A submarine expert has revealed the grim fate of the five people lost on board the missing Titanic submersible, revealing they were likely crushed to dust in their final moments.
On Sunday 18 June, an OceanGate submersible travelling 3,700m below sea level to the wreck of the Titanic suffered a catastrophic implosion, instantly killing the five men on board: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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Several agencies have launched investigations into the incident to determine what went wrong.
Longtime submersible specialist and co-founder of private sub company Sub-Merge Ofer Ketter told the New York Post the force of the implosion force would have immediately turned parts of the sub into granules instantly.
"To me, it makes absolute sense that the chamber, the pressure chamber where the passengers are sitting in, did not withstand the pressure because of the material that it was built on,” he said.
“And that is exactly what imploded and turned to dust. Everything else that was either made of titanium or perhaps other steels, survived, and that’s what was found.”
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Ketter said the Titanic Five would not have suffered as it would have taken place in less than a millisecond.
“They never knew it happened,” he said of the five victims. “Which is actually very positive in this very negative situation.
"It was instantaneous - before even their brain could even send a type of message to their body that they’re having pain.”
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His remarks came after the US Coast Guard revealed in a press conference last week (June 22) that retrieving the bodies would be incredibly difficult.
"This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” he said.
"We will continue to work and we will continue to search down there but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time."
Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) have stated that an investigation is underway to ensure no criminality regarding the Titan sub.
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According to CNN, they have already boarded the Polar Prince - the mothership - shortly after it docked in St John’s, Newfoundland, to examine voice recordings and other data to determine how tragedy struck.
TSB Chairwoman Kathy Fox told the outlet that the agency would collect this information to ‘find out what happened and why and to find out what needs to change to reduce the chance or the risk of such occurrences in the future’.
“We are conducting a safety investigation in Canada given that this was a Canadian-flagged vessel that departed a Canadian port and was involved in this occurrence, albeit in international waters,” she said.
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“Other agencies may choose to conduct investigations and that’s up to them.”
She added that TSB would also share the collected data with other agencies in a ‘collaborative’ effort to find out what happened.
Featured Image Credit: OceanGate / American Photo Archive / Alamy Stock Photo. FB-StockPhoto-1 / Alamy Stock PhotoTopics: News, Titanic, Science, World News