By Helen Regan and Adam Renton, CNN
- Catastrophic implosion: The Titanic-bound submersible that went missing Sunday suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people on board, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday. A remotely operated vehicle found the tail cone of the Titan about 1,600 feet from the bow of the shipwreck, he said.
- Who was on board: Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and Stockton Rush, the CEO of the tour organizer, OceanGate Expeditions, died in the craft.
- About the trip: The submersible was descending to explore the wreckage of the luxury liner, located 900 miles east of Cape Cod at 13,000 feet below sea level.
“Majority of the vessel” must be recovered to know what happened to Titan submersible, expert says
Many questions remain as authorities continue searching for debris from the Titan submersible, including when the implosion happened and what exactly went wrong with the sub.
So far, search teams have located the Titan’s nose cone and one end of its pressure hulls in a large debris field, and the other end of the pressure hull in a second, smaller debris field.
Bobby Chacon, retired FBI special agent and former leader of the FBI dive team, told CNN that a debris field like the one search teams discovered could have been created by an almost simultaneous implosion and explosion of the submersible.
“What happens is the implosion … and then there is simultaneously an explosion because there are things inside, for example oxygen tanks, that were inside this vessel,” Chacon said.
“The two things that they found — the cones or the caps of that vessel — they were titanium. So they weren’t destroyed … Then the carbon fiber shell that made up most of that vessel came apart in the implosion-explosion. That’s what’s scattered about.”
Chacon added that it won’t be possible to know what happened to the submersible “unless you recover the majority of the vessel.”
“The sooner they do that, the better, because the ocean changes things all the time. The tides and currents and ocean pressures moves things around,” he said.
Chacon said the best scenario would be to use remotely operated vehicles, which have baskets and arms that can lift the debris.
“The good thing is it sounds like there is no other Titanic debris in that section. Everything they come across there should be collected, put into baskets and brought back to the surface for analysis,” he said.
