The U.S. Coast Guard has determined that the private submersible craft carrying five people attempting to view the wreckage of the Titanic suffered a "catastrophic implosion" that killed everyone aboard.
"We found five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan," Paul Hankins, the director of the Navy's salvage operations and one of the military experts loaned to the effort, told reporters at a press conference Thursday.
The wreckage of Titan was found just 1,600 feet off the bow of the iconic shipwreck that the five men were trying to see, officials said. The search this week for the small submersible craft piloted by a game controller transfixed the world, and hope for a long-shot rescue -- assisted by U.S. military assets -- in the freezing depths of the northern Atlantic persisted until Thursday.
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According to The Associated Press, the Canadian Polar Prince, a research icebreaker and the vessel from which the Titan launched, reportedly lost contact with the sub about an hour and 45 minutes after it submerged Sunday, approximately 400 miles south of St. John's, Newfoundland.
Shortly after OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operated the small private diving craft, reported loss of contact, the Coast Guard, as well as elements of the military's U.S. Transportation Command and the Air National Guard, moved to begin the search effort.
Officials at the Pentagon said that three C-130 Hercules aircraft were loaned for the effort, and three C-17 Globemaster III aircraft helped to move equipment and cargo into the area.
The U.S. Navy also moved a mobile salvage system and experts into place as well. And the Coast Guard said a submarine officer from the U.K. Royal Navy, stationed in the U.S, was loaned to the team to provide expertise and support.
On Tuesday, rescuers heard sporadic sounds that one expert described as "banging noises" from underwater microphones that were dropped around the search site, raising some possibility that the crew was still alive. The next day, Capt. Jamie Frederick, a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, said those noises led them to direct search efforts to the area where they were heard.
But on Thursday, Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said that "there doesn't appear to be any connection between the noises" and the location of the wreck.
Mauger also noted that the catastrophic implosion of the submersible "would have generated a significant broadband sound," which was not heard by rescuers, suggesting that it occurred before search efforts began.
Looking ahead, Mauger said that the Coast Guard will "begin to de-mobilize personnel and vessels from the scene over the course of the next 24 hours" but added that they will "continue remote operations on the seafloor."
Mauger also said he didn't have any answers as to whether there would be efforts to recover any part of the submersible or its crew.
"This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor," Mauger said.
The Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System, or FADOSS, that the Navy provided alongside diving and salvage experts is capable of reaching the depths in question.
A Navy official told reporters Wednesday that "any time where the Navy has done a lift, we've used FADOSS." In 2021, the team set a salvage record when it recovered an MH-60S helicopter from a depth of 19,075 feet off the coast of Okinawa, Japan.
However, there are serious logistics involved with employing the system. The official explained that the Navy would need to charter a ship capable of supporting what amounts to a motion-compensating crane and then it would take "24 hours around-the-clock operation to weld it and secure to the deck of the vessel prior to getting underway."
"It is a difficult day for all of us and it's especially difficult for the families, and our thoughts are with the families today," Mauger said.
-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.
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