As we reported, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed Thursday that wreckage on the ocean floor was found and presumed to be the missing submersible Titan, and that all five voyagers who were attempting to visit the Titanic are likely dead.
But the Wall Street Journal reports Thursday that Navy officials suspected a disaster had occurred days before:
A top secret military acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard what the U.S. Navy suspected was the Titan submersible implosion hours after the vehicle began its mission, officials involved in the search said.
The Coast Guard reported the debris field is “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” and it looks like the Navy heard the explosion on Sunday:
The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after the submersible’s disappearance Sunday, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.
The US Coast Guard confirms the Titan submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic. pic.twitter.com/vTp9J2jIvH
— Pop Base (@PopBase) June 22, 2023
A senior Navy official told the Journal that although it cannot be 100 percent confirmed that the explosion came from the Titan, owned by the company OceanGate, all signs point in that direction:
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.
While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.
As to why this information wasn’t made public, officials say they didn’t want to impact the rescue operations:
The Navy said it shared its findings Sunday with the Coast Guard, which led the search, U.S. defense officials said. The U.S. held off making public what noises it had detected because it wanted to ensure search-and-rescue operations continued and couldn’t say for sure it was an implosion.
Twitter users were quick to come up with their own theories, however, with tweets similar to this posted by several prominent users: “US Navy detected Titan implosion on SUNDAY, but Biden admin only released news on Thursday AFTER Hunter plea deal and whistleblower reports released.” While I wouldn’t put it past the Biden administration, I would also point out that there has been no information at this time supporting such an assertion.
There’s been lots of back and forth on the internet and in the media about whether these explorers were heroically attempting to test the limits of technology or were foolhardy for attempting such a mission in a craft that had known safety concerns. In any case, five people are dead, and my heart goes out to their families.
Just in: Oceangate says it believes the crew onboard the Titan submarine have all perished. Rescue crews found pieces of the submarines body on the ocean floor 1/3 of a mile from the Titanic site.
The names of those believed to be lost:
-CEO Stockton Rush
– Shahzada Dawood… pic.twitter.com/aLPLlPjZsC— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_in_Flint) June 22, 2023
See Also:
Matt Walsh’s Take on the OceanGate Debacle Is a Titanic Failure
Multimillionaire Backed out of Titanic Sub Trip, Claims Company Was ‘Cutting Too Many Corners’
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