The moment disaster hit the Titan submersible has been captured in footage recorded on the sub’s mother ship.
During an expedition to the Titanic shipwreck that lies 3800 metres below the Atlantic Ocean, the OceanGate Titan imploded on June 18, 2023.
The five passengers aboard, who included OceanGate’s chief executive Stockton Rush, were all confirmed dead following the discovery of the wreckage.
A new BBC documentary into the disaster gained access to material from the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) investigation.
Footage obtained by the USCG shows Wendy Rush, the wife of Rush, listening to the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub’s support vessel and asking: “What was that bang?”
She is shown sitting in front of a computer that was sending and receiving text messages from Titan about 90 minutes in from when it started its dive.
A noise sounding like a door slamming is heard when the submersible reaches a depth of 3300 metres, prompting her to look up and ask other OceanGate crew what the noise was.
Moments later, Wendy Rush receives a text message from the sub saying it had dropped two weights, which apparently caused her to mistakenly believe the dive was proceeding safely.
But the USCG says the noise was in fact the sound of Titan imploding.
Officials say the text message, which must have been sent just before the sub hit disaster, took longer to reach the ship than the sound of the implosion.
Stockton Rush and the four other people aboard – businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood; businessman Hamish Harding; and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet – died instantly.
Earlier this year at the USCG hearings into the disaster, a damning portrait of the Washington-based company that developed and operated the submersible as well as its founder – who charged passengers about $US250,000 (nearly $400,000) per dive – emerged from testimonies.
After the submersible lost contact with its mother ship and failed to resurface, a dramatic international search and rescue mission unfolded in the remote waters several hundred kilometres south-east of Newfoundland.
Authorities concluded the vessel had suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” a sudden inward collapse caused by immense pressure.
The USGC investigation has centred on the design of the Titan, built from carbon fibre, an unusual material for deep sea submersible crafts.
A known problem is that carbon fibre layers can separate under pressure, a process called delamination.
USGC investigators believe the Titan’s structure showed signs of weakening in 2022 after the craft completed its 80th expedition.
Passengers reported hearing a loud bang as the sub returned to the surface.
They were told by Stockton Rush that this noise was the sub shifting in its frame.
But the USCG says the data collected from sensors fitted to Titan shows that the bang was caused by delamination.
The US Coast Guard will publish a final report bout its investigation later this year.
