Expert explains what Titanic sub's victims final 48 seconds would have been like
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Becky Kagan Schott / OceanGate / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
An expert has offered a potential timeline for the final few seconds of the Titan submersible before it was destroyed by an implosion, killing all five on board.
Debris from the imploded vessel was found by a search and rescue effort and an investigation into the incident which led to the deaths of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Hamish Harding, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman is currently underway.
The US Coast Guard confirmed that the Titan sub had suffered from a 'catastrophic implosion', which would have killed all on board as the vessel was destroyed.
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Speaking to NIUS, Spanish engineer and underwater expert José Luis Martín has proposed a potential timeline of events in the final seconds before the OceanGate sub was destroyed.
He said that the people on board the vessel might have been aware that something was wrong between 48 and 71 seconds before the sub was destroyed.
In his proposed timeline of events, he says he believes there must have been an electrical fault 'which left the craft without thrust' and that the weight distribution on the sub would have caused it to sink down towards the sea floor.
Martín suggested that the sub pilot would have attempted to drop the vessel's weights in order to rise to the surface but might have been unable to do so.
If that happened, then the hull of the submarine would have been subjected to 'a sudden increase in underwater pressure' which the expert said would have led to a 'powerful compression' of the craft's shell.
It would have been this which destroyed the sub as it dived down to the wreck of the Titanic, with Martin claiming the implosion would have occurred at about 9000ft below the ocean's surface.
He said once it happened, those on board would have been killed instantly.
Footage from a previous dive the Titan sub made shows that the vessel encountered a problem and ended up spinning out of control as it approached the Titanic wreck.
The footage, which was shown on a BBC documentary last year, led to one of the passengers on board the sub fearing for her life as she said she believed in that moment 'we're not gonna make it'.
In that particular trip, they were able to reprogram the vessel's control and regain movement.
Someone else who'd been on board the Titan sub explained that on their trip, they'd been approaching the debris of the Titanic when one of the sub's batteries went 'kaput' and the vessel struggled to deploy their weights to return to the surface.
Jaden Pan said that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told them to 'sleep' as it would be 24 hours before they could make it back up to the surface.