Chilling video captures moment of Titan sub implosion: “What was that bang?”
Horrifying footage of the apparent moment of the Titan submarine imploding has been released by the Marine Board of Investigation.
We all remember back to June 2023, when the tragic and horrifying news of the OceanGate Titan submersible catastrophically imploding led to worldwide coverage at all hours.
The incident occurred during a dive to the Titanic wreck site, killing all five passengers aboard: CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani-British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The disaster occurred approximately 90 minutes into the descent, at a depth of around 3,300 meters.
‘What was that bang?’
Now, camera footage from onboard the mothership captured the moment when Wendy Rush wife of Stockton, the company’s founder, heard a faint cracking sound similar to a car door slamming. “What was that bang?” she says, stunned, before turning to those around her.
The loud “bang,” was later confirmed as the sound of the implosion; despite this, just moments later, the crew aboard the support vessel received a message from the sub stating it had released two ballast weights – a detail that may have misleadingly suggested the sub was still functioning as expected.
Chris Roman, a professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, explained to CNN that “some inherent buffering or delay related to how they do the signal timing or processing” comes from systems operating underwater. “If the ‘weights dropped’ message was sent a few seconds before the implosion … the computer may not show the message immediately when it is received. The timing is tight, but possible. It really depends on the system they were using.”
Six seconds later, the mother ship lost contact with the submarine.
Investigations revealed that Titan’s carbon fibre hull had experienced delamination as early as its 80th dive in July 2022, compromising its structural integrity. Despite this, OceanGate continued operations without addressing the issue and repeatedly charged passengers around $250,000 per dive.
After five desperate days of searching, the wreckage of the doomed vessel was eventually found on the ocean floor around 500m from the bow of the Titanic’s wreck.
A Netflix documentary titled “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster,” set to release this year along with one for the BBC; they will delve into the events leading up to the tragedy, featuring whistleblower accounts and examining the company’s practices.
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