23 June 2023 , 07:13
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Director and submersible expert James Cameron has said he was struck by "similarities with Titanic" days before the debris from the missing submersible was found.
All five people onboard the submersible died in the vessel's catastrophic implosion.
James Cameron was the director of the iconic Titanic movie which was released in 1997 and even undertook many dives down to the wreck.
He has spoken out about the tragic sub disaster saying the ordeal reminds him of the Titanic sinking in 1912.
He said: "I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result."
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Cameron said he predicted the outcome of the ill-fated submersible days before the news was confirmed.
"I felt in my bones what had happened," Cameron said. "For the sub's electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously - sub's gone.
"I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That's exactly where they found it."
Hopes of a successful rescue mission were dashed after it was revealed five major parts of Titan had been discovered (OceanGate)He added: "(It) felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.
"I immediately got on the phone with some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within about an hour I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3,500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3,800 metres.
"We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings."
It comes as the US Navy said they heard a sound consistent with an implosion when communications were lost.
Suleman Dawood, left, was scared of going on Titan, his aunt said (DAWOOD HERCULES CORPORATION/AFP)The US Navy went back and analysed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was "consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost", a senior Navy official said on Thursday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.
Paul Hankins Director of Salvage with the US Navy briefs the news media (CJ GUNTHER/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)The Navy passed on that information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.
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The US Coast Guard confirmed the tail cone of the deep-sea vessel was discovered around 1,600 ft from the bow of the Titanic wreckage during a press conference in Boston.
Rear Admiral John Mauger said further debris was also found, in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, that was "consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber".