The CEO of the doomed Titan submersible had a one-hour meltdown during a previous dive after the vessel became stuck in another shipwreck.
Stockton Rush became so upset he hurled the joystick controller at a safety engineer whilst exploring the wreck of Andrea Doria which sank in 1956.
The wreckage sits around 250ft underwater south of Nantucket.
David Lochridge, who claims he was fired by Mr Rush for raising safety concerns, was the engineer on board at the time.
Mr Rush insisted on steering the vessel, named Cyclops 1, and landing it near the wreckage himself.
But he ignored recommendations of where to land, and lodged the Titan in the wreckage, Vanity Fair reports.
After an hour of panic, Mr Rush finally relented and handed Mr Lochridge the controls to guide them to the surface.
Passengers were said to have told Mr Rush: ‘Give him the f*****g controller.’
Lochridge, who is a former Royal Navy marine engineer an ship’s diver, was fired after he demanded more safety checks, including ‘testing to improve its integrity’.
But the company argued it would take years and be ‘anathema to rapid innovation’.
In June Mr Rush led a group down to the Titanic wreckage when it imploded, killing himself and four others instantly
They would have known their fate for a minute before they died, Spanish submarine expert José Luis Martín said.
The submersible would have ‘popped like a balloon’ after freefalling for around 3,000 feet due to the rapid change in pressure.
Mr Martín uggested the ‘freefall’ would have lasted between 48 and 71 seconds, with the vessel’s five passengers aware of what was about to happen.
Its wreckage was discovered days later and all five passengers – Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Suleman, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeole, and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush – were killed.
Their deaths were confirmed by the US Coast Guard four days later an an investigation into the disaster is ongoing.
OceanGate has since said it has ‘suspended all exploration and commercial operations’.
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