Looking back, subtourist calls himself ‘naive’ for diving the Titanic in 2021

BERLIN (AP) — As an international search certain the implosion of a ship headed for the underwater wreckage of the Titanic, a man who was one of the submersible company’s early clients characterized a dive he made at the site two years ago as a suicide mission.

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

Loibl told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he first got the idea to see the wreckage of the Titanic during a trip to the South Pole in 2016. At the time, a Russian company was offering dives for half a million dollars.

After Washington state-based OceanGate announced its own operation a year later, it jumped at the chance, paying $110,000 for a 2019 dive that botched when the first submersible failed to survive tests.

Two years later he undertook a successful journey, together with OceanGate CEO, Stockton RushFrench diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and two men from England.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand it. You can’t kneel. They are all sitting next to each other or on top of each other,” Loibl said. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve power, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent light bar.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix an issue with the battery and balance weights. In total, the trip took 10.5 hours.

The group was lucky and treated to an incredible view of the wreck, Loibl said, unlike visitors on other dives who were only able to see a field of debris or, in some cases, nothing at all. Some customers missed non-refundable payments after bad weather made the descent impossible.

He described Rush as a manipulator who tried to make do with what was available to take the dives, but in retrospect, he said, “it was a little iffy.”

“I was a bit naive, looking back now,” Loibl said, likening it to a suicide mission.

He OceanGate Submersible Transport Rush, Nargeolet, a British adventurer, and two members of a Pakistani business family went missing on Sunday after leaving for the wreckage of the famous ship, which struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing nearly 700 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew members

Newly uncovered allegations suggest that important safety warnings they were made during the development of the submersible, called Titan.

The US Coast Guard has been leading the search and on Thursday announced that the missing submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board.