A former contractor for OceanGate, Antonella Wilby, provided testimony on Friday before a U.S. Coast Guard panel regarding the Titan submarine, which experienced an implosion last year during a dive to the Titanic’s wreckage. Wilby revealed that the Titan submarine utilized an overly complex navigation system.
During the hearing conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation, Wilby explained that the Titan’s navigation relied on a GPS-like ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system, which generated data on the submarine’s velocity, depth, and position through sound pings.
Typically, this data would be automatically integrated into mapping software to monitor the submarine’s position. However, Wilby noted that, for the Titan, coordinates were transcribed manually into a notebook, subsequently entered into Excel, and finally loaded into mapping software to track the submarine’s position on a hand-drawn map of the wreckage.
The OceanGate team endeavored to update this information at least every five minutes, but the process was slow and manual, involving communication with the gamepad-controlled submersible via short text messages. Wilby suggested the use of standard software to automate the processing of ping data and plotting of the submarine’s telemetry. However, the company intended to develop an in-house system but lacked sufficient time.
Eventually, Wilby was removed from the team and returned home after expressing dissatisfaction with the navigation method, stating to her supervisors, “This is an idiotic way to do navigation.” Additionally, she testified that during Dive 80 in 2022, a loud bang/explosion was heard during the Titan’s ascent, which was loud enough to be detected from the surface.
This testimony aligns with statements made by OceanGate’s former scientific director, Steven Ross. He affirmed that the noise was attributed to a shifting of the pressure hull in its plastic cradle, although Wilby indicated that the damage was minimal, amounting to only “a few microns.”
Furthermore, Ross detailed an incident that occurred six days before the Titan submarine’s implosion. The sub’s pilot and company co-founder, Stockton Rush, crashed the vessel into a launch mechanism bulkhead while attempting to resurface from Dive 87. This event was triggered by a ballast tank malfunction that inverted the submarine, causing other passengers to “tumble about,” as reported by the Associated Press. No injuries were reported, but Ross mentioned he was unaware if an inspection of the sub was conducted afterward.
