Underwater 'banging' sounds heard in search for missing Titanic sub: US Coast Guard

Rescuers using sonar Tuesday to search for the missing Titanic submersible with five people onboard detected underwater "banging" sounds in the North Atlantic where the craft vanished two days earlier, media reports said, citing US government communications. The US Coast Guard has now confirmed that 'underwater noises' have been detected in the search for the missing vessel.

A Canadian P-8 aircraft involved in the search "heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes. Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and banging was still heard," said an internal email sent to US Department of Homeland Security officials, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

CNN also reported that sonar picked up banging sounds, according to an internal US government memo, but that the document did not clarify when the noises were heard Tuesday, for how long, or what might have caused them.

Rescuers hoped Tuesday that the arrival of specialised deep-sea vessels and US Navy experts would boost desperate efforts to find the tourist submersible that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic, as oxygen for the five on board rapidly runs out.

All communication was lost with the 21-foot (6.5-meter) craft during its descent Sunday to see the remains of the British passenger liner, which sits more than two miles (nearly four kilometers) below the surface of the North Atlantic.

The submersible, named Titan, was carrying three fee-paying passengers, including a British billionaire and a Pakistani tycoon and his son. OceanGate Expeditions charges $250,000 for a seat on the sub, which is about the size of an average truck.

US and Canadian coast guard ships and planes are scouring 7,600 square miles of ocean -- larger than the US state of Connecticut -- for the vessel, which was attempting to dive some 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

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