The submersible that imploded descending to the Titanic wreckage last year instantly killing all five on board had malfunctioned just days before its doomed dive, a former OceanGate scientific director testified on Thursday.
The submersible that imploded descending to the Titanic wreckage last year — instantly killing all five onboard — had malfunctioned just six days before its final doomed dive, a former OceanGate scientific director testified on Thursday.
Steven Ross, a marine scientist and crew member on the Titan’s 87th dive in 2023, said that a malfunction during that dive caused all five people onboard to “tumble about” and slam into the craft’s aft for at least an hour, CNN reported.
The dive, piloted by OceanGate’s late co-founder Stockton Rush, was aborted after an issue with the variable ballast tank — which controls the submersible’s buoyancy — caused the platform to invert 45 degrees shifting the back of the craft upwards.
Rush “crashed into the rear bulkhead, the rest of the passengers tumbled about, I ended up standing on the rear bulkhead, one passenger was hanging upside down, the other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow endcap,” Ross told the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation.
