The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Vixen said:
This type of coating wouldn't transfer in the same way a coat of paint does? I would have thought it would simply crumble, or whatever rubber does.
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Why do you think it is rubber?
Why do you think it would just 'crumble'?
 
Reformed Offlian said:
Assumes facts not in evidence.



But I thought your contention was the JAIC was beholden to outside political pressure. And that the Finns (including Lehtonen) didn't play along. And you also denied that you were questioning Lehtonen's integrity. Why would Lehtonen or anybody else care what Carl Bildt wanted once he left office? Who would he be working for, at that point? And why would the other commission members just let themselves be cowed by him? And why would none of them subsequently come forward to say that they had had their arms twisted?
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I said quite clearly that Lehtola was high-handed and arrogant, which you can be without being dishonest, in the usual meaning of the word. I expect Lehtola justified it to himself as it all being in the cause of 'National Security'. If Bildt told him this was the case then it would be reckless of him not to play along.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Okay. Passenger cabins are small. A car deck which runs the length of the vessel is really big. I think flooding into the car deck is a much bigger threat to the ship than cabins.
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Passenger decks don't have internal watertight subdivision so the flooding would spread across the deck. Passenger cabins would however have acted as baffles to stop any free surface effect due to rolling. Through a hole that size flooding would not have been rapid as the hole is above the waterline and only wave crests would have submerged it.
Flooding on the car deck through a missing bow would also only happen on wave crests. Rolling of the ship would be a danger as free surface effect would be adding to the roll.
 
Axxman300 said:
You assume they didn't rule it out and never investigated this angle. Investigators work with the physical evidence since it speaks loudest. It wasn't terrorism because neither Estonia nor Sweden had pissed anybody off in 1993, and neither country is a threat to its neighbors.



In that weather?

Why can't it be simple crew ineptitude? I ask only because it seems like it was. The vehicles were loaded incorrectly distributing weight to one side, and then the bridge crew failed to slow the ship while they investigated the loud noises below, meaning the ship was slurping in water at a high rate.



Charged and convicted are two different things. The US Navy has a sorted history with prosecuting innocent sailors to cover for systemic problems. The USS Iowa incident is a glaring example. The sailor will have his day in court and we'll get to see the evidence.

Should point out that the ship was moored to the pier, not out at sea in bad weather.




And yet it wasn't the first time this kind of thing had happened. MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsized for the same reason. in 2014 MV Sewol sank when a sudden turn caused the cargo to shift to one side. I'm not quoting anybody. I own a small pickup truck, when I haul a heavy load I need to know the weight, and I have to distribute the load and tie it down so it doesn't shift. Pickup trucks and ferries share the same proclivity to roll over.
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You are kidding right? This was in the era of the fall of the Soviet Union, which it very much resented. The Berlin Wall came down, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, etc,. all former so-called 'Baltic states' (= read Soviet bloc). The Soviets did not like it one little bit, especially when the Estonians wanted to expel the Russians from Estonia. Many live in Narva, and the Russian response was that to get rid of them they would have to make Narva a part of Russia. The old Stalinist-appointed officials were now replaced by Estonians. It is believed the area around Narva is heavily Russian-mined.

The KGB were being replaced by a CIA/MI6/KSI friendly intelligence agency. The soldiers in the Russian army had no idea when it would get their next wages, so the wholesale selling of Soviet military stuff began to take root, with the Russians selling submarines via army agents. There will certainly have been ex-KGB men, such as Vladimir Putin, who would very much disapprove of Soviet/Russian state secrets and space programs being smuggled out on the black market by and handed over to enemy no.1, the CIA, of whom Bildt is said to have been an agent. You very much cannot rule out cold war shenanigans, especially as the Estonia passenger ferry had been used for this very purpose, presumably, with the belief the passengers were acceptable collateral damage/human shield.

The weather was pretty standard for the Baltic in late September. Nothing unusual. They would have known of the expected weather conditions and been prepared for them. For example, lashing down heavy lorries tightly.

The very fact that that sailor has been charged, even not yet convicted indicates that you can't take a sailor's word at face value in an accident...as that sailor might have caused that accident!
 
Vixen said:
I said quite clearly that Lehtola was high-handed and arrogant, which you can be without being dishonest, in the usual meaning of the word. I expect Lehtola justified it to himself as it all being in the cause of 'National Security'. If Bildt told him this was the case then it would be reckless of him not to play along.
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So your imaginary movie now has this "high-handed and arrogant" former chief of police meekly accepting the outgoing Swedish PM's order to cover up any embarrassing evidence in the accident he's responsible for investigating because something something national security wink wink. Cool story.
 
Reformed Offlian said:
There is a big difference between saying that Bildt could not have known what caused the accident and that he could not have know that the bow visor had come off. The latter is what is under contention in your "cover story" story.

Also, you cannot make this all about Carl Bildt's political agenda and then pretend it's irrelevant that he left office a mere ten days later, after which he was no longer driving said agenda.
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Politicians are puppets of the intelligence agencies and the army generals.

You don't really believe the likes of Biden or Clinton (who was USA president as of the time of the accident) have the vaguest of idea where to begin raining down bombs? They will have been advised by the defence forces bods.
 
Vixen said:
The weather was pretty standard for the Baltic in late September. Nothing unusual. They would have known of the expected weather conditions and been prepared for them. For example, lashing down heavy lorries tightly.
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What is your evidence for this?
How were the lorries 'lashed down'?


The very fact that that sailor has been charged, even not yet convicted indicates that you can't take a sailor's word at face value in an accident...as that sailor might have caused that accident!
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Almost as if a fire aboard a ship in port is different to a ship sinking in a storm.

