The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Axxman300 said:
You are working way too hard to paint yourself into a corner.

The Estonia's sister ship had been forced to repair the clamps on her bow cover because they had problems. After the sinking and investigation they found that the clamps were poorly designed, and incapable of taking the rough seas the ship encountered that night. The captain ignored the initial report of damage to the bow and water coming in, and then went to bed as scheduled due to shift change. Most of the crew drowned which should tell you how good they were at communication. The Estonia left port with an 8-degree list due to improper loading, and this made everything worse once out to sea where the was blowing in the direction of the list. The bow was not visible to the bridge crew due to the ship's design, and there was no warning light to alert them that the bow cover had come off. They never slowed down after the initial report of the bow cover coming loose which placed more stress on the damaged area causing it to completely fail.

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/JmOcVPAapkfmCuBiGs/giphy.gif[/qimg]

Those are the facts.

You need to address them sans wild speculation about stolen Soviet hardware and non-existent submarines.
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There might have been issues with the bow visor as seawater had been coming into the deck. Having said that, it doesn't ipso facto prove the bow visor was the cause. I don't know if you have ever experienced a door slam which caused an ornament to fall off the shelf? A collision with another vessel could well cause something precariously loose to drop or hang off, as virtually all of the survivors did feel two or three bangs or shudders, together with a scraping sound.


How would Bildt have known anyway on the 28 Sept when none of the crew except Sillaste had been interviewed as of that date.
 
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Vixen said:
There might have been issues with the bow visor as seawater had been coming into the deck. Having said that, it doesn't ipso facto prove the bow visor was the cause. I don't know if you have ever experienced a door slam which caused an ornament to fall off the shelf? A collision with another vessel could well cause something prevariously loose to drop or hang off, as virtually all of the survivors did feel two or three bangs or shudders, together with a scarping sound.


How would Bildt have known anyway on the 28 Sept when none of the crew except Sillaste had been interviewed as of that date.
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you don't think the bow visor moving against the hull would cause loud noises?
 
Reformed Offlian said:
Sorry. Laur, not Kaur. The actual chair of the JAIC when it issued the final report.
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Uno Laur?

Uno Laur (born June 8, 1961, in Rakvere[1]), also known as Kohtla-Järve Uno (a nickname derived from his hometown Kohtla-Järve), is an Estonian-Jewish anarchist and the iconoclastic ex lead singer of the Must Mamba and Röövel Ööbik, "the oldest punk in Estonia
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wiki - shurely shome mishtake?

If you mean Mart Laar, who was then then Estonian prime minister, he happened to be one of the three heads of state who interviewed Sillaste 28 September 1994 at Turku Hospital. He turned up with Carl Bildt (PM Sweden) and Esko Aho (PM Finland), together with stern faced officers (some survivors say they were interrogated by the Swedish secret police). So Sillaste having recently been dragged out of the sea in a sorry state, highly stressed and traumatised was immediately faced with this intimidating scenario.

No-one other than he spoke Estonian and it was Laar who was best fluent in English who did the questioning in English for the person taking the notes. He claims that Sillaste never said the bow fell off, as Bildt claimed later, and as claimed in the report, but rather that 'water was coming in'. It could be that having had a problem with, the visor before and seawater entering, Sillaste assumed that was the cause. In any case Laar remarked that he thought Bildt seized on this technical excuse and he and Aho found themselves pressured to play along with it. Laar himself actually believed at first it was some kind of terrorism and he, too, believed it was some kind of collision or 'dark forces' at work.

The fact people sign off reports means little . Committees and boards have to be unanimous so people who dissent just sign off minutes for a quiet life or they would be there all night. They had already been at each other's throats for three years.
 
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If it was a Swedish sub that hit the ferry way hasn't anyone mentioned it in all these years?

Complete silence from the crew, naval staff and repair yard, government ministry people, government ministers or members of the PM staff. Many hundreds of people involved and not a peep.

Things like that leak out. You would think that at least some of the crew had feelings of guilt about all the people they killed and were told to shut up about.
Not one member of the naval staff or dockyard workers, ministry of defence staff or government bureaucrats ordered to cover up hundreds of deaths had any remorse? not one deathbed confession or 'leak' to the press?
 
Reformed Offlian said:
There is no way he could have reasonably believed that. He would have been knowingly (and possibly illegally) acting as a foreign agent to perpetuate a lie that did not, AFAICT, serve country he was supposed to be representing.

