Appearing on Fox News Thursday, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, criticized the timeliness of the U.S. response to the ill-fated Titan submersible that was bound for the wreckage of the Titanic, referring to efforts as an “epic failure of leadership.”

What You Need To Know

  • Appearing on Fox News, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, called the U.S. response to the Titan submersible an "epic failure of leadership"

  • Crenshaw said all available rescue assets should have been deployed much sooner 

  • The vessel imploded at an undetermined time this week, killing all five aboard 

  • The Titan was headed for the site of the Titanic shipwreck when the tragedy occurred 

The vessel imploded sometime this week, killing all five aboard near the Titanic shipwreck. What started as a frantic search earlier this week is now a recovery effort.

Despite the determination of what happened to the Titan, Crenshaw remained critical of the response of the U.S. Coast Guard. The congressman said all assets should have been deployed much sooner.

Rescue ships detected banging noises coming from the ocean floor on Wednesday, but the Coast Guard couldn’t confirm they came from the submersible.

“That tapping continues to be heard and chatted about in all these channels throughout Wednesday. Then it stops late Wednesday,” Crenshaw said. “They finally deploy this 6K ROV, the only thing capable of going to that depth and seeing what’s down there this morning [Thursday]. It deploys down there and the wreckage is exactly where they thought it would be.”

The craft submerged Sunday morning, and its support vessel lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later, according to the Coast Guard.

The vessel was reported overdue about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Titan was launched from an icebreaker that was hired by OceanGate and formerly operated by the Canadian Coast Guard. The ship has ferried dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site, where the Titan has made multiple dives.

“So where’s the failure here? The failure here is to not put all your options on the table,” Crenshaw said. “You saw that Wall Street Journal article about the U.S. Navy heard this implosion with their acoustic systems. What seems to me is that the leadership, the Coast Guard, was operating off this assumption that that was an implosion. Now other experts in this industry tell me that that could easily have been the sub just hitting the floor.”

Crenshaw suggested the tapping could have been an SOS.

“It begs the question, could this have been resolved differently if leadership had acted sooner and just put all options on the table instead of just assuming, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter because they’re dead,'" he said.