Former Titanic sub tourist calls his 2021 dive a ‘kamikaze operation’
- Arthur Loibl was one of OceanGate’s first customers, and made the trip with two of the men who were also on board the Titan vessel for its final voyage
- The German adventurer’s group was lucky and enjoyed an amazing view of the Titanic wreck, but the latest mission ended in tragedy when the submersible imploded
As an international search determined the implosion of a vessel setting out for the underwater wreckage of the Titanic, a man who was one of the submersible company’s first customers characterised a dive he made to the site two years ago 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.
Loibl said on Wednesday that he first had the idea of seeing the Titanic wreckage while on 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, he jumped at the chance, paying US$110,000 for a dive in 2019 that fell through when the first submersible did not survive testing.
Two years later he went on a voyage that was successful, 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.”