appears to have suffered a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," imploding and shattering its debris 1,600 feet from the famous shipwreck.
The five passengers' death would have been instantaneous, Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney whose lab works with uncrewed submersibles, previously told Insider.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said at the press conference that the implosion would have "generated significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up."
Officials told the Journal that the Navy couldn't definitively conclude that the sound detected on its system came from the Titan, but the signal helped narrow the scope of the search.
The search for the vessel prompted a massive international effort, including Canadian authorities, commercial vessels, and a French vessel that deployed a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
The device, capable of diving 20,000 feet underwater, discovered the debris believed to be part of the missing Titan on Thursday morning.
Thursday, June 22, 2023: This article has been updated to include additional details that emerged following the breaking news.
Sub's implosion was the quickest way Titan submersible passengers could've died
Grace Eliza Goodwin
Thu, June 22, 2023
OceanGate Expeditions' Titan submersible.OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File)
The Titan submersible's implosion is the quickest way the passengers could've died.
The US Coast Guard announced on Thursday that it believes the sub imploded in the water near the Titanic wreck.
All 5 passengers — including the sub maker's CEO and millionaires — are presumed died.
The US Coast Guard said on Thursday that the missing Titan submersible appears to have suffered a "catastrophic implosion" before search and rescue efforts even began.
And out of all the possible scenarios, an implosion was the quickest way the five passengers aboard could've died.
"It would happen quite quickly, and there would be little chance of surviving," Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney whose lab works with uncrewed submersibles, previously told Insider.
It's not clear exactly when the implosion happened, but the Coast Guard said search buoys deployed to help look for the missing sub didn't hear the sound of any collapse of the OceanGate vessel.
The Titan sub dove under the waves around 8 a.m. on Sunday and lost contact with a surface ship about an hour and 45 minutes later. The Coast Guard first heard from OceanGate that the sub hadn't returned at about 6 p.m. that evening.
The Coast Guard said two debris fields were found about 1,600 feet away from the bow of the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor indicating the submersible imploded in the "water column" nearby.
It's not clear if those aboard reached the Titanic before the implosion.
Science writer David Pogue — who previously reported on OceanGate and the Titan sub for CBS — said those aboard would have died immediately.
"Remember, as we know, at those pressures, if a molecule of water gets in, it's over instantly," Pogue told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday. "I know it's no great comfort to the families and the spouses, but they did die instantaneously. They were not even aware that anything was wrong."
Grace Eliza Goodwin
Thu, June 22, 2023
OceanGate Expeditions' Titan submersible.OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File)
The Titan submersible's implosion is the quickest way the passengers could've died.
The US Coast Guard announced on Thursday that it believes the sub imploded in the water near the Titanic wreck.
All 5 passengers — including the sub maker's CEO and millionaires — are presumed died.
The US Coast Guard said on Thursday that the missing Titan submersible appears to have suffered a "catastrophic implosion" before search and rescue efforts even began.
And out of all the possible scenarios, an implosion was the quickest way the five passengers aboard could've died.
"It would happen quite quickly, and there would be little chance of surviving," Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney whose lab works with uncrewed submersibles, previously told Insider.
It's not clear exactly when the implosion happened, but the Coast Guard said search buoys deployed to help look for the missing sub didn't hear the sound of any collapse of the OceanGate vessel.
The Titan sub dove under the waves around 8 a.m. on Sunday and lost contact with a surface ship about an hour and 45 minutes later. The Coast Guard first heard from OceanGate that the sub hadn't returned at about 6 p.m. that evening.
The Coast Guard said two debris fields were found about 1,600 feet away from the bow of the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor indicating the submersible imploded in the "water column" nearby.
It's not clear if those aboard reached the Titanic before the implosion.
Science writer David Pogue — who previously reported on OceanGate and the Titan sub for CBS — said those aboard would have died immediately.
"Remember, as we know, at those pressures, if a molecule of water gets in, it's over instantly," Pogue told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday. "I know it's no great comfort to the families and the spouses, but they did die instantaneously. They were not even aware that anything was wrong."
‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron Speaks Out on Titan Sub: ‘Warnings Went Unheeded’
Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that after taking part in over 30 dives, he is well-versed in the dangers of deep-sea exploration.
Helen Holmes
Thu, June 22, 2023
Dave J Hogan/Getty Images
Titanic director James Cameron has weighed in on the tragic Titan submersible voyage that now appears to have claimed the lives of all five people onboard.
The Oscar winner, who himself has taken several underwater excursions to the sunken wreck of the Titanic, told ABC News on Thursday: “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that after taking part in over 30 dives, he is well-versed in the dangers of deep-sea exploration.
“I’ve been down there many times, I know the wreck site very well,” he said. “And of course, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, so I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle, and all the safety protocols that you have to go through.”
He added: “It’s absolutely critical for people to get the take-home message that deep submersible diving is a mature art.”
The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, went missing on Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean near the site of the Titanic shipwreck. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a press conference on Thursday that the missing sub is believed to have succumbed to a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreckage site.
Helen Holmes
Thu, June 22, 2023
Dave J Hogan/Getty Images
Titanic director James Cameron has weighed in on the tragic Titan submersible voyage that now appears to have claimed the lives of all five people onboard.
The Oscar winner, who himself has taken several underwater excursions to the sunken wreck of the Titanic, told ABC News on Thursday: “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that after taking part in over 30 dives, he is well-versed in the dangers of deep-sea exploration.
“I’ve been down there many times, I know the wreck site very well,” he said. “And of course, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, so I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle, and all the safety protocols that you have to go through.”
He added: “It’s absolutely critical for people to get the take-home message that deep submersible diving is a mature art.”
The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, went missing on Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean near the site of the Titanic shipwreck. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a press conference on Thursday that the missing sub is believed to have succumbed to a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreckage site.
James Cameron Says He Knew About Sub Implosion Days Before Any of Us
AJ McDougall
Thu, June 22, 2023
CNN
James Cameron, the director of 1997’s Titanic, said in an interview on Thursday that he had correctly guessed the fate of the Titan submersible less than 24 hours after it disappeared on Sunday—then watched the “futile” search unfold, “hoping against hope that I was wrong.”
Cameron, a prolific deep-sea explorer himself, explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he’d missed the initial news of OceanGate Expeditions losing contact with its submersible, having been out to sea on a ship. By Monday morning, though, he was in contact with his colleagues in what he called “the deep submergence community.”
Learning from them that both communications and tracking had been lost simultaneously, Cameron said he’d begun to suspect an implosion, “a shockwave of events so powerful that it actually took out” tracking, a secondary system with its own fail-safes.
“I got on the horn again with some other people, tracked down some intel that was probably of a military origin, although it could have been research—because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic—and got confirmation that there was some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event,” the director continued.
“That seemed to me enough confirmation. I let all of my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades. And I encouraged everybody to raise a glass in their honor on Monday.”
Cameron said he received the information from “credible sources” and “I took that as a factor...I couldn’t think of any other scenario in which a sub would be lost where it lost comms and navigation at the same time, and stayed out of touch and did not surface.”
A 'Terrified' Teen and a Maritime Legend: Tributes Pour in for Titanic Sub Victims
He told BBC News that the next few days “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”
“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position,” he said. “That’s exactly where they found it.”
On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed in a press conference that debris evidence found near the wreck of the Titanic suggested that a “catastrophic implosion” had taken place, killing all five people aboard.
Cameron said he had known “in [his] bones” that he had been right even before the announcement. “So it certainly wasn’t a surprise today.”
On CNN, Cameron added he believes the passengers on the sub “had some warning, that they heard some acoustic signature of the hull beginning to delaminate.” Cameron believes they he heard delamination–the process when water begins to force layers of fibres apart–“with their ears, not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives, and that’s quite a horrifying prospect.”
He said it was “unconscionable” that the company in charge of the submersible mission to the Titanic, OceanGate, did not go through appropriate safety procedures. He confirmed he never had business with OceanGate and did not try to warn billionaire Stockton Rush of his safety problems, thinking “maybe they’ve solved it [safety issues].”
