Should Titanic Have Hit The Iceberg Head On 

This shock wave theory has been soundly debunked. You're using a very poor understanding of physics. The 1999 paper on the mechanics of ship collisions by Shengming Zhang covers this well. In a nutshell: The very method of construction and material used make ships makes this "shock wave" idea not possible. These ships were made of steel with giant forming ribs (also known as frames) and frames with steel plating. Steel is relatively soft and has a good deal of elasticity and plasticity. The way the ships were made, the hull forming frames, bulkheads and longitudinal frames would telescope, thus absorbing a lot of the energy. This happened to two ships and both hit an iceberg head on, suffered telescoping, but ultimately survived the impact, we repaired and continued plying the waters thereafter. SS Arizona - 1879. SS Grampian - 1919. With Titanic being much bigger than these two other liners, she would stand just as good a chance of survival if not more. It essentially boils down to the fact that the more steel there is, the more force is absorbed.

I've never given this "theory" too much thought really -- the idea that Murdoch would be standing on the bridge of the Titanic and decide that the best course of action is to willingly drive her straight into a iceberg is absolutely ridiculous.

I never liked the "they should've hit head on" argument. Simply put, why would Murdoch just stand there and not turn to try to avoid the iceberg entirely. He wasn't going for a side swipe instead of head on crash, he thought he could avoid a collision entirely.

Walter Lord dryly points out in "The Night Lives On" that had Murdoch chosen instead to ram the iceberg, we would all then be ironically second-guessing why he just didn't merely try to steer around it.

As someone pointed out, the video by Ocean Liner Designs explains this theory very well. It talks about the plasticity and elasticity properties of steel and why it would have probably survived the hit or at the very least buy more time for Carpathia to arrive. I do agree though that no one in their right mind would think to strike an iceberg head on, so Murdoch did the expected, try to avoid the collision

If Titanic hit the iceberg head on maybe the V-break theory would make sense

Good point. The designers designed Titanic to survive a collision with another ship, not an iceberg. Also note that only the tip of the iceberg appears above water, meaning a majority of the iceberg is underwater

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Interesting since Ocean Liner Designs put out a video about a week ago which said that it would have withstood a head-on collision… would be good if somebody did a scale model real life simulation to see exactly what would likely have happened

I honestly absolutely agree, a head on collision would mean all crew sleeping forward would be killed in the collision, warping the ships bulkheads, and since the wtd were still open, they warped bulkhead would make it nearly impossible for the doors to close, and allow water to flow freely.

I won't even pretend to agree or disagree with my understanding of physics. All I can say is your animations are magnificent. Well done.

I find this very plausible. It is ludicrous to begin with to expect a maritime officer to willingly collide with an object instead of attempting to evade it, but with an iceberg, that can only come from people who fail to understand the forces involved of a 52.000 ton steel vessel racing into a massive, basically immovable mountain of ice with the estimated mass of about 2 megatons. I completely agree that she would have been so ripped apart, she would have gone down incredibly fast, perhaps within 10 minutes even. And no one would have survived. If this would have happened, it is almost safe to assume that the radio equipment, very sensitive, would have been damaged or destroyed and there would have been no way to even call for help. In such a short time, no life boats could have been let to water either - and by whom anyways? Most of the crew would be wounded or worse. The ship and every soul on board would have vanished with hardly a trace and she might have never been found in consequence. Other ships would have found floating debris over the next days and perhaps weeks, like deck chairs, perhaps a lifeboat that came loose etc. but aside from that? Nothing, not even bodies as no one would have worn lifebelts and went down to almost 4km depth with the ship. While decomposing bodies float, this does not happen in extreme depths. The deep does not give up its dead. Very eerie thoughts.

Nonsense. A collision with an immobile iceberg would impart the same damage as a collision with another ship of the same size. This is why car crash tests simply use a wall instead of another vehicle. Also, the elasticity of the Titanic would make it act like a spring if it had struck head-on. The notion that everything in the ship would go flying is based on the perception that the ship was glass-like in stiffness; it was not. The people near the bow would have had quite a jolt and some would have perished, but the people near the stern would have experienced a fairly quick but not deadly stop, as the ship compressed like an accordion at the front. A true study using finite element analysis would be necessary to establish the survivability of a head-on collision.

What I see a lot is that people assume that the iceberg is a solid wall, when it is in fact a free-floating body. I see estimates that the iceberg that night was around 2x-4x the mass of Titanic. So it's not so much a car vs. immovable wall or a parked semi-truck (easily 10x the mass), but car vs. a parked SUV or larger van. Surely, over the course of a 22mph collision, the iceberg would absorb some of the energy and be pushed along a little bit, effectively yielding a tiny bit and causing less damage than an actual solid wall or a rocky cliff coastline.

