The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Axxman300]

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Divers didn't report crack on starboard hull in 1994.

A single diver reported the crack in the hull in 1999

The crack is photographed in 2020 during an expedition which also reveals the Estonia's list had increased over the years on the bottom.

Preliminary 2021 investigation confirms existence of crack in hull, and reports the bow ramp fell off. A survey of the seabed geology reveals hard granite under a thin layer of soft clay.

From there this thread is divided into two schools of thought:

1. The crack in the hull was caused after Estonia had sank and impacted the bottom, divers didn't report the crack because it was not visible due to the angle in which she lay in 1994. As the wreck shifted a diver was able to see the crack in 1999. While the crack will not be investigated until summer, 2022, the current survey suggests the damage is due ti the considerable force of the Estonia coming to rest on her side based on the fact that the crack follows the seems of the hull plating.

2. Terrorist KGB agents, working with a secret submarine, hijacked the Estonia and sank her because reasons.

 

[Kid Eager]

I aready have then three different editions from the 60s 70s and 80s

Mine were issued in the 70's, although they may have been hanging around in naval stores for a while...

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Read what the JAIC has to say:


It is clear it has Y74 (Moberg) arriving about an hour after Y64 (Svensson) to Heap Big Confusion with Y64 flailing around in the water with Y74 needing to rescue him. Then Y74 gets injured, and Y64's rescuemen have to take over from Y74. So, when the JAIC continues to talk about Y74, it is actually referring to Y64 (see aforementioned) and then astonishingly, this Y74 (actually Y64, according to JAIC) also has to come to the rescue of a Y69. So here we have Y64 rescuing six people plus one (alive) and two (dead) of his own, depending on whether one counts the dead = 9 people rescued by Y64, which is conflated as six of them actually being Y74's rescue, albeit his being injured and unable to do anything more.

None of this seems clear or presumable to me at all. You're just making stuff up. And even then it doesn't work. Y 64 brought back one survivor and no bodies. Y74 brought back six survivors and five bodies, not just two, so your numbers still don't work even with this made-up scenario.

Also, since these people are all counted in the JAIC, they aren't "deleted."

You had originally tried to suggest that the JAIC report only credited Svensson with one rescue, while early news reports credited him with pulling "eight human beings up from the sea". This was wrong: the JAIC credits Svensson with pulling eight human beings up from the sea as well. Seven of them made it alive onto helicopters, according to both reports. So there's no shortfall of survivors here. They must lie elsewhere.

Y74 (under Y64, Svensson) then takes the bodies at least to Uto (and presumably the nine survivors - credited to Y74 Moberg instead - to Berga in Sweden.

Why is this presumable? Also, the JAIC does not credit the rescue of any survivors to Moberg. The only living person he recovers in the JAIC report is Svensson.

Very cleverly done to obfuscate that Y64 - according to Aftonbladet - rescued eight people of his own accord long before eight minutes to six in the morning.

Or: the Aftonbladet simply got the sequence of events wrong. It was, after all, a human interest article, not some sort of forensic reconstruction.

The way the JAIC does it means both Moberg and Svensson get to be credited with eight or nine survivors whilst deleting at a stroke nine 'survivors' which had been listed but were now deleted.

No, it doesn't. Moberg isn't credited in the JAIC report with rescuing any survivors, only Svensson is. Svensson is credited with rescuing seven survivors and one man who didn't eventually survive due to mishaps during his attempted rescue. That's all "eight human beings" mentioned in the Aftonbladet present and accounted for.

The JAIC makes no attempt to explain how nine to eleven people got listed as survivors - and not just by ships' officers but by hospitals, police, the Red Cross Crisis Point and the Estonian Embassy in Stockholm but then were written off.

Why would they? SNAFUs in reporting of survivors weren't their focus. Also, even if there were extra survivors, they aren't going to show up on Y 64 and/or Y 74, no matter how much you massage the story.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Still unresponsive. I didn't ask you about what the JAIC report has to say; I asked you about what your Aftonblad article says.

