A Canadian aircraft, part of a massive search mission to find missing Titanic tourists, heard ‘bangs’ at 30-minute intervals in the area where the submarine disappeared.
Sonobuera, an expert on the plane, identified words close to the ‘crisis location’ from a Department of Homeland Security email published by Rolling Stone on Tuesday night.
Last night The Explorers Club president Richard Garriot de Caiux confirmed there was ‘reason to hope.’
In a statement posted on Twitter, he said: ‘We have high confidence that 1) there is reason for hope based on data from the field – we understand that possible signs of life have been detected at the site.’
The DHS memo reads: ‘RCC Halifax launched a P8, Poseidon, with air-to-underwater detection capabilities,’ the DHS memo reads, ‘reporting a contact in close proximity to the distress location.
A Canadian aircraft heard a ‘bang’ 30 minutes apart at the site of the submarine’s disappearance, a leaked memo suggests.
Last Known Sighting: The Titanic was photographed just before it dived into the Atlantic Ocean to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
‘P8 hears bangs in the area every 30 minutes. Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and the impact was still being heard.’
The timing — or cause — of the injury was not disclosed by the memo
Garriott added that The Explorers Club is confident the US Coast Guard ‘accurately understands the experienced personnel and technology we can employ’ and ‘believes they are doing everything possible with all their resources’.
The group says it has direct lines to Congress, the Coast Guard, the Air Force and Navy, and the White House.
The DHS announcement also said that ‘the Joint Rescue Coordination Center is working with partner agencies to locate an underwater remotely operated vehicle for possible assistance.’
An e-mail sent Tuesday afternoon, seen by Rolling Stone, from the president of the Explorers Society, a travel and research group, also reported the words.
“It is reported that the site detected a possible ‘tapping sound’ at the sonar location at 2am local time, indicating that the crew was alive and could signal”.
A massive search operation is underway to find the missing Oceangate submersible, the Titan, after it lost contact with the mothership during its approach to the wreck on Sunday morning.
Rear Admiral John Mager, who is helping coordinate the search, said it could be stuck.
“We don’t have equipment that can survey the bottom,” Moger said Tuesday.
‘There is a lot of debris, so it will be difficult to locate. Right now, we’re focused on trying to identify it.’
Royal Navy Rear Admiral Chris Parry likened the bottom of the Atlantic to ‘being in space’, saying: ‘It’s pitch black, and you get a lot of mud and other stuff floating around. You can see about 20 feet in front of you with a searchlight. There are very strong ocean currents pushing you.’
The missing Oceangate submersible, the Titan, lost contact with the mothership during its approach to the wreck on Sunday morning.
At 9.45am – one hour and 45 minutes into the sinking – it lost contact with its mothership, the Polar Prince. But the US Coast Guard was not reported missing until eight hours later at 5.40pm. The Canadian Coast Guard was not alerted until 9:13 p.m. Sunday.
The 21-foot submersible has an oxygen supply of up to 96 hours, but the crew of five is thought to have only 40 hours of breathing air left.
The Coast Guard is coordinating a massive search for the missing Oceangate submarine
Among those taking part in the campaign is billionaire Hamish Harding (pictured), CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai. She excitedly posted on social media about being there on Sunday
The search site is about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland. It’s hard enough to get there without finding the missing sub below sea level
If the mini-sub loses power, with no working propellers, lights or heating, its five passengers will be in total darkness at around 3C (37F) as the wrecked craft rolls along the ocean floor.
Oceanographer and Titanic expert David Gallo said: ‘Where is it? Is it at the bottom, is it floating, is it in the middle of water? This is something that has yet to be determined.
‘The water is very deep – two miles plus. It’s like traveling to another planet. It’s a sunless, cold environment and high pressure.’
The main problem is that the submersible, the Titan, has stopped transmitting signals, making it nearly impossible to detect. The mothership Polar Prince was supposed to send a sonar ‘ping’ every 15 minutes (radar and GPS not working underwater), but the last one was at 9.45am on Sunday – during the one hour and 45 minute dive it was just afloat. On top of the Titanic.
For some reason, OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operates tours of the Titanic, took eight hours to call the Coast Guard on Sunday. It was reported to the US Coast Guard at 5.40 p.m., and the Canadian Coast Guard was alerted later, at 9.13 p.m.
Among those taking part in the campaign are billionaire Hamish Harding, CEO of Dubai’s Action Aviation, and Shahzada Dawood, 48, a board member of the UK-based Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19.
