Fact Check: Did the US Navy locate the Titanic-bound missing submarine? Social media claim debunked

The missing Titanic-bound submarine is all anyone can talk about on the Internet. As people from all over the globe gather to learn more about the situation, the news that the submarine has been located has been circulating on the internet. In a June 22 tweet, @jess_solx said that the vessel was found, attaching a picture of the vessel along with her tweet.

However, all information, apart from her claim that banging sounds were heard at 30-minute intervals, was false. According to a Twitter context note underneath the post, the author admitted that the information was fake and that she had only tweeted it to get famous. The tweet amassed around 2 million views and over 700 retweets at the time of writing this article.

The same tweet template, containing exactly the same information, including the exact same hashtags were posted by multiple Twitter accounts. A Twitter user @clark_gasm made a collage of the different times it's been tweeted by different people and posted it as a comment under @jess_solx's tweet.

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Alleged picture of the located Titanic-bound submarine, merely a 1987 painting

Jessica S stated in the tweet that she was the daughter of a US Navy ship commander who was present at the scene. According to her alleged father, whose picture she attached, the submarine was located "2.5 miles down on the sea bed". She stated that the passengers were alive but couldn't be rescued. She even posted a picture of what looked like a submarine under a shipwreck.

However, most of her information was completely fabricated. The attached photo was of Michael P. Donnelly, a rear admiral in the United States Navy who is unrelated to Jessica S.

Michael P. Donnelly (Image via navy.mil)

Moreover, a simple reverse image search on TinEye confirms that the image appeared on the Internet as far back as 2008. The image is a painting of the wreck by esteemed ship artist Ken Marschall in 1987. Marschall's paintings of the Titanic are so well-known that he served as a consultant for James Cameron's Oscar-winning film Titanic.

"... his paintings almost seemed to be stills from a movie that hadn't yet been made.": James Cameron on Ken Marschall (Image via Instagram/ @kenmarschallartist)

The only true information the tweet provides is that a banging was heard from the submersible at 30-minute intervals. According to a memo obtained by CNN, the banging sounds were picked up underneath the North Atlantic Ocean by Sonar Buoys on Tuesday, June 20. It was reported that the banging sound was detected every 30 minutes, even after the later deployment of additional sonar devices.

Despite the positive signs, the US Coast Guard revealed that they “don’t know the source of the noise”. Even though search efforts were refocused on the area around the banging noises, the data was still "inconclusive".

At the time of writing, the 22-foot Titan submersible carrying 5 people and a limited amount of oxygen, is still not found despite ardent search efforts. According to The Independent, the exact speculated time for the oxygen on board to run out is 1 pm U.K time, on Thursday, June 22.

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"When you touch bottom you don't really know where you are", says a former Titan passenger

The lost Oceangate Titanic-bound submersible came under criticism for inadequate safety measures.

In an interview with the BBC, Mike Reiss, a former passenger on the now-missing submersible revealed his experience on the Titan.

"When you touch bottom you don't really know where you are, and again the compass immediately stopped working," he said.

"We had to flail around blindly at the bottom of the ocean knowing the Titanic was somewhere there, '' he added.

He also mentioned that before getting on the Titanic-bound submarine, people were required to sign a wager that mentioned death three times on the first page. According to Reiss, who claims to have taken three different dives with the same company, communication was almost always lost.