Chilling four words spoken by OceanGate CEO’s wife when she unknowingly heard Titan sub imploding during descent

The Titan sub imploded about 90 minutes into its June 2023 dive to the Titanic wreck, killing all five aboard.

The five crew passengers included British explorer sub Hamish Harding, 58, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19, and French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet (known as “Mr Titanic”), 77.

Co-founder of the sub owner's company OceanGate, Stockton Rushton, 61, was also present on the tragic dive.

The footage shows Wendy Rush, the wife of Mr Rush, hearing the sound of the implosion while watching from the sub's support ship, asking: "What was that bang?"

The video has been presented as evidence to the USCG Marine Board of Investigation, which has spent the last two years looking into the sub's failure.

Moments later, a message arrives from the sub saying "dropped two wts" - referring to the Titan shedding weights to control its dive.

The crew passengers paid OceanGate for the trip to the 3,800m-deep site.

Read more: Listen to eerie recording revealing Titan submersible's last moments

Read more: Engineer says carbon fibre hull of Titan submersible showed signs of flaws

According to investigators, the sub had already imploded by the time the message was received.

The footage, obtained by the BBC, comes from the US Coast Guard's (USCG) investigation for a documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster.

The documentary will also reveal that the Titan's carbon fibre hull started failing a year before the tragic £195,000-a-head journey.

Lieutenant Commander Katie Williams from the USCG said: “Delamination at dive 80 was the beginning of the end.

“And everyone that stepped onboard the Titan after dive 80 was risking their life.”

Despite repeat warnings from experts and former OceanGate employees, Titan continued making dives.

Deep-sea explorer Victor Vescovo said he "told them that it was simply a matter of time before it failed catastrophically.”

Christine Dawood, the widow of Shahzada Dawood and mother of Suleman, told the BBC the tragedy had changed her life forever.

She said: “I don't think that anybody who goes through loss and such a trauma can ever be the same.”

The haunting footage comes as the USGC prepares to release its final report later this year - with legal fallout already starting.

Earlier this year, an eerie recording of the last moments of the Titan submersible was released.

It is believed that the noise is the 'acoustic signature' of the sub imploding on 18th June 2023.

It was recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration device about 900 miles from where the sub was last seen on radar, south of Newfoundland, Canada, US Coast Guard officials announced

The audio is the latest piece of evidence in what happened to the sub, which disappeared off radars, sparking an international investigation to determine the cause of the implosion.

The sub lost contact with its support boat, Polar Prince, about an hour and 45 minutes into the two and a half hour dive.

The vessel was descending 12,400ft, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, in the North Atlantic Ocean.

After the manhunt began, the US Coast Guard announced that the passengers had 70-96 hours left before they ran out of oxygen.

The wreckage, at 3,776 metres below the waves, was found lying in the seabed.

An inquiry into the disaster, in September 2024, released new footage of the destroyed sub.

The inquiry heard concerns about the structural integrity and design of the sub.

In addition, the sole window in the Titan was rated to a depth of 1,300 metres by its manufacturer, but the sub was going down almost three times deeper.

Another problem was that the Titan was made of carbon fibre consisting of layers of resin, which the inquiry heard was unusual for a vessel of this kind.

An expert told the inquiry how there were irregularities in the hull which would have made it less structurally secure on deep-sea dives.

Dr Don Kramer, an engineer at the National Transportation Safety Board, said that a bang heard as the sub was coming back up from a 2022 dive.

Another issue, according to Dr Kramer, was the places where carbon fibre parts met rings of titanium within the structure, which were particularly weak points.

The inquiry also heard from a man who had gone on a dive in a previous prototype of the Titan, which had left him feeling shaken after he heard a cracking noise.

Stockton Rush said at the time that it was the vessel shifting in its metal frame, but Dr Kramer said that a change was taking place in the structure of the hull.

Karl Stanley said: "We got down there and it’s making noises - the sound of a carbon fibre bond breaking... We were all clearly a little disnerved.”

He went on: "Then there was kind of like a grand finale of cracking sounds as we were getting close to the surface."

Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster airs on Tuesday 27th May on BBC Two at 9pm. It will also be available on BBC iPlayer.