Director James Cameron has revealed that he knew that the submersible carrying five people to the Titanic had imploded on Monday.
The Titanic director, who has made multiple trips to the wreck site himself, shared that he had been told a 'loud bang' had occurred at the moment that the sub lost contact with the surface.
He also claims that he knew what had happened to the submersible when he heard this news.
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An enormous search and rescue operation had been ongoing until Thursday (22 June), with officials then confirming that the sub had imploded after fragments of wreckage were found and later identified to have come from the deep-submergence vehicle (DSV).
Cameron said: "We got confirmation within an hour that there had been a loud bang at the same time that the sub comms were lost.
"A loud bang on the hydrophone. Loss of transponder. Loss of comms. I knew what happened. The sub imploded."
He added that he'd told colleagues in an email: "We've lost some friends. It's on the bottom in pieces right now.”
The Titan had been launched at around 8am on Sunday morning.
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After it lost communication with its mothership and failed to surface, a rescue operation to find the sub began.
British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood were all named as being on board.
The US Coast Guard officials estimated that the sub had 96 hours of oxygen from the time it went missing, and that oxygen would run out by 12:08pm BST yesterday (22 June).
On 22 June, Rear Admiral John Mauger said in a press conference that the tail cone of the Titan had been located near the wreck of the Titanic, adding that the debris was 'consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber'.
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OceanGate then issued a statement expressing their belief that all five passengers had lost their lives, calling the men 'true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans'.
"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." it continued.
And now, recent reports by the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press have suggested that the US Navy used advanced hydrophones and detected the implosion a number of days prior.
Kit Roberts