Anonymous wrote:Did they know they were in trouble or did it happen so fast?
If the investigators can determine the cause of failure, that might answer the question. It sounds like most experts think it was the carbon fiber composite hull, but they say it could also have been the seam between the hull and the titanium end caps or between the plexiglass window and the end cap.
If it was the window that failed, unless there were strain gauges on that window, they wouldn’t have had warning.
If it was the hull delaminating, they could have heard louder than normal cracking as was heard on a prior version of this sub. But it also could have failed without any warning at all. There was a hull monitoring system, but the failure would have likely happened almost instantly after any alarms.
If it was the seam between the hull and the titanium end caps, unless there were strain gauges in that location, it would have been instantaneous.
Knowing whether the sub was ascending or descending at the time or implosion though recovered instruments
/gauges would say a lot. At the time that communications cut out, they wouldn’t have been at titanic depth yet. If they had heard loud cracking or hull alarms, they might have tried to ascend. If they were still descending, it is less likely that they knew anything was awry. They couldn’t control much from inside that sub, but apparently they could drop ballast. The navy heard the implosion, so they can figure out about how deep it was when it imploded.
I’d like to think it happened without any warning. It seems like the most likely scenario.