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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Vixen said:
Let's compare and contrast to a similar accident with the Herald of Free Enterprise some eight years before. What do the eye witness survivors say there?

Simon Osborne, BBC News


Simon Osborne mentions a 'violent jolt, terrible unbelievable noise, metallic grinding, breaking glass].

Soldier Jim Garvey:

Herald of Free Enterprise - Great Disasters

The Herald of Free Enterprise is pretty much identical to the Estonia in that its car deck was flooded with water, after a boatswain went to sleep in his cabin without checking the car ramp was locked.

I looked for an account that mentioned the same 'bangs' and feelings of collisions but all there was were straight forward accounts of being flung across a room because of a violent list or jolt. IOW survivors were able to relate experiences consistent with sudden flooding and listing. Apart from the 'terrible noise' as reported by Osborne, this seems to refer to the sound of glass breaking and the generally melée, together with a grinding noise as the ship turned onto a bank.

Nobody mentions a 'bang' or even a series of 'bangs' as the Estonia survivors do.
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On the HOFE the bow was already open. On Estonia the visor was hammering against the hull before it fell off.
 
Vixen said:
That would be hindsight. However, if you took down witness statements immediately after the 9/11 thing happened, of course witnesses are going to report a whole range of things. If someone believed it had been a bomb going off then that is how they perceived it. I cannot understand why anybody would want to censor that account. OK so we know it was erroneous but it doesn't follow it should be binned. It may still be useful in getting an idea of what it was like for those people at ground level when the planes hit. We get an idea of the volume of sound and the visceral experience. The purpose of an eye witness is not to prove or disprove an incident. It gives us a picture in the eyewitness' own words of what he or she saw and heard.

Not sure why this bothers anyone.
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No one is trying to 'censor' anything.

People involved in 9/11 reported bombs. They said bombs and explosions.
We know there weren't any bombs.

People on the Estonia reported bangs. Not bombs or explosions.
 
Vixen said:
That would be hindsight. However, if you took down witness statements immediately after the 9/11 thing happened, of course witnesses are going to report a whole range of things. If someone believed it had been a bomb going off then that is how they perceived it. I cannot understand why anybody would want to censor that account. OK so we know it was erroneous but it doesn't follow it should be binned. It may still be useful in getting an idea of what it was like for those people at ground level when the planes hit. We get an idea of the volume of sound and the visceral experience. The purpose of an eye witness is not to prove or disprove an incident. It gives us a picture in the eyewitness' own words of what he or she saw and heard.

Not sure why this bothers anyone.
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Yes, you really put all the people wanting to censor witness testimony in their place.

Um, who are these people again?

Oh, yeah, I remember. It's all of us who say that there were bangs reported, but no one claimed to have heard explosions[1]. We say that because that's the evidence of testimony we have. I mean, if that's not censorship, then I don't know what is.

The opposite of censorship is, of course, encouraging everyone to read "explosion" whenever they see "bang".

[1] One person said the noise she heard sounded like an explosion.
 
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Vixen said:
A 'bang' can mean almost anything but usually refers to a sudden alarming sound.
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Exactly. Which is why you should not automatically equate any "sudden alarming sound" with an explosion or a collision. Many "bangs" aren't explosions, and any attempt to infer the latter from a witness' testimony to the former is putting words (and meanings) in their mouths.

Several witnesses, from the ones you have cited, did not suggest that they heard explosions; only one did. One is not several.
 
Vixen said:
A 'bang' can mean almost anything but usually refers to a sudden alarming sound.
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You specifically said that multiple witnesses reported hearing explosions.

Are you now admitting that they didn't actually report hearing explosions, but bangs, cracks, crashes, etc. and only one actually reported hearing something that sounded like an explosion?

I'm not interesting in reading you ramble on about something else, I want to know if you will admit you were wrong that multiple survivors on the Estonia actually said they heard explosions.
 
Vixen said:
Let's compare and contrast to a similar accident with the Herald of Free Enterprise some eight years before. What do the eye witness survivors say there?

Simon Osborne, BBC News


Simon Osborne mentions a 'violent jolt, terrible unbelievable noise, metallic grinding, breaking glass].

