The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Jack by the hedge]

He was under orders from the military and CIA obviously.
They told him what to say

And told the survivors what to say and told the investigating divers what to say and so the conspiracy grows...

 

[Andy_Ross]

And told the survivors what to say and told the investigating divers what to say and so the conspiracy grows...

Not forgetting ordering the cover up of the sub incident, disappearance of the mystery crew members and then got the navy to go down and pull the bow visor off the ship.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

What would Bildt have told the press other than what he himself had already been told?

You surely can't be inviting us to infer he decided to make up a story, pretending to have information that he didn't have, and just assuming that nobody who knew he didn't have that info would call him on it. That would be insane, so I'm going to assume that's not what you mean. Which creates a puzzle: what do you mean?

The other point Vixen keeps missing is that *any* source of information, however thin or unreliable, that could have told Bildt about the bow visor on the 28th completely obviates the need for him to have made it up. "Only Sillaste" -> Bildt didn't invent it from nothing.

 

[gypsyjackson]

Or somebody else with the same name? I don't see what your point is here. Are you suggesting the JAIC report was issued with made-up names?

Don’t!

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Uno Laur?

wiki - shurely shome mishtake?

And no, the correct Uno Laur does have a wikipedia page, although it's only in the Estonian wiki

https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uno_Laur

 

[Axxman300]

Watched a bunch of Youtube stuff on the Estonia, including the documentary that found the hole. NONE OF THE CARS OR TRUCKS WERE TIED DOWN IN ANY WAY.

A foot of water will float most small cars and two feet will move big vehicles. I don't understand how this is a mystery.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Watched a bunch of Youtube stuff on the Estonia, including the documentary that found the hole. NONE OF THE CARS OR TRUCKS WERE TIED DOWN IN ANY WAY.

A foot of water will float most small cars and two feet will move big vehicles. I don't understand how this is a mystery.

Maybe the Swedes removed the lashings when they removed the bow visor.

 

[Vixen]

One can legitimately argue that in these pictures she's riding high because she is unloaded. Luckily there are plenty of pictures of the ship underway, where we can determine that she's riding lower in the water, but still not to the point where the blue painted waterline is at or below the actual physical waterline.

The water line is defined by a ship's Plimsoll line, not where the paint starts. In stormy seas, this line will be very different than when the same ship is in, say, the tropics.

 

[Vixen]

Why can't a submarine 'see aft'?

Sonar, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, Sonar, dear Henry, dear Henry, sonar.

 

[erwinl]

The water line is defined by a ship's Plimsoll line, not where the paint starts. In stormy seas, this line will be very different than when the same ship is in, say, the tropics.

You're now saying that the hole is thus above the waterline and not on it?

 

[Vixen]

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?



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.

Citation, please.

 

[Vixen]

No, they did not.

First off, it's not the Germans, it was Der Spiegel, a German magazine. Second, nope:



https://apnews.com/article/10aeef52880c761c1af5be6fdee8a0f2

What this article doesn't tell you is that BAM did not test the metal from the Estonia, but tried to recreate the twinning effect (=which indicates metal deformation caused by an explosive impact) on a fresh piece of metal and found that it could by shot peening it first. Shot peening is a method of cleaning before applying paint to metal. Meyer Werft looked through its records and found that the Estonia had never been shot peened. In addition, the BAM twinning was a supercifial one that appeared just on the surface of their piece of metal.

The piece of metal that was retrieved by Brian Braidwood, an ex-Royal Navy (UK) diver and military explosives expert working for the German Group of Experts (Werner Hummel, marine claims investigator) was tested at three independent laboratories, including a one that carried out police forensics, and every single one of them said the force needed to cause that type of deformation was compatible with an explosion. This was metal taken from the port side bulkhead where there was a hole and the theory is that someone had attached explosives to the side bolts of the bow visor, thus causing a telling hole in the bow bulkhead.

The fact that a majority of survivors (29 of them) said the bangs happened at circa 01:00 (when Swedish time turns midnight) seems to indicate a timed device, which coincided with when the captain would retire to his cabin for the night to take over the tricky archipelago in the morning, and a change of watch for the various seamen. People would be asleep in their cabins, the ship half way through its cruise, in international waters, far from any mainland. It all fits.

In addition, it was Bildt's last day as PM, Laar had just resigned from the Estonian government and Yeltsin was in the USA getting drunk being tired and emotional.

 

[Vixen]

Sinking a ferry isn't very stealthy.

It is if you can get away with it.

 

[Vixen]

Water entering the ship is not waves breaking on a beach. 2000 tons did not enter at one go.

Bangs are what you would expect.

Sailors tell a good tall story.

 

[Vixen]

At periscope depth they also have radar masts that give lookout coverage

Periscopes and antennae are very fragile and in a collision, easily broekn.

 

[Vixen]

We now have a 'rogue' Russian sub sold to an inexperienced third world crew in the mix.

A few months earlier, in 1993, the Swedish government did issue a formal complaint about Russia (likely rogue military speznazs) having sold one of its submarines, which it caught in Swedish waters being sailored by...




















...an inexperienced Iranian crew.


Hello? Selling stuff to Iran?

 

[Andy_Ross]

The water line is defined by a ship's Plimsoll line, not where the paint starts. In stormy seas, this line will be very different than when the same ship is in, say, the tropics.

Yes in the tropics Or the summer the draught is deeper. It's to do with the water density which is to do with salinity and temperature.
Estonia didn't have to worry about tropical conditions and their full load wouldn't vary enough to be a big factor.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

In addition, it was Bildt's last day as PM, Laar had just resigned from the Estonian government and Yeltsin was in the USA getting drunk being tired and emotional.

Yeltsin's visit was in late September, so you're right there. Bilt's last day in office was 7 October, well after Yeltsin had left the US.

Laar didn't resign until a month after Bildt left.

 

[Vixen]

I thought Lehtola was working for Swedish intelligence and by proxy the CIA, who were puppeting Carl Bildt? Now it's Russians he's secretly working for?

Still doesn't explain how one could reasonably characterizing him as acting with integrity.

Lehtola on being shown the video images taken by the German crew of suspect packages found near the bow, which ex-Royal Navy diver, Brian Braidwood, military explosives expert, identified as explosives packets, shrugged his shoulders and claimed that as the Institute of Seismology at Helsinki University had not registered any explosion that night, it cannot have happened. When the Soviet submarine Kursk ignited and at least two nations other than the Soviets knew of it, it was because the seismologists had picked up the tremors. However, Kursk was 300 m under water. The M/S Estonia was not in deep water, so it is not clear why a seismology point would even pick up a TNT-type or Semtex-type explosion on a bow above the water line, on the ship's bow bulkhead. The aim of these would have just been to blow out the bolts. This is a good example of Lehtola's high-handedness. He was a lawyer, not a physicist. I've worked with lawyers and many of them could barely calculate 10% never mind have the foggiest idea what 'twinning deformation' is.

 

[Vixen]

Since Lehtola wasn't Swedish, any unofficial knowledge he had of Sweden's security secrets would already constitute a serious breach of national security. If he cared about that crap at all, he'd be saying to Swedish intelligence: "You really shouldn't be telling me any of this. Why are you?"

Discretion is the better part of valour.