Yes Philip I couldn’t agree more hitting the iceberg head on would have killed everyone sleeping in the forward bow. And would have warped the ships frames leaving the water tight doors inoperable

I always figured that since the iceberg is several times the size of Titanic and completely solid all the way through, a collision would send a shockwave through the ship which would damage everything along the way. The time between spotting the iceberg and colliding with it was mere minutes, her fate was already sealed. But thanks to the crew's quick reactions, they prevented something that was already a disaster in the making from becoming a worst case scenario.

Its also possible that the bow would fold into itself up to the well deck, but in the end we don't fully know because a ship of titanic's size and speed never done this.

Your argument makes no sense . The iceberg is floating and not fixed to the ground.

This doesn't take into effect that steel does not work like this. Hell, even the videos of the cars show how soft steel is and there would be no bow to stern shockwave as if it were made out of glass. The differences is speed is only 10 knots which is nothing when talking about thousands of tons of mass. The animation of this channel is great but the understanding of basic physics and metallurgical properties are not taught in art school me thinks. If engineering isn't easy to get, lets go with History: H&W Engineer stated by name, when asked about a head on collision with an iceberg in the Titanic's hearing, stated that the outcome would have been that of the Arizona (not the BB...), which had also hit an iceberg head on at full speed and survived with only bow damage, and that the Titanic would have survived.

No officer in their right mind would drive directly into an iceberg - it defies training, and human instinct and logic. Yes, I tend to agree with you... It would’ve been even more catastrophic. And imagine the officer defending such actions later in a court, - if they survived it.

I don't know why, but this theory just reminds me of the Titan from the book "Futility/Wreck of the Titan" where the ship slams into a wall of ice, climbs up it and splashes back down, sinking in under 5 minutes. Not saying Titanic would have done that, but it just reminds me of the Titan.

With all due respect, this is just rubbish. Edward Wilding, one the designers of the ship, said that the ship would survive the head on collision. And he knew what he was talking about, since he calculated exactly how big was the damaged area after the real collision. You keep on repeating that the iceberg was many times bigger than the ship. But you know, there are examples of other ships colliding with icebergs (which also were way bigger than the ships), and these ships survived. The Titanic was not built in a different way, with different technology or materials, she was just like the older ships, just bigger.

I mean I don’t blame Murdoch for what he did tho. Why risk doing a whole lot of damage to the ship when he had a chance to avoid the iceberg. I’d imagine he’d have fallen under tons of scrutiny too for intentionally putting the lives of his passenger and crew in harm’s way…and over 300 people in that bow that were crushed to oblivion. I mean if you were him and knew there were that many people that were gonna receive the full blunt of the impact and potentially killed outright would you even consider ramming the iceberg head on an option at all?

Especially considering they were so close in nearly missing the berg entirely...Give or take an extra five to ten seconds and impact would have been avoided entirely. Thanks for putting this ludicrous theory to bed, Newton's second law states Force=MassxAcceleration (ΔV )the mass of the berg roughly 300,000 tonnes and the rapid deceleration as Titanic impacted her would have ripped the ship to absolute shreds. Great video as always 👍 Annotation: On further research, it appears the deceleration would not be rapid, which greatly alters the calculations: instead of the less than one second to get to 0kts I presumed, from multiple studies it actually transpires that it would be as long as 5 seconds, this would dramatically alter the ΔV used, in favor of the ship surviving the impact.

the Titanic at full speed and hit the iceberg head on just like a car everybody would want to move forward toward the the iceberg people would be injured no seat belts on the Titanic

If Titanic hit the iceberg head-on, she would not have sunk, but passengers whose rooms were in the front part of the ship would have been injured or killed. Of course, the officers on duty were not going to delibertly hit the iceberg head on

I’m glad someone understands that this is impossible!

I have seen reports Titanic would have survived with serious damage if she hit head on as the intact compartments (aft) would have kept her afloat. This can be argued about forever, has no-one done a computer modelling test as used by air crash investigators and NASA to see what the likely outcome might be. Thank you for the amazing animation.

I'd wonder if a proper debate between yourself and Oceanliner Designs would be worth having, seeing as you both have released video in the Head-on theoy in a relitivly short period of time. I would watch that. Maybe even get Casual Navigation involved.

