A tourist who traveled to the Titanic in a submersible describes it as a “kamikaze operation”

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BERLIN (AP) — As the international search operation continues for a submersible that went missing en route to the wreck of the Titanic, a man who was one of the vehicle company’s first customers described a dive he made at the site two years ago. years as a “kamikaze operation”.

“You have to be a little crazy to do this kind of thing,” said Arthur Loibl, a 61-year-old German adventurer and retired businessman.

Loibl told The Associated Press that he first got the idea to see the wreckage of the Titanic during a trip to the South Pole in 2016. At the time, a Russian company was offering dives for half a million dollars.

After Washington state-based OceanGate announced its program a year later, he jumped at the chance, paying $100,000 for a 2019 dive that was canceled when the first submersible failed pretesting.

Two years later he took part in a successful voyage together with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and two English men.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long and a metal plate for the floor. You can’t stand up. You can’t be on your knees. Everyone sits next to or on top of another,” Loibl said. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2.5-hour climb and descent the lights were turned off to conserve power, he noted, with all lighting coming from a fluorescent wand.

The dive was delayed several times to fix a problem with the battery and balance ballast. In total, the trip took 10.5 hours.

The group was lucky and got a spectacular view of the sunken cruiser, Loibl said, unlike visitors from other expeditions who saw little or no debris at all. Some customers missed non-refundable payments when bad weather made the descent impossible.

Loibl described Rush as a skilled repairman who tried to troubleshoot whatever he had available to perform the dives, though in retrospect he noted that “it was a little questionable.”

“Looking at it now, I was a bit naive,” Loibl said. “It was a kamikaze operation.”

The OceanGate submersible, in which Rush, Nargeolet, a British adventurer and two members of a Pakistani business family were traveling, disappeared on Sunday after leaving for the wreckage of the famous ocean liner, which collided with an iceberg and sank in 1912. Just 700 of all approximately 2,200 passengers and crew survived.

Known allegations now suggest that significant safety warnings were issued during the development of the submersible, dubbed Titan.

The United States Coast Guard was leading the search operation. An aircraft detected sounds underwater Tuesday and Wednesday, though authorities weren’t sure what caused them.