In an earlier interview on Thursday, he told ABC News that several of his deep submergence colleagues had written letters to OceanGate officials in the past, warning that their submersible was too experimental and its safety needed to be certified.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” said Cameron.
“For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
A diving expert who has taken part in over 30 deep-sea expeditions, Cameron in 2012 piloted an experimental craft of his own design on a record-breaking dive to an undersea valley in the Mariana Trench.
He “knowingly” did not seek certification for his vessel, he told The New York Times on Thursday, because it was a scientific—and solo—mission.
“I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified,” he said.
AJ McDougall
Thu, June 22, 2023
CNN
James Cameron, the director of 1997’s Titanic, said in an interview on Thursday that he had correctly guessed the fate of the Titan submersible less than 24 hours after it disappeared on Sunday—then watched the “futile” search unfold, “hoping against hope that I was wrong.”
Cameron, a prolific deep-sea explorer himself, explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he’d missed the initial news of OceanGate Expeditions losing contact with its submersible, having been out to sea on a ship. By Monday morning, though, he was in contact with his colleagues in what he called “the deep submergence community.”
Learning from them that both communications and tracking had been lost simultaneously, Cameron said he’d begun to suspect an implosion, “a shockwave of events so powerful that it actually took out” tracking, a secondary system with its own fail-safes.
“I got on the horn again with some other people, tracked down some intel that was probably of a military origin, although it could have been research—because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic—and got confirmation that there was some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event,” the director continued.
“That seemed to me enough confirmation. I let all of my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades. And I encouraged everybody to raise a glass in their honor on Monday.”
Cameron said he received the information from “credible sources” and “I took that as a factor...I couldn’t think of any other scenario in which a sub would be lost where it lost comms and navigation at the same time, and stayed out of touch and did not surface.”
A 'Terrified' Teen and a Maritime Legend: Tributes Pour in for Titanic Sub Victims
He told BBC News that the next few days “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”
“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position,” he said. “That’s exactly where they found it.”
On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed in a press conference that debris evidence found near the wreck of the Titanic suggested that a “catastrophic implosion” had taken place, killing all five people aboard.
Cameron said he had known “in [his] bones” that he had been right even before the announcement. “So it certainly wasn’t a surprise today.”
On CNN, Cameron added he believes the passengers on the sub “had some warning, that they heard some acoustic signature of the hull beginning to delaminate.” Cameron believes they he heard delamination–the process when water begins to force layers of fibres apart–“with their ears, not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives, and that’s quite a horrifying prospect.”
He said it was “unconscionable” that the company in charge of the submersible mission to the Titanic, OceanGate, did not go through appropriate safety procedures. He confirmed he never had business with OceanGate and did not try to warn billionaire Stockton Rush of his safety problems, thinking “maybe they’ve solved it [safety issues].”
In an earlier interview on Thursday, he told ABC News that several of his deep submergence colleagues had written letters to OceanGate officials in the past, warning that their submersible was too experimental and its safety needed to be certified.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” said Cameron.
“For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
A diving expert who has taken part in over 30 deep-sea expeditions, Cameron in 2012 piloted an experimental craft of his own design on a record-breaking dive to an undersea valley in the Mariana Trench.
He “knowingly” did not seek certification for his vessel, he told The New York Times on Thursday, because it was a scientific—and solo—mission.
“I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified,” he said.
James Cameron says Titan submersible passengers likely had warning just before implosion
Emily St. Martin
Thu, June 22, 2023
"Titanic" director James Cameron, left, says that the Titan submersible deaths are "impossible to process" and that passengers were likely warned just before the implosion. (Pat Martin / For The Times; Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Titanic” director James Cameron said during an ABC News interview that one of his longtime friends was among the passengers on the tourist submersible Titan and that sensors likely warned of the disaster just before it occurred. All five aboard were killed in a “catastrophic implosion, officials said.
After OceanGate Expeditions released a statement Thursday saying that all five passengers’ lives had “sadly been lost” and the company confirmed that the debris found was indeed from the missing submersible, Cameron weighed in on the tragedy.
“This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of a hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack,” he told ABC News. “And I think if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong. They probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate, starting to crack. ... [W]e understand from inside the community that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency.”
