Former submersible customer calls dive to the Titanic a 'kamikaze operation'

As multi-nation rescue teams continue their search for the 'Titan' submersible which was initially ferrying paying passengers to the wreck of the Titanic, a man who was one of the submersible company's first customers described the dive to see the Titanic as a "kamikaze operation"

"You have to be a little bit crazy to do this sort of thing," said Arthur Loibl, a 61-year-old retired businessman and adventurer from Germany.

On Wednesday (June 21), Loibl told Associated Press that the idea to see the Titanic wreckage struck him while he was on a trip to the South Pole in 2016.

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At that time, to see the wreckage, a person had to pay half a million dollars to a Russian company. OceanGate, the Washington state-based company announced its own operation a year later. In 2019, Loibl paid USD 110,000 for a dive. However, the expedition didn't take place as the first submersible didn't survive the testing.

Two years on, Loibl went on a successful voyage, along with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and two men from England.

"Imagine a metal tube a few metres long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can't stand. You can't kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other," Loibl said.

"You can't be claustrophobic."

Lights were off

He said that during the submersible's 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights inside the cabin were turned off to conserve energy. The only illumination was light coming from a fluorescent glow stick. The dive was reportedly delayed a number of times to fix a problem with the battery and balancing weights. The voyage took a total of 10.5 hours.

The group was lucky and enjoyed an amazing view of the wreck, Loibl said, unlike visitors on other dives who only got to see a field of debris or in some cases nothing at all.

Some of the customers lost their nonrefundable payments after descent was made impossible by bad weather.

Loibl regarded Rush as a Tinkerer who tried to make do with what was available.

But in hindsight, he said, "it was a bit dubious."

"I was a bit naive, looking back now...It was a kamikaze operation,"

A frantic search is on for 'Titan', the OceanGate submersible which went missing on Sunday. The submersible, which set out to visit the Titanic wreckage, lost contact 1 hour 45 minutes into the dive. On board are Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate along with Nargeolet and a British adventurer with two members of a Pakistani business family.

(With inputs from agencies)

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