Sailors are charged if they did something deliberately or were negligent.

Are you claiming it was a deliberate act by the crew again?
I thought it was a submarine that did it?
What do you suspect the crew of doing?
 
Vixen said:
Politicians are puppets of the intelligence agencies and the army generals.

You don't really believe the likes of Biden or Clinton (who was USA president as of the time of the accident) have the vaguest of idea where to begin raining down bombs? They will have been advised by the defence forces bods.
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Is this a new conspiracy theory that Sweden and the USA are controlled by the military?
 
Axxman300 said:
The smuggling is a peripheral issue, and something you clearly do not understand.

Second, if the "sensitive military stuff" was really important - it would have been put the submarine.

Third, submarines track ships with sonar, and if the target is important there is ALWAYS backup in the way of surface radar tracking from other ships, or from the air.

Fourth, EVERYBODY KNEW THE CIA AND SWEDEN HAD A JOINT PROJECT TO RECOVER STOLEN SENSITIVE SOVIET EQUIPMENT AND WEAPONS DURING THIS TIME. Come on, am I the only one who remembers loose Ukrainian nukes and Red Mercury? Con-artists were making a mint of the US and European intelligence agencies back then.

Finally, the fun thing about the Russians is their predictability. If someone was smuggling legit sensitive gear or tech to the west their response would not have been to sink a ferry. They would target the smuggler, the purchaser, and anyone else involved directly.
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Don't forget that submarine they had to cover in concrete because of the radiation leak.
 
Vixen said:
... There will certainly have been ex-KGB men, such as Vladimir Putin, who would very much disapprove of Soviet/Russian state secrets and space programs being smuggled out on the black market by and handed over to enemy no.1, the CIA, of whom Bildt is said to have been an agent. You very much cannot rule out cold war shenanigans, especially as the Estonia passenger ferry had been used for this very purpose, presumably, with the belief the passengers were acceptable collateral damage/human shield.
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So your movie now has Vladimir Putin (or similar) deciding that unauthorised black market sales of Soviet military hardware are best halted by sinking a passenger ferry carrying one consignment instead of going after the sellers, buyers or middle men and making an example of them.

Well that sounds deeply unlikely to me but let's run with it. What's Vlad's plan?
 
Jack by the hedge said:
So your movie now has Vladimir Putin (or similar) deciding that unauthorised black market sales of Soviet military hardware are best halted by sinking a passenger ferry carrying one consignment instead of going after the sellers, buyers or middle men and making an example of them.

Well that sounds deeply unlikely to me but let's run with it. What's Vlad's plan?
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I thought it was the Swedes that sank it?
 
Vixen said:
As captain he has to be held responsible for what goes on on his ship. Why didn't he take the May Day call and why Captain Tammes, third mate?
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Because a rogue KGB agent took revenge on the ship which was ferrying Soviet military hardware? :confused:

Which the CIA was involved in covering up by conspiring with the Swedish premier?

And the crew were involved in sabotaging the ship because 9 crew members mysteriously disappeared... which is now just a clerical error and not suspicious?

What's the actual theory being proposed now? :confused:
 
Vixen said:
Common knowledge. The sheer force of 2,000 tonnes per second.
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Per second? What? How about putting common knowledge down, patting it on it's head and picking up some physics?

We've heard it suggested that about 2,000 tons of water on the car deck might have destabilised the ship and caused its initial list. Nowhere is it suggested this mass of water was shipped in the course of one second. Want to try again?
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Absolutely nobody is suggesting that Bildt immediately and independently determined the cause of the sinking. The idea is asinine.

Your imagined movie scene of the survivors struck dumb and unable to utter a word to their rescuers appears to be yanked from your behind. If you wish to claim that Bildt was not repeating what the crew members had already said then please show us your evidence that their reports were not given to him before he told the press the same thing. The very basic thing that you seem to have overlooked is that Bildt could perfectly well have said we don't know yet.
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There was only one crew member who was actually interviewed on the 28th September 1994, when Bildt issued his statement to the Swedish main papers, and that was in Finland:

6.2.4 Summary of testimonies by the system engineer
The system engineer was interrogated five times.
1. 28 September 1994 in Turku by the Finnish police.
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JAIC Report

This would have been Henrik Sillaste. (He is not named in the report, nor is is statement shown. It is summarised. We have no way of knowing what he said and what the interviewer may have asked as a leading question, for example, "Mr Sillaste, think carefully. Can you remember seeing the bow visor?" HS: No. Report: "When the ESTONIA sank, stern first, he could see that the bow visor was missing. He was about 20 metres from the ship in a raft together with 9 to 10 others. He has estimated that the time from his first observation of water entering the car deck to the sinking was 15-20 minutes.") I find it curious this is written in the third person and not via Sillaste's own words.

None of the other crew were interviewed until 29 Sept 1994 (supporting my claim that there was no way they were in any fit condition as of the day of rescue).


In other words, Carl Bildt pulled it out of his arse.
 
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Captain_Swoop said:
Why would they be 'shadowing the boat'?

What was the purpose of the shadowing?

If they were shadowing why did they sink it?

Have you made your mind up if it was a submarine or the mysterious crew members planting a bomb?

How do the mines play in to this?

Who removed the bow visor?

What happened to your 'Russian revenge' theory?
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It was clearly a Swedish or UK submarine given who is keen to cover it up. It was probably an accident.

The expert who had to sweep the area for mines, was probably looking for what Sweden/Finland knew to be a mined area.
 
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