Sorry, but this video is entirely inaccurate. I am a reserve officer in the Royal Canadian Navy and we spent a great deal of time in training for damage control. Interior watertight bulkheads are designed for exactly what their name indicates - they create watertight compartments. There are no "crumple zones" in ships. It simply is not a thing. And even cars did not have crumple zones until the 1990s of thereabouts. I doubt it was even a concept back in 1912. Furthermore, while it sounds like an interesting theory, this "catastrophic pressure wave" simply does not happen. The passenger ships ARIZONA and GRAMPIAN are examples of large vessels running into icebergs where no such pressure wave was demonstrated. As an even more extreme example, the Canadian destroyer HMCS COLUMBIA ran directly into a sheer cliff with no foot, at high speed on the coast of Newfoundland. Again, no pressure wave and the ship was later brought safely into port. Ships do not and cannot be brought to a full immediate stop. They have far too much bulk and weight for this to happen, so the idea that all the interior momentum would rip the ship apart is nonsense. The bunkers, incidentally, are where the coal is stored, not burned, so it would not be "searing hot" while there. The coal is burned in the furnaces, which have doors and do not have large openings, so little to no burning coal would be flying about in the boiler rooms in a collision. Rivets would not have been "popping" in most cases. Riveted hulls were generally found to be stronger than welded hulls, but they require far more steel and specialised labour, making them more expensive than today's welded hulls. Ultimately, you're forgetting that the bow was mostly made up of empty hollow compartments. Thus, in a collision, the bows would have crumpled and much of the energy you claim would have ravaged the hull further aft would have been absorbed in the peeling back of the steel forward. It's an interesting theory, but neither the physics, not the real-life examples of similar collisions back it up in the slightest.

There was only one way Titanic could have been saved - if they had headed the ice warnings and stop sailing on the night she sank. Other than that, there was no way Titanic could have been saved.

If this somehow did happen, I still believe that the wireless operators would have sent out an SOS. They're not stupid. After feeling a shockwave that strong, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have waited for an order and would have immediatley sent out an SOS (if the power was still going). So, all and all, it wouldn't have been a "complete mystery" asto what happened to the ship in this hypothetical timeline.

A quite interesting story I've heard about Ismay is that around the time "A Night to Remember" was released in November 1955 Walter Lord got a letter from someone in England about the remarkable finish at the 1913 Derby in Epsom Downs. Craganour, the favourite, crossed the line first and was escorted to the winners' circle. Then, without a protest from anyone, it was placed second to Aboyeur. Craganour, Lord's correspondent said, was owned by Bruce Ismay, and I guess it doesn't really need saying that the horse racing establishment would never let his horse win the hallowed Derby after what happened. Walter Lord then went to check the story. Everything turned out to be accurate except for one important detail. Joseph Bruce Ismay didn't own Craganour. His brother, Charles Bower Ismay, did. Still, Craganour remained placed second to Aboyeur. The reason? Craganour's original jockey had been replaced by an American one, Johnny Reiff. I don't know why that was but the move was regarded as immensely unpopular, and at the end of the race during discussions the judges had a golden opportunity to discredit Reiff. Walter Lord, though, said that he still got letters afterwards still linking Bruce Ismay and Craganour together

"Should the Titanic Have Hit The Iceberg Head On"? Yes I think so she would've then been able to still limp into NY Harbour

It's a pity it couldn't been avoided, the ship was going full throttle when it hit the Iceberg, if was going much slower, the damage and injuries would have been a lot lesser, speed kills.

I honestly don't know what to think of this theory anymore. I Hava watched this video and the video made by Oceanliner Designs and he says that Titanic wouldn't have sunk if it had hit the iceberg headon.

The funniest part was that a head-on collision might've been enough time for the Carpathia to save everyone, but..... No seaman deliberately crashes a ship. Wilde tried to avoid the iceberg entirely....but fate....had other plans....

The only ways we would ever know what would happen if Titanic collided with an iceberg head-on are to either: Run a super-accurate supercomputer simulation of Titanic hitting the iceberg head-on, or : Build a real life replica of Titanic, down to the last detail, then crash it head on into an iceberg similar to the iceberg that the real Titanic hit at a speed of 22 knots in broad daylight.