The director of the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic" is a longtime member of the diving community, has experience designing submarines able to withstand the depths that the Titan could not and has ventured down to the wreck of the Titanic 33 times himself.
Cameron described implosion as a “violent event,” and he said engineers typically focus first and foremost on the submersible design maintaining structural integrity against pressure that increases with depth.
Read more: 5 aboard Titanic tourist sub are dead after 'catastrophic implosion'
“People in the community were very concerned about this sub,” Cameron told the network. “A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified. I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result.
"For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
The Times obtained the 2018 letter privately written to Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate, who was among those who died in the implosion. The manned underwater vehicles committee at the Marine Technology Society wrote to Rush, stressing the need for a third-party safety review of OceanGate’s submersibles.
“Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” the letter stated.
William Kohnen, chairman of the committee, told The Times that OceanGate “raised a number of eyebrows.”
Also in 2018, David Lochridge, a former OceanGate employee, sued the company for terminating him after he raised safety red flags, “particularly OceanGate’s refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design of the hull.” Lochridge specified that its hull monitoring system would detect failure "often [only] milliseconds before an implosion."
He said he disagreed with Rush’s decision to “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”
Read more: 'Catastrophic' safety concerns raised about sub long before ill-fated Titanic voyage
Cameron also told ABC News that he was mourning the death of French Titanic explorer Paul-Henri “P.H.” Nargeolet, a longtime friend who was aboard the Titan submersible.
“It’s really quite surreal, it’s just astonishing,” he said. “P.H., the French legendary submersible dive pilot, was a friend of mine. It’s a very small community, I’ve known P.H. for 25 years.
"For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Emily St. Martin
Thu, June 22, 2023
"Titanic" director James Cameron, left, says that the Titan submersible deaths are "impossible to process" and that passengers were likely warned just before the implosion. (Pat Martin / For The Times; Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Titanic” director James Cameron said during an ABC News interview that one of his longtime friends was among the passengers on the tourist submersible Titan and that sensors likely warned of the disaster just before it occurred. All five aboard were killed in a “catastrophic implosion, officials said.
After OceanGate Expeditions released a statement Thursday saying that all five passengers’ lives had “sadly been lost” and the company confirmed that the debris found was indeed from the missing submersible, Cameron weighed in on the tragedy.
“This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of a hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack,” he told ABC News. “And I think if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong. They probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate, starting to crack. ... [W]e understand from inside the community that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency.”
The director of the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic" is a longtime member of the diving community, has experience designing submarines able to withstand the depths that the Titan could not and has ventured down to the wreck of the Titanic 33 times himself.
Cameron described implosion as a “violent event,” and he said engineers typically focus first and foremost on the submersible design maintaining structural integrity against pressure that increases with depth.
Read more: 5 aboard Titanic tourist sub are dead after 'catastrophic implosion'
“People in the community were very concerned about this sub,” Cameron told the network. “A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified. I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result.
"For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
The Times obtained the 2018 letter privately written to Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate, who was among those who died in the implosion. The manned underwater vehicles committee at the Marine Technology Society wrote to Rush, stressing the need for a third-party safety review of OceanGate’s submersibles.
“Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” the letter stated.
William Kohnen, chairman of the committee, told The Times that OceanGate “raised a number of eyebrows.”
Also in 2018, David Lochridge, a former OceanGate employee, sued the company for terminating him after he raised safety red flags, “particularly OceanGate’s refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design of the hull.” Lochridge specified that its hull monitoring system would detect failure "often [only] milliseconds before an implosion."
He said he disagreed with Rush’s decision to “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”
Read more: 'Catastrophic' safety concerns raised about sub long before ill-fated Titanic voyage
Cameron also told ABC News that he was mourning the death of French Titanic explorer Paul-Henri “P.H.” Nargeolet, a longtime friend who was aboard the Titan submersible.
“It’s really quite surreal, it’s just astonishing,” he said. “P.H., the French legendary submersible dive pilot, was a friend of mine. It’s a very small community, I’ve known P.H. for 25 years.
"For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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