FAULTY engineering and failures to test the Titan submersible led to the vessel’s deadly implosion, investigators have revealed in a final report.
The ill-fated Titan imploded during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic ship off the coast of Canada in 2023 – killing everyone on board.
It collapsed under immense pressure at a depth of around 3,300m – just 90 minutes into the £195,000-a-head journey.
The disaster claimed the lives of CEO Stockton RushBritish explorer Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeoletand British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has now concluded in its final report that the vessel failed to meet necessary strength and durability requirements as a result of faulty engineering.
It also found that OceanGate, the private company that owned the vessel, failed to adequately test it and was unaware of its true durability.
Investigators concluded in the report that the wreckage of the Titan likely would have been found sooner had OceanGate followed standard guidance for emergency response.
A Coast Guard report released in August found that the Titan implosion was preventable, stating that safety procedures were critically flawed.
During a previous hearing, an ex-OceanGate chief admitted the doomed Titan sub crashed during a malfunction just days before it set off on its fatal dive.
The private company suspended operations in July 2023 and wound down.
Titan – which was steered with a gaming controller – vanished from radars and failed to resurface.
Hopes of a miracle faded by the hour as desperate rescue crews worked around the clock to find any signs of life.
Five days after the sub was supposed to return, debris was found on the ocean floor dispersed over an area of around 322,917 square feet – the equivalent of almost six football fields.
Mangled wreckage of the Titan was later recovered from the Atlantic seabed, along with clothing, stickers and business cards.
“Presumed human remains” were found from the ocean floor in two recovery operations.
The remains were taken ashore and were matched with the profiles of the victims on board the submersible.
Chilling footage taken by a remotely operated vehicle during a search of the ocean floor showed the wreckage of the doomed sub.
It was shared in September last year by the US Coast Guard as part of a two-week hearing into the tragedy.
Meanwhile, a chulling audio clip revealed the final moments of the doomed vessel when it suffered a deadly implosion.
The recording – captured by an oceanic device some 900 miles from the scene of tragedy – revealed an eerie noise believed to be the sound of the vessel getting crushed under the water.
Passengers on board told support ship Polar Prince, “all good here” before the vessel dropped off the radar.
The crew on the Polar Prince then asked if the Titan could see the Titanic on its display.
Titan passengers were still able to send one message when the submersible was 3,341m deep – an hour-and-a-half after it began its journey.
OMAZE-ING
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BOTTOMS UP
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The message read: “Dropped two wts.”
Six seconds after the message was sent the Titan was pinged for the final time at a depth of 3,346m.
How the Titan tragedy unfolded
By Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)
FIVE men plunged beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in a homemade sub in a bid to explore the Titanic wreckage.
Four passengers paid £195,000 each to go on the sub, with the fifth member of the trip being a crew member.
But what was supposed to be a short trip spiralled into days of agony as the doomed Titan vanished without a trace on June 18, 2023.
The daring mission had been months in the making – and almost didn’t happen at the hands of harsh weather conditions in Newfoundland, Canada.
In a now chilling Facebook post, passenger Hamish Harding wrote: “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.
“A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
It would be his final Facebook post.
The following morning, he and four others – led by Stockton Rush – began the 12,5000ft descent towards the bottom of the Atlantic.
But as it made its way down into the depths, the vessel lost all contact with its mother ship on the surface, the Polar Prince.
It sparked a frantic four-day search for signs of life, with the hunt gripping the entire world.
There was hope that by some miracle, the crew was alive and desperately waiting to be saved.
But that sparked fears rescue teams faced a race against time as the passengers only had a 96-hour oxygen supply when they set out, which would be quickly dwindling.
Then, when audio of banging sounds was detected under the water, it inspired hope that the victims were trapped and signalling to be rescued.
It heartbreakingly turned out that the banging noises were likely either ocean noises or from other search ships, the US Navy determined.
Countries around the world deployed their resources to aid the search, and within days the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle (ROV) was sent down to where the ghostly wreck of the Titanic sits.
The plan was for the ROV to hook onto the sub and bring it up 10,000ft, where it would meet another ROV before heading to the surface.
But any hopes of a phenomenal rescue were dashed when Odysseus came across a piece of debris from the sub around 1,600ft from the Titanic.
The rescue mission tragically turned into a salvage task, and the heartbroken families of those on board were told the devastating news.
It was confirmed by the US Coast Guard that the sub had suffered a “catastrophic implosion”.