I don't understand the timeline. It's been reported elsewhere that the tourism company didn't report the submarine's disappearance for eight hours. This article says "The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications."
Did the crew sit there trapped for eight+ hours and then the sub imploded? I thought any hull failure would happen a lot faster than that.
Or is this article confused? It would make sense that the navy is always listening, and deduced what they'd heard after they learned of the disappearance.
Yeah, I thought that was confusing as well. I'd be shocked if the navy wasn't always recording. If the point of the system is defense, I'm sure it's not down to Frank to flip the switch on when they think there's going to be an attack.
Maybe by "listening" they meant reviewing the recorded data around that time?
The Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data after the Titan submersible was reported missing Sunday. That anomaly was ‘consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,’ according to the senior Navy official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system. The Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search.
I was sitting here thinking "Wow, it's odd that the only found the debris field exactly when the sub would have run out of oxygen. There's no way that's a coincidence. I'll bet they knew it was toast days ago and just kept everyone on the hook."
I'm guessing it was just a coincidence between the 96 hour mark and when the capable ROVs finally arrived on site. They deployed the ROV that discovered the debris in the early AM today. Based on the fact that info was already leaking prior to the coast guard announcement, it was probably known for several hours before being made public.
Edit: Yeah, they probably had reasonable suspicion that the sub was gone. But until they had evidence, continuing search and rescue seems like the prudent thing to do.