Titanic director James Cameron reveals the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the Titan submarine

There were several “potential points of failure” in the doomed Titan submarine — and a warning system likely alerted the five crew members who perished shortly before the ship imploded, Titanic director James Cameron said.

In recent years, a series of concerns have been raised about the ship’s carbon fiber hull – the cylinder that carried the five perished crew members – and the porthole, which was reportedly not certified for the immense depths Titan ventured into.

The company’s CEO Stockton Rush even said the carbon fiber design broke a “rule” and was accused of ignoring the concerns of his own staff.

Cameron, a famous explorer who has traveled to the deepest known point in the ocean, said Titan had “three potential points of failure” and indicated its “Achilles’ heel” was the carbon fiber cylinder.

He added that the hull had broken into “very small pieces” after Titan imploded as the hull broke from the pressure. A warning system likely issued a warning and the crew attempted to take off just before the implosion, he added.

Cameron gave a series of interviews following news of Titan’s demise, criticizing the ‘fundamentally flawed’ carbon fiber hull

Concerns about the hull and porthole were also raised in 2018 by OceanGate’s former head of maritime operations, David Lochridge, in court documents. to a depth of 4,000 meters.

Cameron gave a scathing assessment of the Titan craft during a series of interviews following the grim news that it had been destroyed on its mission.

He criticized the design for straying from tried and tested techniques in favor of experimental methods.

“There are three possible points of failure and hopefully the investigation can pinpoint exactly what happened,” he told Good Morning America.

“The front viewing window was an acrylic viewing window. I was told it was shallower than what they were diving to, which is one point. They also had two glass balls on the submarine, little glass balls for floating, which is a bad idea.’

Cameron didn’t clarify his statement about the “crystal balls,” but he said it was the carbon fiber fuselage that was the “weakest link.”

“If I had to put money down on what the find will be, the submarine’s Achilles’ heel was the compound cylinder that was the main hull that the humans were in,”

Cameron said, “And they probably got a warning that their hull started to delaminate, and it started to crack…” It’s our belief that we understand from within the community that they dropped their takeoff weights and they surfaced , trying to manage an emergency’

“There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It’s pretty clear that that failed.’

Rush, who died in the Titan incident, said in a video posted online in 2021 that he “broken some rules” to make the ship, adding: “The carbon fiber and titanium, there’s a rule that you doesn’t – well I did.’

He also said in 2020 that the hull had “showed signs of cyclic fatigue.”

Carbon fiber is prone to delamination, the process by which a material breaks into layers under pressure.

Cameron said, “The way it fails is it delaminates. You have to have a hull, a pressure hull, made of a continuous material like steel, or like titanium, that’s the proven standard.’

“This OceanGate submarine had sensors on the inside of the hull to alert them when it started to burst. And I think if that’s your idea of ​​security, you’re doing it wrong. And they were probably warned that their hull was starting to delaminate, and it was starting to crack…

“It is our belief that we understand from within the community that they had dropped their takeoff weights and they were coming, trying to manage an emergency situation.”

In 2012, James Cameron conducted a successful solo mission to the deepest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench. He piloted the Deepsea Challenger (pictured) which was designed to withstand depths in excess of 36,000 feet

Cameron in 2012 after his successful solo dive in the Deepsea Challenger to the deepest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean

An image shows Cameron’s 2012 mission to the deepest known point in the ocean

OceanGate has not commented on reports of safety issues with Titan since the incident.

The company had boasted in promotional materials about Titan’s ‘Real Time Hull Health Monitoring’, which constantly checked the ship’s integrity during the dive. The system used acoustic sensors and strain gauges to ‘analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submarine dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure’.

But legal documents show that Lochridge, the former director of naval operations, “expressed concern that this was problematic because this kind of acoustic analysis would only show when a part is on the verge of failure — often milliseconds before an implosion — and not detect existing defects. before applying pressure to the trunk.’

Cameron successfully reached the deepest known point on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, in 2012 using the Deepsea Challenger submarine.

It was only the fourth time the seven-mile descent to the Pacific had been successfully completed—and the first time since 1960 that a man made it to the bottom and back.

The dive followed seven years of planning and design for the construction of the specialized submarine that could withstand the enormous pressures on the ocean floor.