The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Vixen said:
Because of the type of deformation. An explosion causes a particular type of deformation in that type of metal.

Do you think forensic metallurgy laboratories don't know about shot peening or shot blasting?
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What type of deformation did they find?
 
Vixen said:
The plane was at the bottom of the Atlantic - much deeper than the Baltic by a country mile - and scattered over a wide area.

When the Ehime Maru was salvaged, just off the coast of Hawaii, what they did was simply move the wreck to more shallow waters, and then the recovery of the bodies was made much easier than having to keep diving down into very deep waters.
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It was a much smaller ship, less than 800 grt
 
Vixen said:
The plane was at the bottom of the Atlantic - much deeper than the Baltic by a country mile - and scattered over a wide area.
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It's this sort of stultifyingly ignorant and scientifically-illiterate nonsense which makes this the threat that just keeps on giving....

It's palpably ridiculous to propose - as Vixen appears to be doing here - that the Atlantic Ocean is "much deeper by a country mile" than the Baltic Sea. I'd hope the sheer wrongness of such a statement would be immediately apparent.

And for the record, TWA800 sank to around 36m. The Estonia sank to around 90m. The difference - wrt the relative ease of exploration and recovery - is actually huge. For example, someone with my scuba certification could have dived to TWA800 three times per day, and would be able to spend an average time of around 20-25 mins per dive at the wreck site. By contrast, the Estonia could only be reached by either a tech diver, high-pressure manned submersible, or ROV*. In the first of those possibilities (the only one where humans could actually touch the wreck with their (gloved) hands) the divers would only have been able to spend around 15 mins at the wreck site, and would only be able to dive once per day.


** And NB to Vixen (or nota bene :D), "ROV" stands for "Remotely Operate Vehicle". It does not, ceteris paribus, stand for anything else. Kimo sabi?
 
Vixen said:
Waves in a Beaufort scale 7 of 6 - 8 m high south westerly do not have a force of 3,000 - 5,000 mps.
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But you clearly haven't read the report you keep citing. A crew member was on the car deck a few meters from the bow and reported that the loud bang occurred as a large wave struck the front of the ship. And then water began to rush in.

I have been within 500 meters of a controlled detonation of C-4 used on an old 75mm anti-tank round. It was loud. It sounded like it was much closer making me duck to avoid debris. Again, just a layman, but I suspect explosives detonating INSIDE a ship would be noticeable to someone standing a few meters away.
 
Just to amplify on the Ehime Maru she was 741grt and 48m in length.

Estonia was 15,598grt and 157m in length.

Can you think why it may have been possible to move one and not the other?
 
Vixen said:
Bildt was told of the accident within an hour of it. He had his ready explanation within sixteen hours. Witness Mart Laar, PM of Estonia who actually questioned Sillaste on 28 Sept 1994 says Sillaste did not say the bow was missing.
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So what? Laar was a politician trying to show that he cared, not an investigator. Why would you assume he would want to interrogate a survivor of a fresh tragedy about technical details. Also, didn't you mention that they spoke in English, and that Sillaste's English was poor? So in addition to everything else, there was a language barrier to contend with. Laar's exchange with Sillaste is not the be-all end-all of his statements on the official record.
 
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Vixen said:
Waves in a Beaufort scale 7 of 6 - 8 m high south westerly do not have a force of 3,000 - 5,000 mps.
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But you have to bear in mind that the ferry was crossing the Baltic on a bearing of 14 haystacks per teaspoon.


Am I getting the physics right here?
 
Oh and it is extremely funny to see!!!



Time code 32 minutes and 20 seconds!

Well not exactly life size, more like 50%, but as far as Vixen's usual claims it is the closest to the truth up till now.
 
A poster? so no life size model?

Why is the camera wobbling all the time? are they on a ship? :sour:
 
Captain_Swoop said:
A poster? so no life size model?
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Yeah. Well.
I never said it was the whole truth of what happened, did I?
I only said it was the closest that any of their claims came to the truth. :)

Why is the camera wobbling all the time? are they on a ship? :sour:
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Hmmm.
Seeing as the 'hole' is present, I suspect, they've just been rammed by a submarine.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Just to amplify on the Ehime Maru she was 741grt and 48m in length.

Estonia was 15,598grt and 157m in length.

Can you think why it may have been possible to move one and not the other?
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And it wasn't a "simple" operation (Vixens most said "simply"), it cost around $60mil USD to drag the vessel to shallower water and dive on it. The way pacific islands work, there is usually a nice steady rising gradient between deep water and an island, since they're volcanic. The same technic may not have worked in the Baltic. Or, they may have needed to tow the ship many times further. One that weighted roughly 20 times more.
 
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erwinl said:
Oh and it is extremely funny to see!!!
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Dramatic, and completely unnecessary for engineering purposes.

Also, the professor notes the double crease in the deepest part of the indentation and says this indicates tremendous impact force. He is simply wrong. A double crease indicates the material was compressed in-plane. Indentation due to impact stretches the material in-plane, often leading to tensile failure and fracture. That's another data point in favor of a stress fracture and counterindicative of collision.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the people who examined the metal recovered from the wreck actually opined that it's distortion *could* have been the result of an explosion and ventured a range of shockwave velocities which might narrow down the type of explosive which could have done the job. I suspect they did not rule out that the distortion could also have been caused by the metal being wrenched apart by a very large applied force rather than a detonation.

Of course that's just my guess. Once the info has been filtered through Vixen we have traces of explosives, high confidence that bombs are the only explanation and unexploded ordnance littering the wreck. Oh, and a submarine which keeps popping up even though it seems to have nothing to do now, plot-wise.
 
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Bombs blew the visor off and caused the ship to veer off course and strike the escorting submarine
 
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