A shocking photograph shows how the Titan submersible fell apart before imploding

The ongoing public hearing into the Titan submersible disaster has revealed that part of the experimental vessel fell over before imploding last June.

Better known as the “Titanic tourist submarine,” the Oceangate submersible had a controversial design that sparked concern inside and outside the company before it led to the deaths of five men. Former Oceangate COO David Lochridge revealed last week that he was actually fired for raising concerns.

The ship’s carbon fiber hull, considered by experts unsuitable for use at depth, is believed to have weakened in repeated dives into the wreckage of the Titanic, which lies about 12,500 feet beneath the North Atlantic Ocean, as witnessed by the National Transportation Safety Board. engineer Don Kramer on Wednesday.

Now the US Coast Guard, which is investigating the sinking, has released an image showing that the part of the ship’s dome, which was used to view the doomed Titanic, fell off when it returned to the surface after a dive in 2021.

The inquest heard at an earlier session how bolts around the dome “shot like bullets” when the Titan hit the deck of its mother ship.

One of the Titan’s commercial passengers, Fred Hagen, testified: “The force of the rig hitting the deck…basically broke several bolts and they shot out like bullets. And the titanium dome fell.”

This was one of more than 100 technical failures the submersible is said to have suffered, including a lightning strike on its previous prototype, before the catastrophic implosion last June.

It claimed the lives of Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, also known as Mr Titanic, as well as commercial clients earning $250,000 apiece. British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58; Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48; and his son Suleman Dawood, 19.

A specialist from the 2021 mission where the dome fell, Renata Rojas, stated in a hearing on September 19 that the Titan was “working very well” before submerging.

She recalled: “I think there were only two or four screws in the dome. “It started leaking and falling.”

In response to the malfunction, 18 bolts were added to the dome to ensure it stayed in place, and Rojas insisted she never felt unsafe when diving into the Titan.

“This was never sold as a Disney attraction,” he said. “It was an expedition in which… things happen and you have to adapt to change.”

Other controversial elements of Operation Titan included the fact that the submarine was reportedly controlled by a PlayStation controller and its movements were tracked on an Excel spreadsheet, according to previous witnesses at the hearing.

“Stockton’s vision was to give someone this PlayStation controller and within an hour they’ll be a pilot – that’s not how it works,” Lochridge said as part of his testimony.

Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor, said at the hearing last week: “There were delays because there was this manual process of first typing in the latitude and longitude coordinates and then typing them in.”

The Titan lost contact about an hour and 14 minutes after its dive into the wreckage of the Titanic last June. What followed was an international search and rescue mission before his remains were discovered at the bottom of the ocean.

An Oceangate spokesperson said the independent: “OceanGate expresses our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died in the tragic implosion of Titan. There are no words to ease the loss suffered by the families affected by this devastating incident, but we hope this hearing will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy.

“OceanGate, which is no longer an operating company, which ceased all commercial activity shortly after the tragedy and which has no full-time employees, is an interested party in the Coast Guard proceeding.

“The Company has been cooperating fully with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began, including at the ongoing public hearing convened by the Coast Guard. OceanGate is represented at the hearing by Jane Shvets and Adrianna Finger of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.”

The public hearing will conclude on Friday.