The emergency services knew that the rescue operations were probably in vain. A US Navy system detected a signal on Sunday indicating the probable implosion of the submersible then searched for four days by an armada of rescuers in the North Atlantic, said Thursday evening the wall street journal And CNN.
According to an anonymous source within the US Navy, a “top secret” instrument dedicated to detecting and monitoring submarines recorded an acoustic signal suspected to correspond to the implosion of the Titan a few hours after this submersible was reported missing Sunday near the wreck of the Titanic.
“The US Navy has analyzed the acoustic data and detected an anomaly that may be consistent with an implosion or explosion in the area where the Titan was operating when communications were lost,” an official told Reuters. wall street journal.
“Debris Field”
The US Navy immediately relayed this information to officials orchestrating the search, a source told CNN, adding that these elements had made it possible to circumscribe the excavation area.
Many planes, ships and specialized robots from several countries had been mobilized for several days to find the five passengers of the machine, without success.
A “debris field” found near the wreck of the Titanic “is consistent with a catastrophic implosion” of the submersible, the US Coast Guard then announced Thursday, confirming their deaths and ending the search.
immediate death
The Titanic debris, tail and nose, were found in two separate locations on the ocean floor, about 500 meters from the Titanic’s bow. “There is no Titanic debris there, it is a smooth bottom (…) The debris field seems to indicate that there has been an implosion in the water column,” said an expert. at the Coast Guard press conference.
The disaster probably took place during the dive on Sunday, with communications lost after 1h45 of descent. If the Titan was around 3,500 meters at the time, the passengers would, in all likelihood, have died within seconds, with a pressure of 350 atmospheres beyond the capacity of the lungs.