The submarine’s oxygen supply was estimated at 96 hours, giving rescue teams until Thursday morning to find the vessel.
Timeline of events: Titan loses contact with the surface causing panic. All times given are in BST, five hours ahead of EST
Oceangate expedition CEO Stockton Rush (right) along with French Navy veteran PH Nargiolet (left) are believed to be taking part in the expedition.
‘Passengers must sign a waiver that mentions death three times’
A former Titan passenger has revealed how explorers are required to sign a waiver warning them of the deadly risks before boarding the submarine.
Mike Reiss, a New York-based writer who toured the Titanic wreckage on Titan last year, said communication failures were a common occurrence.
He told the BBC: ‘I’ve done three different dives with this company, one on the Titanic and two others and you almost always lose contact.’ He added: ‘Nobody went into it with any illusions. You sign a waiver before even getting on the boat. It mentions death, and three different ways you can die, on the first page.
‘If, in the worst case, they are at the bottom of the sea, I don’t see how anyone can get to them, much less rescue them.’
As families wait agonizingly for news, OceanGate, which began diving for the Titanic in 2021, is facing questions after the Titan suffered electrical damage and had to be rebuilt to withstand seas before it disappeared.
The tourism company responsible for the missing submersible took eight hours to notify the Coast Guard after it lost contact within an hour and 45 minutes of its descent on Sunday, Newstimesuk.com revealed yesterday.
By yesterday, a fleet of US and Canadian rescue ships and aircraft had reached the scene, along with a growing number of private vessels.
Speaking at search headquarters in Boston, Captain Jamie Frederick of the US Coast Guard announced: ‘That search effort has yielded no results.’
But last night some commercial ships with specialist underwater drones were taking them down. Mr Frederick offered his ‘heartfelt thoughts and prayers’ for the missing crew and their loved ones and promised they were doing ‘everything possible’. But he admitted rescuers were entering at the end.
When he was asked ‘even though there is so much time left, if you found the submarine right now, would that give you enough time to save the five people on board?’ He replied: ‘I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is, we will do everything in our power to rescue.’
The wreck of the Titanic is located at an altitude of 12,500 feet and the Titan was the only craft in the world capable of reaching it. Even nuclear submarines cannot safely go that deep. Deepwater dive specialists are assisting the Coast Guard in ‘unique and challenging’ operations, Mr Frederick said.
Standing at a dockside, he told reporters: ‘Getting rescue equipment to the scene is a top priority. It’s very heavy equipment, it’s very complicated, but the best experts are on the scene. If the sub is located, experts will look at the best course of action to recover the sub.’
The equipment includes a decompression chamber for five passengers to bring them to the surface.
A thrill-seeker who wanted to join billionaire Hamish Harding on the missing Titanic sub pulled out of a dive because he thought Oceangate was ‘cutting too many corners’, it has emerged.
Chris Brown, 61, paid a deposit to go on the doomed voyage, but said he changed his mind after becoming concerned about the quality of the technology and materials used on board, The Sun reported on Tuesday night.
Among his concerns were Oceangate’s use of ‘old scaffolding poles’ for ballast and its controls being ‘based on computer game-style controllers’.
He told the newspaper that despite being ‘one of the first people to sign up for this trip’, he ultimately decided ‘the risk was too great’.
Mr Brown added that he felt ‘really upset for Hamish’, who is among the five passengers on board the submersible Titan, who are currently missing.
Mr Brown and Mr Harding signed up for the then £80,000 voyage after sharing a ‘few beers’ while holidaying on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island.
The pair paid a 10 percent deposit for the trip, which more than doubled in price, while the Titan was still being built, he claimed.
But Mr Brown alleged that in later years, he learned that Oceangate had ‘missed the main target’ when depth-testing the submarine.
The multi-millionaire digital marketing tycoon found out that the ship was controlled by a modified PlayStation controller.
He is also understood to have been concerned by technical issues and delays throughout the development process.
He told The Sun: ‘I found out they used old scaffolding poles for the saber ballast.
‘If you’re trying to build your own submarine, you can probably use old scaffolding poles. But it was a commercial craft.’
Mr Brown, who says he is ‘not one to shy away from risk’, eventually emailed Oceangate and asked for a refund.
He is worried for his friend, but says Mr. Harding is not the panic type. He believes the billionaire is probably keeping ‘extremely calm’ and ‘processing plans, schemes and ideas through his huge brain’.
Mr Brown said Mr Harding would ‘give hope’ to other passengers.
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