I'll ask again, what moral, patriotic reason could Lehtola possibly have had to lie at the behest of *Swedish* intelligence services?
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There is something in diplomatic circles called 'honourable deception'. Rather like telling someone they look great when it would be too hurtful to say they look awful. Is it good or bad? <shrug>
 
Vixen said:
Do scroll back so you can see the post I answered. You were the one who requested further information.
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Your reference refers to waves breaking on a shoreline.

Waves at sea make no sound if they aren't breaking against something.

What you will notice in a big storm is the sound of the wind and the sound of the ship being slammed by the waves which is different to the roar of breaking waves on a shore.
 
Vixen said:
The irony is that whilst nobody in naval circles or the survivors groups, including marine claims investigators, engineers, architects and investigative journalists believes the JAIC report...
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Or maybe just the people you consult.

...and a new investigation has opened, a bunch of people claiming to be sceptics prefer to believe the original bunkum.
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You believe the "original bunkum" when it suits you. You use claims in the report to try to rebut statements made here. But that's neither here nor there: disputing your frantic, comical attempts to undermine something doesn't mean people fully endorse what you're attacking.
 
Vixen said:
No, this time I am referring to Werner Hummel, head of Marine Claims Partner, in Hamburg, Germany, acting for Meyer Werft shipbuilders. He says it is 'simple physics'.
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Then I guess I need to throw out all the sophisticated physical flooding models that we've been using for decades. Give us a citation to his statement, please, so we can see the context in which he said it.
 
Vixen said:
Do scroll back so you can see the post I answered. You were the one who requested further information.
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Yes, I was asking for more information.

The sound of waves breaking on the shore has nothing to do with the fate of the Estonia.
 
Vixen said:
If it was rammed by a sub and its side penetrated in the impact, then this explains why it sank so fast without capsizing or turtling.
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The damage is above the waterline and doesn't look anything like a submarine impact. The Estonian experts calculated the hole is too small for a flood rate that matches the Estonia foundering profile. What's that you keep telling us about timeline?

Also, in a disaster such as this, you can't assume that 'it was just an accident' you have to consider the possibility of crew involvement, even it just to rule out sabotage or criminal involvement of any kind.
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There you go again, pretending to be an expert in investigation.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Why would it be 'escorting it'?

If it was escorting it why was it on the surface ramming it when a sub is designed to operate under water where it is faster and in no danger of ramming anything?
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Submarines cannot 'see' aft so if one was lurking in the Baltic and was emerging it might not have seen the Estonia coming towards it from behind. Maybe it was a Russian sub after all and Bildt wanted to avoid an incendiary situation in Estonia, with Russia feeling it needed to bring in 'peace-keeping troops' and never leave.

Fact is, the Russian Navy put out two official disclaimers saying none of their fleet was in operation as of the time of the accident, yet, the Finnish coastguards had to intercept a Russian vessel the Leonid Bykof. heading towards the rocks within one hour of the accident, so can't believe every statement issued, which appear to be more to do with PR and reputation management than factual truth.
 
Vixen said:
In the case of the one in Japan, the captain of the submarine did a quick sonar routine without bothering with the comprehensive one and managed to wreck a research ship above them in so doing.
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If you're speaking of the Ehime Maru, it was a school ship, not a research ship. But close enough. When we look at the damage to Ehime Maru, we see some things that immediately distinguish it from the damage to Estonia. First, the damage is below the waterline, because that's were submarines operate. Second, the impact damage is spread over a wide area, consistent with impact with a blunt object like a submarine. Third -- and most telling -- there is a giant skid mark from USS Greeneville's anechoic material.

The damage to Estonia is above the waterline, not "at" it. It is highly localized. And there is no transfer of material from the impacting object. And no, those elastomers don't just magically dissolve in seawater, as you claimed.

There's still the matter of the physical effect you haven't considered in collisions, which undermines that claim. I've asked you to describe it and its effect, and I've asked you in a way that you can't just Google for the answer. You have to answer from a position of prior knowledge. Can you do it?

Submarines can also move extremely swiftly if they are of the technology that enables it.
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The technology that enables it enables it for submerged operation only, because the fluid dynamics for a submerged submarine are wholly different than those for a submarine on the surface. Sensibly enough, the designers optimize for submerged operations because that's where a sub is meant to be.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
If it was so hazardous why were they doing it?

Apart from sink the ferry, what was the sub supposed to do?
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Russian vessels posing as research frigates or cargo vessels have been caught several times snooping about Swedish/Finnish waters. Before the fall of the USSR, it was used to dominating these waters, with a massive navy port at Kaliningrad (former Prussia). So if they have vessels in plain sight snooping, then we can be sure they have well camouflaged submarines sneaking around below water.
 
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