The U.S. Navy detected what it believed to be the missing Titan submersible implosion just hours after the vessel started its voyage to the Titanic, according to officials involved in the search.
Using a top-secret system created to find enemy submarines, the Navy started listening for the Titan almost immediately after it vanished in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The system detected what was likely the submersible imploding near the debris site that authorities eventually discovered on Thursday.
The Navy reported its discovery to the Coast Guard commander overseeing the search, U.S. defense officials said.
“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 in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
The U.S. Coastguard provided an update on Thursday revealing all five of the passengers on the missing Titan submersible were presumed dead in a “catastrophic implosion.”
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” OceanGate announced in a statement following the Coast Guard’s update.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the statement added. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
This was a breaking news story. The details were periodically updated as more information became available.