Coming off of the heels of watching Mike from Oceanliner Designs' video covering this same topic a few weeks ago, in which he provided the case for the ship surviving the impact, this was a nice video to go over the other side of the argument, in which she doesn't. For me, perhaps the biggest issue with the idea of her surviving hitting the iceberg head-on is the comparison to other ships which have done the same. The first problem is that those ships were far smaller and traveling much slower than the Titanic was. The second is that those are only the instances we have heard of. How many more shipwrecks could be out there where the vessel slammed full force into a berg and went down without a trace? Maybe Titanic could have survived the impact, but then again, maybe she wouldn't have. This uncertainty is the biggest reason why Murdoch made the right decision to try to avoid the berg in my book. Not to mention that it would've been insane on his part, to put it lightly. I am currently in college pursuing a degree in Physics. First my Bachelor's, then I'll move on to graduate school to try for my Master's, and maybe beyond that I'll go for a PhD. The whole point is to one day take up a career in naval architecture: maybe then I'll be able to answer the question once and for all. Who knows what would have happened, but two things are for sure. One, I'm glad we never found out. Two, that would be a lot of damage. 🤣🤣

The ship would have took 4 or 5 seconds to stop. The bow would have buckled up like a concertina. Huge loss of life for anything fore of the crows nest. Murdoch would have been imprisoned for negligence. But the ship wouldn't have sank. Put yourself in this alternative scenario, an "unsinkable" ship should have never rammed the berg head on. The families of the firemen killed would have wanted answers. Titanics reputation would have been tarnished forever. Total sinking wasn't even considered a possibility. So Murdoch did the "right" thing, even if it wasn't correct.

An iceberg is not the same thing as a stationary wall. An Iceberg floats in water and therefore has "give" when something the size of Titanic hits it. Head on plus engines in full reverse plus iceberg floating equals survivable impact. There certainly would have been casualties but not 1,500.

Probably the best analysis of this theory. I never really considered the shockwave, and my brain just automatically assumed the iceberg would shift....but in reality, this iceberg didn't budge much in the actual collision. Thanks for this breakdown.

Odds are the shockwave would knock out the electric engine dynamos (flanked by the freshwater tanks) so lights out. It would also knock out the emergency dynamos on D-Deck meaning no emergency lights. Nobody can find their way to the boat deck and there would be no SOS call from the wireless

iv thought about it a whole lot myself and even after the titanic broadsided the iceberg, if they would have just kept going but towards Newfoundland Labrador they could have just made it to warmer waters before the ship sank. the distance they were to warmer waters was around 75 nautical miles and the titanic could travel at 23 knots which would put them right at the border of the warmer waters and arctic waters. they also would have been 75 miles closer to help from a continent that had more random fishing boats than anywhere in the world. also when your going full speed on a ship you'll notice the bow raises up out of the water which reduces the water pressure being closer to the surface of the water meaning the ship would be taking on less water while going forwards since only the front portion of the right side of the ship took a hit.

3:58 Im not sure if such a Shockwave would happen, if we look at examples of other ocean liners that accidentally rammed head on at full speed into a ice burg the ships bow absorbed all of the energy. And in some cases the bow just bent in multiple areas like a pancake keeping the ship safe. Even multiple calculations by Titanic's own designers said that the ship would have survived the Ice burg collision, but it would compromise her forward 2 compartments and leave Compartment 3 flooded. Head on ice burg collisions happend so much that Ship buildings actually designed the bows of ocean liners to deal with it. The most famous photos of ships that suffered from this are the: Knight Bachelor, SS Arizona, SS Grampian, (And a large German Ocean Liner which was 20.000 GRT), but I forgot the name) And non of the ships reported any shock waves going through the entire ship, it was only reported in the Second to 3rd compartment (Mind you compartment 1 would be gone)

head on would have not been as bad as steering ,Titanic was 50k tons and the iceberg was a floating object so is similar 2 a ship in some aspects . The iceberg would have deff been pushed backward and downwards and the Titanic would have lift up as iceberg have the shape of a cone where the top is smaller then the base , So all this factors would deff help on reducing the impact.

Had the titanic hit the berg head on- most people would never have heard of the Titanic. She would have made it to port and repaired. End of .

In the end she should never have been traveling at her near top speed through a reported ice field. Ismay was almost entirely to blame for that because he wanted to make it to New York ahead of schedule, even though Smith told him they were making good time already. He wanted everyone to think that his ships were just as fast as Cunard‘s liners, but reality is that they could do at best 23 knots vs the max 28 knots the Cunard ships could make. It was all about personal ego. Smith warned him of the dangers but I guess the chairman will always have the last say since he’s at the top of the totem pole.

This idea would make for a great alternative romance fantasy adventure movie, in which Jack and Rose die of hypothermia

I can’t see Titanic surviving a full on collision with the iceberg. It actually would’ve sank it much faster than when it did. Few know how fast the ship was actually going the night Murdock saw the iceberg.

Great analysis! This theory gets spouted all the time and it's annoying to me. Thank you for highlighting its absurdity. Why would Murdoch willingly choose to steer a virtually unsinkable ship into the berg when there's a *chance* to avoid it completely?

