Bravo to our sister service, the Titans of the United States Coast Guard (“USCG”), for its professionalism in searching for Ocean Gate’s “Titan” submersible off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada last week. There will undoubtedly be one or more investigations by the National Transportation Safety Boards of both Canada and the United States. Investigators will leave no stone unturned and from this will come a series of recommendations and regulations that impact requirements in the design of future submersibles. I would estimate that the investigation will take at least a year before results are released to the public.
Titan had made a dozen successful excursions to the wreck of the Titanic in the past couple of years and was in the process of “commercializing” undersea tourism to depths of 12,500 feet. At that depth, pressures are 340 times that on the ocean’s surface. This equates to about 5,500 pounds per square inch. In the past, such excursions have been made with experimental vehicles made of titanium. Ocean Gate is the first producer of a deep ocean submersible using a combination of titanium and carbon fiber materials. Carbon fiber is typically used in jet aircraft capable of flying at heights of 35,000 feet or greater across the vast oceans of the world, but the dynamic forces on a jet aircraft are quite different at altitude than the extreme pressures of the deep ocean. Obviously, something went wrong and, tragically, five souls were lost.
As tragic as this story is, one of the silver linings is the response of a coalition of sea going services to conduct a search and rescue operation. Enter the United States and Canadian Coast Guards. During the days prior to declaration of all hands lost, the voice on the big screen in American living rooms was Rear Admiral John Maugher, USCG. Rear Admiral Mauger assumed the duties of Commander, First Coast Guard District in May 2022. He oversees all Coast Guard missions across eight states in the Northeast, including over 2,000 miles of coastline from the U.S.-Canadian border to northern New Jersey and 1,300 miles offshore. Accordingly, he was the natural choice to lead the coalition search and rescue operation with elements of the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and commercial deep sea rescue assets from the U.S., Canada, and France.
Admiral Maugher and I participated in an event in New York City last fall, hosted by the New York Council of the Navy League of the United States, to celebrate the importance of the commercial maritime in support of military operations worldwide. Like all other Coast Guard Flag Officers I have met, I found him to be an experienced sea-going officer with a keen awareness of both the importance and hazards of the maritime environment, as well as having an extremely affable personality. He impressed me as a good leader. This impression played out in spades during the conduct of the search and rescue operation. With 96 hours of oxygen purported to be onboard Titan, time was of the essence. The pressure was on the search and rescue coalition to get forces on scene as fast and safely as possible, locate Titan, and bring her up prior to the 96-hour deadline—hardly a simple task. There was an abundance of contradictory information, such as the U.S. Navy’s sharing of a sound that resembled an implosion about the time that Titan lost communication with the mother ship. This information was deemed “inconclusive” and, with five lives at stake, Rear Admiral Maugher and the team chose to press on with the search and rescue. Canadian P-3s with sonobuoys in the water gave us hope when they reported repeated instances of a tapping sound at 30-minute intervals. When stricken with a casualty that puts your boat on the bottom with no hope of surfacing, any submariner would have done exactly the same thing. Alas, this too was an anomaly, and we now know that the implosion heard on Sunday, June 18, 2023 was indeed the breakup of the Titan, after some catastrophic failure of its pressure hull.
Much has been made in the media of the operation’s cost, estimated to be in excess of $1.2 million dollars, which eventually concluded that all souls were lost before rescue units even arrived. I support the statement of former U.S. Coast Guard Commandant, Admiral Paul Zunkuft, USCG (ret.), who stated to The Washington Post, that we typically do not bill companies or private citizens for search and rescue operations: “It’s no different,” he said, “than if a private citizen goes out, and his boat sinks. We go out and recover him. We don’t stick them with the bill after the fact.”
I would have it no other way. In times of war or peace, the United States Coast Guard is on watch and always ready—Semper Paratus!
BZ Coasties for a job well done!
Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (ret.), is the Dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy. Admiral Foggo is the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, and Allied Joint Force Command, Naples. He commanded BALTOPs in 2015 and 2016 as well as Exercise Trident Juncture in 2018.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
Bravo to our sister service, the Titans of the United States Coast Guard (“USCG”), for its professionalism in searching for Ocean Gate’s “Titan” submersible off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada last week. There will undoubtedly be one or more investigations by the National Transportation Safety Boards of both Canada and the United States. Investigators will leave no stone unturned and from this will come a series of recommendations and regulations that impact requirements in the design of future submersibles. I would estimate that the investigation will take at least a year before results are released to the public.
Titan had made a dozen successful excursions to the wreck of the Titanic in the past couple of years and was in the process of “commercializing” undersea tourism to depths of 12,500 feet. At that depth, pressures are 340 times that on the ocean’s surface. This equates to about 5,500 pounds per square inch. In the past, such excursions have been made with experimental vehicles made of titanium. Ocean Gate is the first producer of a deep ocean submersible using a combination of titanium and carbon fiber materials. Carbon fiber is typically used in jet aircraft capable of flying at heights of 35,000 feet or greater across the vast oceans of the world, but the dynamic forces on a jet aircraft are quite different at altitude than the extreme pressures of the deep ocean. Obviously, something went wrong and, tragically, five souls were lost.
As tragic as this story is, one of the silver linings is the response of a coalition of sea going services to conduct a search and rescue operation. Enter the United States and Canadian Coast Guards. During the days prior to declaration of all hands lost, the voice on the big screen in American living rooms was Rear Admiral John Maugher, USCG. Rear Admiral Mauger assumed the duties of Commander, First Coast Guard District in May 2022. He oversees all Coast Guard missions across eight states in the Northeast, including over 2,000 miles of coastline from the U.S.-Canadian border to northern New Jersey and 1,300 miles offshore. Accordingly, he was the natural choice to lead the coalition search and rescue operation with elements of the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and commercial deep sea rescue assets from the U.S., Canada, and France.
Admiral Maugher and I participated in an event in New York City last fall, hosted by the New York Council of the Navy League of the United States, to celebrate the importance of the commercial maritime in support of military operations worldwide. Like all other Coast Guard Flag Officers I have met, I found him to be an experienced sea-going officer with a keen awareness of both the importance and hazards of the maritime environment, as well as having an extremely affable personality. He impressed me as a good leader. This impression played out in spades during the conduct of the search and rescue operation. With 96 hours of oxygen purported to be onboard Titan, time was of the essence. The pressure was on the search and rescue coalition to get forces on scene as fast and safely as possible, locate Titan, and bring her up prior to the 96-hour deadline—hardly a simple task. There was an abundance of contradictory information, such as the U.S. Navy’s sharing of a sound that resembled an implosion about the time that Titan lost communication with the mother ship. This information was deemed “inconclusive” and, with five lives at stake, Rear Admiral Maugher and the team chose to press on with the search and rescue. Canadian P-3s with sonobuoys in the water gave us hope when they reported repeated instances of a tapping sound at 30-minute intervals. When stricken with a casualty that puts your boat on the bottom with no hope of surfacing, any submariner would have done exactly the same thing. Alas, this too was an anomaly, and we now know that the implosion heard on Sunday, June 18, 2023 was indeed the breakup of the Titan, after some catastrophic failure of its pressure hull.
Much has been made in the media of the operation’s cost, estimated to be in excess of $1.2 million dollars, which eventually concluded that all souls were lost before rescue units even arrived. I support the statement of former U.S. Coast Guard Commandant, Admiral Paul Zunkuft, USCG (ret.), who stated to The Washington Post, that we typically do not bill companies or private citizens for search and rescue operations: “It’s no different,” he said, “than if a private citizen goes out, and his boat sinks. We go out and recover him. We don’t stick them with the bill after the fact.”
I would have it no other way. In times of war or peace, the United States Coast Guard is on watch and always ready—Semper Paratus!
BZ Coasties for a job well done!
Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (ret.), is the Dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy. Admiral Foggo is the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, and Allied Joint Force Command, Naples. He commanded BALTOPs in 2015 and 2016 as well as Exercise Trident Juncture in 2018.