The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Reformed Offlian said:
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.
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Indeed, Vixen is selectively weighing eyewitness testimony while accusing others of doing precisely that in order to effect a coverup.

Similarly, layman's opinions regarding the difference between the detonation of explosives and the impact of sea-driven structures is to be respected, but the layman's opinion of what looks like impact damage versus stress fractures is to be discounted.

All these contradictory claims are giving me whiplash.
 
JayUtah said:
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.
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And you know that is the trace of the submarine's coating, how?
 
Reformed Offlian said:
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.
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How the heck would Sillaste know what caused the accident?
 
Vixen said:
I am not sure you are right, so please provide a citation as to where the MS Estonia Plimsoll line was.
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You were saying the hole was on the water line.
We can clearly see the hole is above the top part of the blue area. You yourself said the blue area was not the waterline per se.

So.
Was the hole on the waterline, or were you mistaken, when you said that?

It is not a shame to be mistaken and to acknowledge that.
 
Vixen said:
I am not sure you are right, so please provide a citation as to where the MS Estonia Plimsoll line was.
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You're the one who brought up the Plimsoll line as part of your argument regarding where the waterline is. Therefore it's your responsibility to show us Estonia's Plimsoll line if it's your intent to argue by that evidence that the ship was riding low enough for a submarine to strike it at the point indicated.

I contend that we don't need the Plimsoll line to determine with suitable confidence where Estonia's operational waterline was while loaded and underway. There is plenty of relevant photographic evidence.
 
Vixen said:
Not running on the surface but emerging. Its sonar may not pick up an object behind it.
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So now you're an expert in military sonar and submarine operations? Besides, an impact on the starboard side with an object that Estonia overtakes is inconsistent with the disposition of the shell plating.
 
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Is what Brian Braidwood says is an "explosive charge". It was estimated at about 10 cm squared.

https://www.estoniaferrydisaster.net/estonia final report/chapter32.htm
 
He says there were 'explosive bags' scattered around too.
How many charges does he say we're present and why would there be anything left after all these years?
If it was hit by a sub what was the purpose of the explosives?
 
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Vixen said:
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.
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You previously claimed that they had all found traces of explosives. That's incredibly misleading. You are an astonishingly unreliable reporter of facts.

So in fact what they appear to have concluded is that the deformation of the metal *could* have been caused by an explosion, but they didn't say that it couldn't have been caused by something else, such as a large section of the front of the ship being violently wrenched off its mountings.
 
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Yeah it's a bit weird. The report claims the "explosive" subsequently vanished. A claim was made that the image below is a shaped charge.

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"Evaluation of the footage made by ROV on 02. and 09.10.94 revealed, however, that the package had not been at the identified location on the 5th deck on these dates, thus must have been placed there between the 09.10. and 03.12.94 and therefore could not be casualty related. In any event, the term "explosives", which had always been in the background during the preceding years of the investigation, was suddenly brought back to the attention of the investigators and the video footage available in Hamburg, all obtained from the JAIC, was analysed again also in an attempt to find possible explanations for numerous so far unexplained damage areas. It revealed among other things that an orange coloured cube had been attached to the recess of the port front bulkhead of the wreck in way of the hydraulic and manual side locks and the fastening of the bow ramp actuator.

The cube was clearly visible and had been closely looked at by the ROV during the inspection on 09.10.94, it could not, however, be found on the 02.10.94 videos which was possibly due to restricted visibility and was definitely not in this location on the SPRINT ROV made on 03.12.94 respectively on the diver video of the same date.
Images were made from the orange coloured cube and identified by all three experts from Sweden, England and Germany with a high degree of probability as an "explosive charge".

https://www.seainfo.se/files/Estonia-Investigation-Initiative.pdf

It seems there are conflicting conspiracies going around which have all been merged into one super-conspiracy in this thread. Some people think it was explosives, a smaller group seem to think it was hit by a sub.

Brian Braidwood seems to be an expert in his field but the nature of his relationship with the people for whom he did the reports for is not apparent. It seems Braidwood died in 2014 so he can't be questioned.
 
Vixen said:
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.
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You claim Bildt could not have learned from Sillaste what the report claims Sillaste said. And your proof is your personal incredulity. Imagine how unconvincing that is.

So instead you invent a fantasy where Bildt (for no reason we can see) just makes up a story about the bow door which, by amazing coincidence, divers later discover to be true.
 
If the charge was visible on video of the sunken ship it obviously didn't contribute to the sinking.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
You claim Bildt could not have learned from Sillaste what the report claims Sillaste said. And your proof is your personal incredulity. Imagine how unconvincing that is.

So instead you invent a fantasy where Bildt (for no reason we can see) just makes up a story about the bow door which, by amazing coincidence, divers later discover to be true.
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Or, he was in on the sinking and knew the bow door had been blown off with explosives!
 
Captain_Swoop said:
If the charge was visible on video of the sunken ship it obviously didn't contribute to the sinking.
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Yeppers. On one of the links I provided, they showed images of areas were it was claimed explosives did go off. I found it interesting enough to post is all. I have no idea how to judge if an area has been exposed to an explosive blast or not.

The guy claiming the smaller packages were explosives seems to have a decent background in the area. He was one of the peeps who investigated the Greenpeace ship bombing and was a naval diver and explosives expert for a long time.

It's also a bit strange the smaller package has since disappeared.
 
https://www.estoniaferrydisaster.net/estonia final report/34.7.htm

"To sum it up, the following damage has been described and illustrated in the area of the starboard side lock:

- Split and torn metal damaged around the top part of the manual side-lock opening front bulkhead.
- All of this damaged metal has been pushed forward towards the visor.
- Darkening of the visor paintwork at exactly the same level as the damaged metal described.
- The hydraulic side-lock hooks just below the burn marks were pushed down and severely distorted in a manner unlikely to have resulted from any mechanical impact.

On a balance of probabilities Brian Braidwood has concluded that:

- The damage near the starboard visor side locks was caused by an explosion.
- The charge weight was between one and two kilograms of TNT equivalent.
- The explosive device was placed on the forward bulkhead, just above the manual side-lock recess.
- The device could easily have been placed by someone following the route taken by the crewman responsible for operating the manual side lock."

In summary the following circumstances were established:

- A fairly round damage hole in the port bulkhead of the car deck adjacent to the bow ramp.
- Split and torn metal petals around the edge of the hole.
- All of the damaged metal pushed away from the bulkhead into the car deck space.
- That any explosive device used could have been dislodged from a higher position and fallen on some bedding in the compartment next to the car deck.
- Any device used would have been surrounded by water when it exploded. These points, taken together, suggest that a small explosion occurred on the far side of the bulkhead with the seat of the explosion being in the centre of the damage hole.

On a balance of probabilities, Brian Braidwood has concluded that:

- The damage in the car deck port side forward was caused by an explosion.
- The charge weight was between one and two kilograms of TNT equivalent.
- The explosive device was placed inside the space used to give access to the visor side locks.
- The device could easily have been placed by someone following the route taken by the crewman responsible for securing the manual side locks.
- The seat of the explosion was just above deck level as if the device had been resting on something, perhaps a pile of blankets, before it went off.
- The device may be have been placed on the forward bulkhead like the one on the starboard side, and been knocked off to fall onto some bedding before it exploded."

Seems to be the claims.

And this link has images of some of the alleged explosion areas. https://www.estoniaferrydisaster.net/estonia final report/32.2.htm
 
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