The physics evoking people, who say it would have survived a head-on collision, remind me of the survivors who said: "The Titanic did NOT break in two." If many people could not believe the ship was ripped into two pieces why would many people believe it would stay together after hitting a solid wall while traveling at 26 knots?

I disagree I believe she would have survived a head in collision, the hull was designed to withstand that the bow itself was built taking a head on collision into account and other ships have survived head in collisions with icebergs

This subject is constantly on the titanic reddit. this video should be a pinned thread there.

Murdock would have been given full blame had the ship struck headon

I wonder if the propeller was disengaged the moment they spotted the iceberg and then head on collision. Wouldn't that make difference? In your analysis you have considered head on collision with full speed.

This is a theory if they hit it head on without reversing the engines but what if they did reverse the engines and still hit the burg head on?

During the 1980s, my ship, USS Thomas C. Hart, hit a whale while going at an economical speed of about fourteen knots. The ship’s sonar dome was destroyed and we lost all mechanical and electrical power. Everyone was all shaken up and most of us had no idea what happened. There was flooding in the bow but the damage control party was able to shore up bulkheads and get pumps working in short order. That’s what happened when a 4,500 ton ship ran into a soft living creature that probably weighed about forty to fifty tons. Now imagine a ship that displaced ten times that, hitting a rock hard, immovable object many times its weight. Titanic was not a modern, welded ship, but an early twentieth century liner held together with rivets and with row after row of glass portholes lining her hull. The lowest rows of portholes were not very far above the waterline, and the sudden impact would have probably shattered most of them, given the freezing cold weather. Titanic would have crumpled an estimated eighty to one hundred feet, losing the lightest, most buoyant section of her hull. Rivets would have failed all throughout the ship, and her watertight bulkheads would probably have done her little good. I’m sure that her crew were not skilled at damage control, like one would expect to find on a modern US Navy warship. I’m convinced that Titanic would have sunk a lot faster than she did after her real life brush with the iceberg. The loss of life might have been near total, especially given how slow Captain Smith acted in ordering the lifeboats filled and launched. There are even worse scenarios possible, since seven-eighths of an iceberg is unseen below the surface. Titanic might have run over a sharp, rock hard spur that would have ripped her bottom right out, causing her to sink almost immediately. Another very bad thing that could have happened would be for the ship to run up onto a steep underwater slope, causing her to capsize and sink within less than a minute as seawater poured into her funnels and hundreds of open scuttles. If that happened then Titanic might have disappeared without leaving any survivors or a clue of what happened to her. Eggheads like Mike Brady and his engineer friend should stay in their ivory tower and leave the operation of ships to the real men of the sea.

Titanic would have sunk in minutes, not hours.

I don't think that the shockwave would have been sufficient to cause enough hull breaches and popped rivets/seams to sink it, but the forward water tight doors would more than likely have been jammed and misaligned as they were on the Britannic after it hit a mine. Either way same result, the ship sinks. It also would have been harder to evacuate as many of the interior doors and gates would have jammed, displaced furniture and hardware would block doors and escape routes, people would have suffered injuries rendering them immobile, injured crew would be unable to assist in evacuation causing more chaos, telegraph antennas might have snapped preventing calls for help, and lifeboat davits might be deformed making it harder to launch lifeboats. Internal systems would also suffer significant damage such as pumps being rendered inoperable due to broken piping, generators being damaged resulting in a quicker loss of power, injured crew would hinder safety measures such as venting excess steam resulting boiler explosions, and many portholes might have shattered increasing the rate of flooding.

Fantastic vid, I never considered the coal fires as well in this theory.

There have been several other ships that have collided straight-on into an iceberg and survived. You make the assumption that a vessel the size of titanic is inflexible and extremely ridged, when in reality, it bends with heavy seas. It’s completely designed to flex, bend, roll, etc. with it’s environment. You’re absolutely correct it would a horrific crash for the people inside, but the structure of Titanic was designed to absorb. Even the collision with another ship at 20 knots would cause Titanic to stop in seconds, with the design of the ship being so that the bow would crumple with any impact (in order to replace only a small section of ship, instead of the ship being a total loss).

there are ships that have collided with islands at almost full speed and have not had this problem so im curious if this is a guess of what the physical properties of metal and rivots can uphold individuals as appose to what types of energy absorption properties the structure can handle

I always wondered why the sailors thought it was better not to hit it head on and ordered “hard to starboard”. It made more sense to hit it from the side if they had to hit it after watching this. Thanks for explaining.

