An Australian engineer fears the tourist submersible that went missing while exploring the sunken wreckage of the Titanic could ‘collapse like a tin can’.  

The OceanGate submarine was reported missing deep in the Atlantic ocean, about 700km south of Newfoundland, Canada, at 6.13am AEST on Monday. 

Five people including British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and UK-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman were onboard. 

The expedition vessel, known as Titan, lost contact with the surface while taking the passengers 3,810 metres under water to view the Titanic wreckage in a $250,000-a-head tour. 

Engineer Ron Allum, who helped build the submarine to film the wreckage of the boat for the 1997 movie ‘Titanic’, revealed it was a race against time as authorities searched for the missing submersible. 

He said temperatures would reach as low as 2C inside the submarine, oxygen would be limited, and the vessel’s hull could collapse from enormous underwater pressure. 

‘Let’s hope it’s not an engineering problem, if the hull were to collapse it is catastrophic,’ he told A Current Affair on Tuesday.

‘That would be the worst case. If it’s still on the bottom of the ocean… and it’s collapsed, they would be no longer.  

‘Usually if a pressure vessel was to collapse it is fairly catastrophic. It’s over in an instant.’

Mr Allum explained just how perilous it would be to be trapped onboard. 

‘The pressure hull is like a geometric shape – a cylinder or a sphere – and are inherently strong while they are a sphere or cylinder but as soon as they go out of round, bang! The thing is going to collapse like a tin can,’ he said.

Mr Allum said he would like to see a positive outcome and is hoping an electrical fault was behind the submarine’s loss of communication. 

‘I’m hoping that it is purely just a battery outage or a connector may have failed,’ Mr Allum said. 

‘Submersibles have failsafe systems and hopefully, say they have lost power, one of the failsafe systems would drop a weight and the sub will ascend at some stage.

‘Loss of power shouldn’t prevent a failsafe helping to bring it back to the surface if it were to be activated.’  

Mr Allum said if the situation was more dire with the submersible stuck at the bottom of the ocean, there are no rescue vehicles capable of aiding anyone that deep.

A Current Affair host Ally Langdon first met Mr Allum in 2012 on an expedition inside Titanic director James Cameron’s submarine which was used to film the Hollywood blockbuster. 

Langdon recalled barely being able to fit inside the one used for filming, with Allum adding the submarine was not built for comfort. 

A desperate search mission is underway to locate the OceanGate submersible before its passengers run out of oxygen. 

Titan lost communication with the surface just one hour and 45 minutes into its journey.

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The US Coast Guard is leading the search for the 22ft (6.7metre) vessel, which is believed to have less than 45 hours of oxygen left – enough to last until 12pm (9pm AEST) on Thursday.

Inside the small tourist submersible there are no seats only one toilet – a small black box – with a black curtain drawn across for privacy. All passengers are barefoot and must sit on the floor. 

Former Royal Navy commander Ryan Ramsey, 53, warned there was ‘no way’ of rescuing the crew if the tiny craft is still thousands of feet under the sea because the technology required ‘doesn’t exist’.

However, rescue crews are hoping the vessel is floating on the surface of the water, which would make it easier to locate before the air runs out.

The US and Canadian Coast Guards are leading the search for the submersible and have deployed vessels and aircrafts to search above and below the water.

Rear Admiral John Mauger, first district commander of the US Coast Guard is overseeing the search and rescue operation. 

‘We were notified yesterday [Sunday] afternoon and we began immediately to mobilise assets to search both the surface of the water, search from the air, and to detect any vessels under the water as well,’ Admiral Mauger told reporters. 

‘We’ve had a comprehensive search to find these people. ‘It is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area but we are deploying all available assets to make sure we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board.’

The US Coast Guard has deployed two C-130 aircraft as part of their search, while they are in contact with commercial ships in the area to monitor the water’s surface in case the missing submersible has come back up.

The commercial boats also have access to sonar buoys that are capable of listening to a depth of 13,000ft, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard added.

While the search initially focused on the surface of the water, the team of rescuers are now expanding their search into deeper waters.

A deep sea pipelay vessel, named Deep Energy, arrived at the Titanic wreckage site so its crew can search the seafloor using cameras.

France will also send a ship equipped with a deep-sea diving vessel to help the search-and-rescue operation.

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