The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Vixen]

Working backwards...

Some of the survivors worked their way along the port side of the ship to get down to the water AND USED THE OPEN RAMP TO CLIMB DOWN. So you have three or four people right there who could give immediate testimony.

The bangs were the bow cover clamps failing. The scraping sound was the bow cover scraping the hull as the ship plowed over it.

Yes, I have had things fall off a shelf due to a slamming door. I have also experienced a 6.9 earthquake. Neither of this things is comparable to being on a large steel ship in rough seas.

The JAIC very clearly states the bow ramp was closed.


I think we all know what clunking metal sounds like and can differentiate it from explosions.

 

[Vixen]

What I want to know is why is the "hole" right along the seam of the steel plating?

I watched the video of the "discovery" and they state technical facts and then ignore them. The first thing they illustrate is how the Estonia has listed an additional 8 degrees on the bottom since the initial survey back in the 1990s. Right off the bat this proves the hull has shifted, and it also suggests that the hole - if it was there in 1993 - would not have been visible at the time of the investigation...so no cover-up, just incomplete data.

The main problem, as you point out, is the hole is above water. And while one side of the hole has metal wrenched outward, the other side does not.

This, in my layman opinion, is a stress fracture.

It could have been caused on the surface as the ship wrestled with the growing stress of the water shifting weight on the car deck compounded by wind and waves. Estonia sank stern-first and would have made contact with the sea floor while the bow was above water causing potential additional lateral stress on the hull.

Or the hole was caused by the weight of the ship combined with a weak spot in that section of hull as the ship shifted on the sea floor over the years.

I don't see evidence of an impact.

Impressive. Axxman can tell more from his armchair than a physics professor who specialises in marine collision (Prof Amdahl, who did computer modelling).


Respect!

 

[Vixen]

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?

He obviously did exactly that.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Discretion is the better part of valour.

Evasion is the better part of unresponsiveness.

 

[JayUtah]

The water line is defined by a ship's Plimsoll line, not where the paint starts.

I didn't claim otherwise. The hull paint allows us to precisely locate the hole on Estonia's hull. And we have several photographs of the ship under various cargo loads, in which the paint scheme also allows us to determine the ship's actual operational waterline, regardless of the Plimsoll line, which indicates a maximum load. In my argument the paint does nothing more than allow us to correlate two different locations on the hull: the alleged impact damage, and the ship's actual waterline when underway.

You asked for definitive proof that the damage occurred above the waterline. I've given it to you.

In stormy seas, this line will be very different than when the same ship is in, say, the tropics.

The tropics are irrelevant because all our evidence pertains to the Baltic. And the evidence fails to show any examples of Estonia under way in a manner that places the "impact" point where a submarine running on the surface could hit it and cause damage there.

 

[Vixen]

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

What the survivors say is at odds with what was in the report. That is one reason they have been clamouring for it to be reopened.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

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.

What does the depth of water have to do with the ability to detect tremors? Seismologists can detect tremors where there's no water at all. In fact, water suppresses certain types of seismic waves.

 

[Vixen]

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.

There definitely was a metallic object showing up in Lehtola's sonar drawing. Maybe it was a mini-sub after all, which nobody ever mentioned again.

 

[Vixen]

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.

What would Sillaste know? He was merely an engineer running around like a blue-arsed fly, who reported seeing water coming in at the sides of the car ramp on a cctv monitor and opined that there might have been a problem with the bow visor as it didn't align squarely with one or two of the mating lugs.

He was hardly qualified to determine the cause of the accident and PM Mart Laar who questioned him in English, Sillaste in broken English, said Sillaste never said the bow visor had fallen off, yet the JAIC said in its report that he said he could see the bow visor was missing (supposedly from his life raft) on 28 Sept, a blatant fabrication. Sillaste never volunteered that information, whereas Paul Barney did say he saw the bow of the ship clearly in the moonlight, before it went down, and that it had been extremely moving.

 

[JayUtah]

Impressive. Axxman can tell more from his armchair than a physics professor who specialises in marine collision (Prof Amdahl, who did computer modelling).

I've discussed Prof. Amdahl's modeling, and the problems with it, in great detail. You never addressed a single word of it. You can't answer why other people who are similarly qualified take issue with his findings and would like him to present them in greater detail than he did when hired by a guy who wanted to tell a story about a collision and ignored all the other stress-fracture evidence he discovered in order to keep his story clean.