It is an interesting video with an equally interesting and lively discussion. You certainly provided some food for thought on whether or not the Titanic could have survived a head on collision. I do agree that it would have been irresponsible for Murdoch to have deliberately hit the iceberg head on. However, you did make two glaring mistakes. In your animation you show the Titanic continuing on in a straight line after hitting the iceberg. When Murdoch realized they were going to hit the berg he immediately ordered the ship hard a port to swing the stern away in ordered to preserve the propellers. The other mistake was saying that the Titanic was going 22.5 knots when it hit. It was going at least a knot slower, perhaps 2 knots slower. This is based on the position of the wreck versus where it should have been based on the position given in the distress calls.

I also thought that the keel might have been bent causing WTD's to be stuck open

Glad to see someone FINALLY bring up these points!

Just ine point: Titanic was traveling at 21,5 knots, but it would have not hit that Iceberg at full steam, they started to decelerate the ship by reversing the engine so it would have been less than the traveling speed.

The head on would have to have been done VERY slowly in order for the damage to not be that great

Realistically Titanic would've survived OR had a better chance at surviving. The damage she sustained on the night was impossible for her to sustain as she wasn't built to withstand that level of damage despite the new safety features implemented. Using car crash simulations is a poor, almost dishonest comparison to justify damage to a ship on the scale of the Titanic for a few reasons 1. Cars travel MUCH faster than Ships, especially a Cruise Liner from 100+ years ago. assuming Titanic was travelling at her full speed (even though she wasn't on the night as not all furnaces were ignited as shown on the wreck), it would still be less than 30mph, insignificant to the speed of modern cars when discussing damage on this scale. 2. Cars are constructed of far weaker, less dense materials such as plastic, aluminium, glass, rubber and SOME steel, whereas Titanic was almost entirely comprised of durable dense materials (Steel / Iron) 3. Cars simply aren't designed to withstand the level of damage that Titanic was designed to withstand. They are built with thin layers of material designed to minimise weight, to improve handling, fuel economy, speed and comfort, with only a few safety features such as airbags, crumple zones and seatbelts. Meanwhile titanics hull wasn't just individual sheets of steel and rivets as you seem to imply. the hull was constructed as a "box girder" a huge complicated latice structure of steel beams, with the soul functionality of telescoping under the events of an impact. There is simply no comparison between the 2. We saw that with Arizona and Grampian, 2 other ships involved in collisions, that despite taking a head on impact, they still survived and could return to port under their own power for repairs. Yes, the energy yield Titanic would've released in the impact would've been enormous. However this would work in its favour as the box girders spanning the length of the ship would've been in greater quantity compared to those smaller ships "More Steel = More energy absorbed" due to plasticity and the forces at work. One of the chief designers of Titanic Edmund Wilding, stated in an enquiry that a head on collision for Titanic would've telescoped the first 80-100 feet of her hull, destroying the first 2 watertight compartments and killing anyone inside, causing damage to the 3rd and even 4th, yet it wouldn't have been sufficient to affect the rest of the ship. Ultimately 2 ships smaller than Titanic in similar circumstances, were able to survive. Titanic with FAR more steel to absorb more energy in addition to the "modern" at the time safety features such as the bulkheads, float planks, double bottom keel etc would've almost certainly survived. Also in this hypothetical situation, Murdock would've used those 30 or so seconds he had to put the engines in reverse to slow the Titanic as much as possible in the short window they had to further reduce the energy yield. Even if this reduced the energy yield by MAYBE 1-5% at most, it would still contribute in saving the ship

I totally disagree with this. All of the energy would be concentrated in the area of impact. maybe with some plate separation but it's not like a bomb going off with a "shockwave."

The shock wave story outcome is 100% against the rules of physics and would never have worked out like that. The force of titanics weight + speed would be split between both objects, the weight of the iceberg dosn't count into it at all. It's more compareable to falling to the ground and in that case, everyone just falling from 1 feet high must die instant b.c. the crash force (following your idea of physic) would be the weight of the person and the panet earth + speed. SS Arizona (1879) and SS Grampian (1919) are a proove -.-

The titanic would have PERFECTLY survived!

The shockwave theory has been debunked. The force of the impact would have crumpled the bow past the collision bulkhead, so it probably would have breached around 4 or less compartments. Now I am not saying she would not have sunk, a 5th compartment would have probably been breached. If you want more information, please look at Oceanliner Design's video on this topic, if you have not at the moment. I really do not mean to disrespect you in any way, I really love your work.

I feel like it would have been nice to mention that the shockwave you describe in this video did affect a ship of the Olympic class. Of course the terms of the force were different, but survivor testimony from the Britannic states that after the mine detonated, a "shockwave" reverberated from the ship's bow to her stern and back again for a few minutes. Now imagine instead of the force being a naval mine with 2.3 gigajoules of energy, it is between 20 and 50 gigajoules. (Do note these are armature estimates that only took me twenty minutes to draft out). If the mine was capable of sinking the Britannic with 2.3 Gigajoules, then to imagine 50 would sink her older sister may not be entirely out of reach. Just thought that could be a cool thing to have added.

