A submersible vehicle that was headed to visit the Titanic shipwreck was determined to have imploded, killing all five people aboard, the U.S. Coast Guard said June 22.
A day before that announcement, as many news outlets focused on the desperate search for survivors, some social media posts claimed to share audio of underwater banging noises heard during the search for the vessel.
“Edited to add audio! 5 knocks each time,” read the caption on a June 21 Facebook post. “Underwater noises and ‘banging sounds’ have been detected,” read the caption of another post the same day. Both posts shared audio with text on an image of the vehicle that read, “Here’s the audio of the knocking they caught from the submarine.”
It’s unclear where the audio in the posts came from, but a June 21 TikTok video with the same audio has been shared more than 36,000 times and viewed more than 12 million times on that platform.
But there’s no evidence the audio is authentic; authorities involved in the search for the Titan have not released any audio related to the sub.
The Facebook posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The Titan submerged June 18 and went missing shortly thereafter, according to news reports.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said June 22 after finding debris near the Titanic wreckage that there was a “catastrophic” implosion of the vessel. OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned the Titan, said that all five people aboard were “lost.”
During the search, rescue crews said sonar devices detected underwater banging noises that raised hopes, but it’s unclear what produced those noises. There doesn’t appear to be a connection between the noises and the missing sub, Rear Adm. John Mauger said at a June 22 news conference.
News reports since then have quoted unnamed U.S. Navy officials saying the Navy on June 18 detected the sound of what it suspected was the vehicle’s implosion hours after it first submerged, though it was not definitive. The Coast Guard was alerted about this, but search efforts continued, reports said.
A spokesperson for Canada’s National Defence and the Canadian Armed forces, when asked about the audio of banging noises, said in an email to Politifact that the agencies have “not released this type of content, nor do we have plans on doing so.”
The Coast Guard did not return our request for comment but told The Associated Press fact-checkers June 22 that it had not released any audio. There is no evidence in the Coast Guard’s news releases, its social media accounts or in press briefings of any audio being publicly released, including a June 21 briefing when officials first mentioned the underwater noises.
Our ruling
Facebook posts shared audio they claimed to be of knocking noises coming from the Titan submarine. There is no evidence the audio is authentic and U.S. and Canadian officials involved in the search for the sub said they have released no audio. A U.S. Coast Guard official said noises heard during the search are not believed to be related to the Titan.
We rate the claim False.