And yes, Axxman is just as qualified to render his opinion from his armchair as you are to render yours from your armchair. The difference is that Axxman is honest enough to characterize his as a layman's opinion, whereas you vacillate between disclaiming any expertise in the matter and all but demanding we take your word for everything.

In my non-layman's opinion, I think it's more likely to be a stress fracture than it is to be collision damage, for reasons I've given at length. In any case, I feel comfortable in ruling out completely that it could be damage from a collision with a submarine.

 

[Vixen]

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.

The JAIC clearly says the lorries were lashed as stormy weather had been forecast and the crew acknowledged it did this. Cars were not, just that the hand brake had to be on and the gear in reverse.

 

[JayUtah]

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

Irrelevant. The point is that a ro-ro ferry could hardly sneak up on a submarine running on the surface, as you claimed.

 

[Vixen]

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

It looks to me as if it breaches both the hull and the superstructure by dint of it situation. Because of the vertical fracture cause by the impact, then it seems clear to me the hull is breached, if mostly via this fracture.

 

[erwinl]

It looks to me as if it breaches both the hull and the superstructure by dint of it situation. Because of the vertical fracture cause by the impact, then it seems clear to me the hull is breached, if mostly via this fracture.

That was not the question.

You earlier declared the hole to be on the waterline.
We see the hole being mostly in the white part, with a portion going into the lower blue part.

Seeing, my picture of the Estonia and your declaration that the blue part was indeed not the waterline, can we now put the hole above the waterline and certainly not on it?

 

[Vixen]

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.

It was the day Bildt was having his farewell meal, having just lost the election.


So that was his real leaving day.


Laar's vote of no confidence in him was known of as of 28 Sept 1994.

Both Bildt and Laar were around, with Finnish PM Aho, to interview some of the crew in hospital in Turku. They then went on to Helsinki, where I elieve the JAIC was then established.

 

[JayUtah]

Citation, please.

There is only one widely circulated image of the damage to Ehime Maru's starboard side from the initial impact, therefore you'll have little trouble finding it. The shell plating buckled outward above the impact area, forming a sharp crease. The dark discoloration beneath the crease, which was the part in contact with Greeneville's hull, is unmistakable.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

What would Sillaste know? He was merely an engineer running around like a blue-arsed fly, who reported seeing water coming in at the sides of the car ramp on a cctv monitor and opined that there might have been a problem with the bow visor as it didn't align squarely with one or two of the mating lugs.

He was hardly qualified to determine the cause of the accident and PM Mart Laar who questioned him in English, Sillaste in broken English, said Sillaste never said the bow visor had fallen off, yet the JAIC said in its report that he said he could see the bow visor was missing (supposedly from his life raft) on 28 Sept, a blatant fabrication. Sillaste never volunteered that information, whereas Paul Barney did say he saw the bow of the ship clearly in the moonlight, before it went down, and that it had been extremely moving.

What is your basis for claiming a "blatant fabrication"? How do you know that the JAIC did not, in fact, interview him on the date in question?

As to whether he was in a position to know whether the bow visor failure was a cause, as opposed to an effect, of the accident, that is irrelevant. It may well be that representing it to be the *cause* of the accident may have been premature.

What we are discussing, however, is whether Carl Bildt had any information that the bow visor had come off as of 28 September. Sillaste could certainly have known that; he and other crew members had seen that it was missing.

You denigrate Sillaste's competence and veracity, yet your basis for doing so seems to be nothing more than sneering and innuendo. Yet you extol the unevidenced virtues of Paul Barney, a passenger with no notable maritime expertise, talking to a reporter years after the fact.

By any "objective" measure, Sillaste's testimony should be given far more weight than Barney's in this instance, even if we ignore the fact that all other evidence corroborates the former's testimony.

 

[Andy_Ross]

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 experienced Iranian crew.


Hello? Selling stuff to Iran?

So it wasn't a Swedish boat that sank the ferry

 

[Vixen]

Irrelevant. The point is that a ro-ro ferry could hardly sneak up on a submarine running on the surface, as you claimed.

Not running on the surface but emerging. Its sonar may not pick up an object behind it.

 

[Vixen]

That was not the question.

You earlier declared the hole to be on the waterline.
We see the hole being mostly in the white part, with a portion going into the lower blue part.

Seeing, my picture of the Estonia and your declaration that the blue part was indeed not the waterline, can we now put the hole above the waterline and certainly not on it?

I am not sure you are right, so please provide a citation as to where the MS Estonia Plimsoll line was.