I did believe that the Titanic would have survived a head on collision with the iceburg until watching your video I do have a degree in physics, and I plan to carry on to a PhD. I never considered your theory until I watched it and your physics is sound. Now when I watch the movie I'm no longer shouting at 1st officer Murdoch "You've got 37 seconds until impact, you may aswell just hit it dead on and breach a couple of compartments rather than risk a glancing blow. The thing with the movie, from the moment the call comes through whilst Murdoch is also spotting the burg, I've timed the scene and it's 2:01 until impact. When in actual fact they only had 37 seconds from spotting it to impact.

Very Interesting. Didn't know that the ship would turn in to a pile of scrap metal after she would hit head on with the iceberg.

Why didn't they have a "telescope" at the front of the titanic to monitor the passage of the ship. They don't think about the first safety of running?

I mean if you really wanna want a good idea of what would happen if the Titanic hit the iceberg head on just look at the bow section after hitting the ocean floor.

The damage to the bow would be bad, but the ship would remain afloat. Also they could try evacuating everyone from the bow before the iceberg is hit. Unfortunately the officers had no time too think about what could happen.

It was “made of Iron sir I assure you”

I do understand, even if the ship wouldn't have sunk, it would have been damaged beyond repair and the loss of life would've been huge. The crew would be judged for not trying to change course. Hindsight is 20/20.

They would put engine in reverse and the speed wouldn't have been 22 knots more like 10....

Oceanliner Designs explains pretty good why the Titanic could have survived an head on colision with the iceberg

It’s very plausible that such a collision head on with the iceberg could have shattered her keel, warped her frame and or as seen in Britannic jammed her bulkheads.

Great insight into the tragedy and what could have been even a more disastrous event had the ship hit the berg head-on! EXCITED to see your finished masterpiece...again, hope it may be transferred into DVD format at a late date! :-) AWESOME WORK FOR SURE!!!

Well I do think it wouldn't have been travelling full steam ahead. They still would have reversed the engines as they did on the night, but Murdock wouldn't have given the hard to starboard instruction. Might have gotten the ship down to half the speed it was going full steam. Who knows really? I still think it would've suffered catastrophic damage in any case.

It's only natural that somebody would offer an opposing theory about a popular hypothetical question regarding quite possibly *the* most over-romanticized shipwreck in history. Having seen this whole presentation, I feel a need to respond, via refutation. I'm sure my contributions to refute this claim have already been touched on, but I feel a need to post them as well, anyway. 1. Comparison of a ship hitting a stationary object (and icebergs are not really all that stationary, not like, say, an ocean floor) to that of a modern car hitting a stationary object is like comparing an airplane crash to a kite crash. And given the established speed of just under 26 mph that Titanic was going, *assuming* it kept going at that speed, and knowing that it is feasible for a car to survive a sudden stop from that speed, that debunks the whole idea of a total-length distortion, being that a ship is far more massive and therefore far more capable of withstanding a sudden stop from 26 mph. 2. Titanic would *not* have hit at full speed. When the iceberg was spotted, the bridge crew immediately threw the engines into reverse...and it was more than a mere two or three seconds before impact. Although impossible to come to a stop without "help," Titanic's speed would have still slowed down enough to mitigate collision damage even more. Has anyone been in an auto collision doing 20 mph? What happened? Did you and your car survive, albeit with some damage? The house odds say yes. So would have Titanic. 3. The whole premise of this argument fails to factor in other historical collisions of the same kind. Bmused55 indicated two ship/iceberg collisions, one before Titanic and one after. Though an advocate of this video's topic will argue that the 1879 collision of SS Arizona is irrelevant because ships of that century could not travel nearly as fast as Titanic, there is another ship/iceberg collision that happened just *5 years before* Titanic: A modern German super-steamer named SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, which was close to Lusitania's size and speed. There isn't very much about this ship on the web, but there is enough to bolster the theory this video tries to (poorly) refute. The Kronprinz Wilhelm actually met its accident at or near the same spot as Titanic, just a few hundred miles from the Canadian coast, when it slammed into an iceberg, head-on, outright front-ending. Result: The bow was wrecked...but the ship withstood the impact and continued its trip to New York *under its own power.* This happened in 1907. It was this incident, as well as a few others involving other iron-hull steamers, that contributed to the then-popular presumption that ships of the 20th Century would make tragic sinkings a thing of the past. I therefore refute this video's premise, holding that Titanic would have withstood front-ending the iceberg and, if the worst-case scenario prevailed that it could not move without risking flooding out too many compartments, it still would have stayed afloat long enough for other ships at sea, to include her older sister Olympic, a chance to get everyone off safely (another presumption made about tragic sinkings being a thing of the past). 4. This video fails to analyze the actual impact damage the bow of the ship sustained by impacting the ocean floor, going at nearly twice the speed it was doing that night before the collision. Factoring this in, that will at least challenge, if not outright refute, the whole premise to this video. These factoids in refutation established, I will not go on record saying that a front-ending of the iceberg would have been uneventful or inconsequential. There would certainly have been injuries, possibly some deaths among the lower crew; and a lot of haughty, arrogant, obnoxious richie-riches would have been complaining, threatening to sue because their beauty-sleeps were interrupted...but there would certainly not have been anywhere near the 1,502 who actually died by the bridge crew's vain and foolish attempt to veer around the iceberg far, far too late.

