OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said the Titan submersible was struck by lightning during a test in the Bahamas back in 2018

• OceanGate's Titan submersible was struck by lightning during a test dive in the Bahamas in 2018.
• CEO Stockton Rush said a direct strike to the carbon fiber hull would have taken the submersible out.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said the ill-fated Titan submersible was severely damaged after being struck by lightning during a test dive in the Bahamas in 2018.

The late submersible inventor was recounting the experience to Teledyne Marine, an undersea technology company, in a now-deleted interview. Copies of the interview have been uploaded on YouTube. The video was published in August 2020, based on metadata seen by Insider.

"Fortunately, it was not a direct strike. A direct strike to the carbon fiber probably would have taken us totally out," Rush said in the interview.

Rush and his team started deep sea testing for the Titan submersible in the Bahamas back in April 2018, according to a post by OceanGate's Instagram account dated May 16, 2018. OceanGate said in the post that the submersible had "sustained lightning damage that affected over 70% of its internal systems."

But the setback did not seem to faze Rush, who said in the interview that OceanGate was able to replace the Titan's faulty components within a "couple of days."

"Fortunately, we are using commercial off-the-shelf and line-replaceable items. So in a matter of a couple of days, we were able to replace all those components," Rush said. The Titan submersible was known to have used off-the-shelf parts, and was piloted using one such item, a Logitech video game controller.

However, the lightning strike still resulted in OceanGate aborting the test dive. The firm also canceled the survey expedition that they had initially planned for 2018.

"But we continue to have issues on connectors, penetrators, wiring. Lightning can do weird things. That pushed our testing back and we ended up having to cancel that," Rush continued.

Rush's past comments on the safety of the Titan submersible have drawn much attention after the vessel went missing during a June 18 dive to the Titanic shipwreck.

The submersible inventor had also dismissed multiple safety warnings from experts. Rush told the Smithsonian Magazine in June 2019 that he thought the industry regulations for commercial submarines were "obscenely safe" and stifled innovation.

All five passengers, including Rush, were declared dead after the US Coast Guard said on June 22 that the Titan submersible had likely imploded.

Representatives for OceanGate did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.