BERLIN — As the international operation of search for a submersible that disappeared while heading for the wreck of the Titanica man who was one of the vehicle company’s first customers described his dive at the site two years ago 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 feet 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.”
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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.
The Coast Guard released the information hours after the oxygen supply ran out.
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, carrying Rush, Nargeolet, a British adventurer and two members of a Pakistani business family, disappeared on Sunday after leaving for the wreckage of the famous ocean liner, which collided with an iceberg and sank in 1912.
Only 700 of the 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 led the search operation that detected remains in the area where the Titanic is located on Thursday.
An aircraft detected sounds underwater Tuesday and Wednesday, though authorities weren’t sure what caused them.