The key words are "and at full steam". In a head-on collision scenario, the Titanic would be slowing down as the order to go full astern would still have been given.

There are multiple examples of steel ships hitting icebergs head on and they all survived because the steel bending absorbs lot of energy. All ships were bow down, but made it to ports under their own power. Unfortunately I can't post links on YT to show this.

It would had been so easy to embed to powerful light on the bow to be used during nights like these; by turning them on alternatively every 10 to 15 minutes any obstacle would be seen with time enough to take action.

If Titanic ended up having to be towed, most likely destination would have been Halifax which was the nearest major port.

It's often claimed that Titanic wouldn't have sunk if a head on collision had occurred, however the likelihood of interior damage going to mid ships is unlikely, the impact from a head on collision with an iceberg like the one Titanic struck would possibly telescope the bow up to the crows nest mast due to the brittle steel that Titanic had. That amount of damage would likely cause enough force to snap the rivets that had heavy amounts of slag in them up to and between the first and second funnels. At full speed, and depending on the shape of the iceberg underwater the iceberg could have rolled in a fashion that could have forced the berg to roll into the ship which could cause more damage than to just the bow. The Titanic wouldn't have hit the berg square on as it may have tried to maneuver in what reverse speed they could achieve before impact and they weren't aiming for the berg to start with. While hitting a berg would have been like a car slamming into granite side of a cliff, the ship had massive amounts of what we would we deem significant design flaws for today. Several university test show that the steel that was used while high quality for the day was brittle steel. Was Titanic designed for safety, yes for the day, but other factors could have occurred in a head on collision that still would have had Titanic sink maybe not quicker but still sink.

Whether or not you subscribe to the try and avoid the iceberg which the ships officers tried to do or hit it straight on the one thing we should be able to agree on is the Titanic was going way to fast that night considering the conditions

@Titanic Animations This was very informative to watch Phillip, thank you. I think had Titanic's engines been put in reverse when the lookout officers first spotted the iceberg, perhaps the ship wouldn’t have hit it head on with as much impact, like think of the ship beginning to go backwards just as it hits, resulting in a much less damaging collision. But perhaps that theory is also implausible. Sometimes I just wish it hadn’t sank or at least a better outcome in which mostly everyone survived.

Let me ask you all a question, if this video states that the titanic would have sunk if she hit the iceberg head on, then why ships before titanic, still hit icebergs head on, but dinnt sink, i dont even know wicht side to belive this is a really good explanation but at the same time ships is the past before titanic dint sink, now heres some explanation from me, ships smaller then titanic in the past had hit iceberg and some had survived, know do you remember that shockhave in this video, now someone try to explaim to me, WHY THE SHOCKHAVES DINT EFECT THE OTHER SHIPS , I MEAN CMON A SMALLER SHIP THEN TITANIC WOULD HAVE SUNK 1 MINUTE IF THE SHOCKHWAVE THEORY WAS CORRECT BUT THERE ARE SHIPS THAT SURVIVED HEAD ON COLLISION WITH ICEBERGS , HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!??????!??!!?!!!!😡😡 , appoligice me for my rude behavior and not to be mean, but i just dont personally belive this theory because smaller ships survived collisons with icebergs in the past :/

here is a quick correction: the mv dona paz was the actual worst peace time disaster

I always wondered if Murdoch had stopped central and starboard props, and put port prop in full ahead on the rudder; if that would have made Titanic evade the ice all together?

Too bad the captain didn't do what he should have done, slow down or stop,

At this point we need a simulation with some hardcore physics and calculations to figure this out once and for all lmao You make the shockwave rivet argument, Oceanliner Designs makes the other case