The US Navy detected sounds "consistent with an implosion" shortly after OceanGate's Titan submersible lost contact, a navy official has said.

Five people were aboard the vessel when it went missing during a dive to the Titanic wreck on Sunday.

The loss of the sub was confirmed on Thursday after a huge search mission.

The official told CBS News their information about the "acoustic anomaly" had been used by the US Coast Guard to narrow the search area.

Earlier on Thursday, the district commander the Coast Guard, Rear Adm Mauger, confirmed that all five people aboard Titan had been killed following what was probably a "catastrophic implosion", based on patterns of debris discovered.

However he said no sounds had been detected during the search mission that were consistent with this.

"We've had sonar buoys in the water nearly continuously and have not detected any catastrophic events when those sonar buoys have been in the water."

On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard confirmed that a Canadian P-3 aircraft had detected "underwater noises" in a search area for the missing vessel.

This brought new hope that the Titan's crew might be found alive and caused the Coast Guard to relocate operations.

According to CBS, those noises are now thought to have been coming from other ships in the area.