The original interview with the OceanGate CEO, which owned the Titan submersible, was published on YouTube in August 2020, the report said. However, it was subsequently deleted from the platform, the portal reported, citing metadata.
"Fortunately, it was not a direct strike. A direct strike to the carbon fiber probably would have taken us totally out … Fortunately, we are using commercial off-the-shelf and line-replaceable items. So in a matter of a couple of days, we were able to replace all those components," Rush was quoted as saying by the portal.
In addition, on May 16, 2018, OceanGate said on its social media that the submersible had "sustained lightning damage that affected over 70% of its internal systems," the report stated.
In June, the OceanGate submersible, Titan, went missing during an expedition to the Titanic wreckage in an area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod in the North Atlantic, at a depth of approximately 13,000 feet. The five people on board the Titan included Rush, UK businessman Hamish Harding, French maritime expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and vice chairman of Pakistan’s Engro corporation Shahzada Dawood with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
Later, the US Coast Guard confirmed that the debris found on the ocean floor near the Titanic wreck site was made up of pieces of the missing submersible. All five people aboard the Titan were presumed dead.