Please show where Aftonbladet claims that Svensson saved nine people just after two.
Please show where it states that Moberg saved between six and eight people between 4 and 5.
Please show where Aftonbladet states that Svensson airlifted anybody from Uto to Turku (or indeed that Svensson airlifted anybody).

Failing that, show from where else you got that information.


ETA: In an earlier draft of the above list, I had asked where the article says anything about survivors being evacuated to Huddinge, but I realized that it does report that, so I deleted it.



What I'm hearing is: "I don't have any documentary support for the claims in question."

Also, did you really get the information from Aftonbladet, or did you get it from this guy?

 

[Vixen]

You can call it a "descriptive narrative" all you want, but that does not change its essential nature. If he notes that the damage matches a thing nearby, how does that fail to suggest a plot point in which the nearby thing caused the damage? Further, you specifically cited Arikas to support a hypothesis of a surface collision. It is disingenuous to cite a source in support of a hypothetical plot point in your favor, and then deny to your critics the ability to cite the same evidence in favor of a different plot point.

Arikas clearly states that as well as deformations caused by shifts and geological matches (wear and tear), there is also a large deformation on the starboard side which must have been caused by an enormous force. This is obviously over and beyond 'matching the geology'.

 

[Vixen]

Are the missing crewmen the ones that shot the captain?

What was the point of shooting him?

Was he part of the conspiracy?

Was the tattoo man one of the hijackers?

As the bodies unusually were never recovered we may never know who exactly is down there. However, as well as initial Swedish Navy teams, there was a Swedish government sponsored outsource team of divers - Rockwater - who extensively filmed many many hours of footage. There were three teams of divers who of course reported back ont he bodies they had seen. Just because the JAIC doesn't mention them, it doesn't mean the divers did not see them. In fact iirc they reported seeing circa 152. They specifically noted the bodies on the bridge, of which there were three, identified as Kaunasaar (second mate), another officer (not Tammes) and the body trapped under a cabinet with a tattooed hand, which doesn't match any description provided by the deceaseds' relatives of their loved ones. Tammes' body was recovered from the water so it was not him.

In the Rockwater footage someone believed to be Simm - who was jailed ten years for high treason in 1996, when it came to light he was seliing Estonian and EU secrets to the Russians (this is fact, not conspiracy theory) - was on the platform instructing the divers, but his voice is muted out in which he is instructing divers to visit what would have been Captain Piht's cabin and to also look for a passenger with an attaché case locked onto his wrist. The attaché case was found and passed up. We are not told what was found in Piht's cabin or why they searched the cabin of Russian survivors family Voronin. (Voronin was massively obese yet he and his family managed to escape readily. He ran an arms trading business.) They claim is that a number was juxtaposed when they sought Piht's cabin and accidentally searched Voronin's instead, where they found the attaché case.

These are all weird facts that the JAIC never investigated, sticking religiously to former PM Carl Bildt's 'suggestion; the entire accident was not the fault of anybody but just due to a poor design of the visor bolts.

I don't know about you but I think the JAIC should have started off with a tabula rasa null hypothesis and not a foregone conclusion.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Mine were issued in the 70's, although they may have been hanging around in naval stores for a while...

I have an old set of RN navigation manuals too. Interesting reading but the bits on buoyage and 'rules of the road' are redundant.

 

[Andy_Ross]

What do fat Russian survivors have to do wit it?
Are you suggesting he was involved somehow and had foreknowledge so was a ble to get off the ship?

Did he plant the bombs?

Man with the tat could be anyone of dozens of crew members.
A bridge crew at night in a storm will have extra members to act as lookouts.
If there is a problem aboard then you would expect people to be coming and going from the bridge.
Who do you think the man was? a bomber? an assassin?

 

[Vixen]

What do fat Russian survivors have to do wit it?
Are you suggesting he was involved somehow and had foreknowledge so was a ble to get off the ship?

Did he plant the bombs?

Man with the tat could be anyone of dozens of crew members.
A bridge crew at night in a storm will have extra members to act as lookouts.
If there is a problem aboard then you would expect people to be coming and going from the bridge.
Who do you think the man was? a bomber? an assassin?

