Aircraft hears sounds coming every 30 minutes from location near Titanic wreck where sub with five men on vanished into the deep – raising hopes they are alive as search enters make-or-break day
- A Canadian Aircraft picked up the sounds near the disappearance site, a leaked memo suggests
- Specialist sonobuoys, giving the plane underwater detection capabilities, are said to have picked up the contact
A Canadian Aircraft, part of the enormous search mission looking for the missing Titanic tourists, heard ‘banging’ at 30-minute intervals in the area the submarine disappeared.
Specialist sonobuoys onboard the plane detected the sounds near the ‘distress position’ a Department of Homeland Security email seen by Rolling Stone revealed on Tuesday night.
‘RCC Halifax launched a P8, Poseidon, which has underwater detection capabilities from the air,’ the DHS memo read, ‘reported a contact in a position close to the distress position.
‘The P8 heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes. Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and banging was still heard.’
The timing – or cause – of the banging is not revealed by the memo.
The announcement also stated that ‘the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre is working to find an underwater remote-operated vehicle through partner organizations to possibly assist.’
An e-mail sent Tuesday afternoon, seen by Rolling Stone, from the president of the travel and research group, the Explorers Society, also reported sounds.
‘It is being reported that at 2 a.m. local time on site that sonar detected potential ‘tapping sounds’ at the location, implying crew may be alive and signaling’ it read.
A massive search operation remains underway to find the missing OceanGate submersible, the Titan, after it lost contact with the mothership during its descent to the shipwreck on Sunday morning.
Rear Admiral John Mauger, who is helping coordinate the search, said it could be stuck.
‘We don’t have equipment onsite that can do a survey of the bottom,’ Mauger said on Tuesday.
‘There is a lot of debris, so locating it will be difficult. Right now, we’re focused on trying to locate it.’
