The first hint of a timeline came Thursday evening when a senior U.S. Navy official said that after the Titan was reported missing Sunday, the Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an “anomaly” that was consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the vessel was operating when communications were lost. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.

The Navy official who spoke of the “anomaly” heard Sunday said the Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, argued in 2018 that the method the company devised for ensuring the soundness of the hull — relying on acoustic monitoring that could detect cracks and pops as the hull strained under pressure — was inadequate and could “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”

“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull,” Lochridge’s attorneys wrote in a wrongful termination claim.

https://apnews.com/article/missing-titanic-submersible-updates-93a59c3c1d48aee2feef46caca418fd1