I have no opinion on this. The point being made is that it should have been ascertained by the JAIC who was on the bridge and who was controlling the ship timeline by timeline. The JAIC heavy reliance on the third engineer, an able seaman and a trainee boatswain is questionable, especially as they had to be interviewed six or seven times over three years until their accounts tallied and each were able to say, 'I saw the bow visor was missing'. Now that does smack of Dr Loftus' theory of false memory.

 

[Andy_Ross]

So if you have no opinion why are the bodies on the bridge important?

 

[Vixen]

Also, did you really get the information from Aftonbladet, or did you get it from this guy?

First of all, that writer gets the date of the Rome Treaty (Criminal Law) wrong. It should read 1988 not 1998.

You should note that it was a whistleblower - chief of his department - who revealed the cargo plane receipts for the relevant dates on which he believed the nine passengers were shipped out to the Netherlands and the USA.

It was a customs officer who came forward about the covert smuggling of FSU arms and electronics. All named people who came out as a matter of ethics and principles.

 

[Andy_Ross]

What do cargo planes have to do with missing passengers?

Why would they be on cargo planes?

 

[Vixen]

So if you have no opinion why are the bodies on the bridge important?

There is a sudden accident in which 900 people die immediately and a boat sinks within half an hour to the sea bed.

You are appointed accident investigator.

Don't you want to understand who is who before you proceed, together with the all-important timeline and personae dramatis?

 

[Vixen]

What do cargo planes have to do with missing passengers?

Why would they be on cargo planes?

These were planes reserved to transport the covert FSU defence and space secrets out, I presume.

Jutta Rabe claims she has proof these were ordered by Israel via the CIA.

 

[Andy_Ross]

There is a sudden accident in which 900 people die immediately and a boat sinks within half an hour to the sea bed.

You are appointed accident investigator.

Don't you want to understand who is who before you proceed, together with the all-important timeline and personae dramatis?

So you do have an opinion?

 

[Andy_Ross]

These were planes reserved to transport the covert FSU defence and space secrets out, I presume.

Jutta Rabe claims she has proof these were ordered by Israel via the CIA.

Israel is involved now?

The conspiracy grows again.

Why would the CIA not just send them out on one of their own aircraft?
Did they go to the USA or Netherlands?

What do they have to do with the supposedly missing passengers?

If someone has proof why not publish it?

What is there to show any involvement at all?

 

[Vixen]

So if you have no opinion why are the bodies on the bridge important?

The point being made is that it was considered imperative to search Captain Piht's cabin and obtain an attaché case, yet no attempt was made to try to identify the bodies on the bridge.

As accident investigators, you would think the JAIC would want to identify who exactly the 'driver of the vessel' was. and whether Captain Andresson did indeed go down with the ship, or even whether Captain Piht did.

 

[Kid Eager]

There is a sudden accident in which 900 people die immediately and a boat sinks within half an hour to the sea bed.

You are appointed accident investigator.

Don't you want to understand who is who before you proceed, together with the all-important timeline and personae dramatis?

Is it your belief that the above is the order in which things are done to investigate an accident?

 

[Vixen]

Israel is involved now?

The conspiracy grows again.

Why would the CIA not just send them out on one of their own aircraft?
Did they go to the USA or Netherlands?

What do they have to do with the supposedly missing passengers?

If someone has proof why not publish it?

What is there to show any involvement at all?

If you want to travel to the USA from Europe it is quite normal to fly to key airports, such as Schipol, Frankfurt or Heathrow in order to do so.

If the stuff is smuggled out of course you would use a private aircraft.

 

[Vixen]

Is it your belief that the above is the order in which things are done to investigate an accident?

You would certainly identify 'the driver'.

My car rescue service magazine Autoliitto regularly publishes the intricate details of the latest fatal car accidents in Finland -in the interests of safer driving - and it always makes clear who the driver was, per age and gender (privacy laws prevent further identification). How can you begin to understand an accident if you don't even know who was at the wheel or even attempt to ascertain this key fact?