Soldier Jim Garvey:

Herald of Free Enterprise - Great Disasters

The Herald of Free Enterprise is pretty much identical to the Estonia in that its car deck was flooded with water, after a boatswain went to sleep in his cabin without checking the car ramp was locked.

I looked for an account that mentioned the same 'bangs' and feelings of collisions but all there was were straight forward accounts of being flung across a room because of a violent list or jolt. IOW survivors were able to relate experiences consistent with sudden flooding and listing. Apart from the 'terrible noise' as reported by Osborne, this seems to refer to the sound of glass breaking and the generally melée, together with a grinding noise as the ship turned onto a bank.

Nobody mentions a 'bang' or even a series of 'bangs' as the Estonia survivors do.
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You're not seriously comparing a ship which SANK IN THE HARBOR to a ship that sank in a storm.

Wait, you are.

giphy.gif
 
Axxman300 said:
I'm not sure how we live in a world where this is common:

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/kH4nkDKogsbMk/giphy-downsized-large.gif?cid=ecf05e477mej0tqs8p5vqa1tnrlb4sg3v0kfcw8zjyou0znx&rid=giphy-downsized-large.gif&ct=g[/qimg]

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/l0MYEUCVuQSNnvYxW/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47sufyascp1a9tumrvzh4ogjuslohwhgfas9nvqmd3&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g[/qimg]

...but someone wants to argue bombs or submarines.
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Well it's "basic physics" that a ship cannot sink underwater unless its hull is breached. So it must have been a submarine...
 
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Vixen said:
That would be hindsight. However, if you took down witness statements immediately after the 9/11 thing happened, of course witnesses are going to report a whole range of things. If someone believed it had been a bomb going off then that is how they perceived it.
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Right. So? Perception does not always equal reality.


Vixen said:
I cannot understand why anybody would want to censor that account.
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Who do you imagine is suggesting it should be censored?

Not being useful enough to bother following up on =/= censorship. If someone who was a building demolitions expert was in the towers and said it sounded like explosions then maybe that should be looked into (maybe) but some uninformed Joe Bloggs? No.

Remember this isn't even at the level of the statements you are talking about. No one in those statements claimed that it was an explosion or explosions they heard. One person opined it sounded LIKE an explosion. Do you really think that it worth investigating if there was an explosion?


Vixen said:
OK so we know it was erroneous but it doesn't follow it should be binned.
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It should not be used to try and determine if explosives were used, however. That is what people are objecting to.

Vixen said:
It may still be useful in getting an idea of what it was like for those people at ground level when the planes hit. We get an idea of the volume of sound and the visceral experience. The purpose of an eye witness is not to prove or disprove an incident. It gives us a picture in the eyewitness' own words of what he or she saw and heard.

Not sure why this bothers anyone.
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It doesn't, it's your transparent attempts to crowbar one or more of your ridiculous theories into the imagined gap those statements leave that is objectionable.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
By all accounts being aboard a Battleship shooting a full broadside from the main guns is a similar experience.
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my father told stories about stuffing his ears with cotton and then having to go to sick bay to get the cotton removed because it had been pounded into his ears

Sent from my SM-G981V using Tapatalk
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Right. So? Perception does not always equal reality.



Who do you imagine is suggesting it should be censored?

Not being useful enough to bother following up on =/= censorship. If someone who was a building demolitions expert was in the towers and said it sounded like explosions then maybe that should be looked into (maybe) but some uninformed Joe Bloggs? No.

Remember this isn't even at the level of the statements you are talking about. No one in those statements claimed that it was an explosion or explosions they heard. One person opined it sounded LIKE an explosion. Do you really think that it worth investigating if there was an explosion?




It should not be used to try and determine if explosives were used, however. That is what people are objecting to.


It doesn't, it's your transparent attempts to crowbar one or more of your ridiculous theories into the imagined gap those statements leave that is objectionable.
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Really? Quote from explosives experts:

The explosion theory of German investigative journalist Jutta Rabe is presented in her book Estonia: Tragedy in the Baltic Sea (2002). Rabe talks with some explosion experts (Brian Braidwood [member of the German expert group], Michael Fellows [AgnEF conference expert in May 2000] and Dr. Michael Edwards [Cranfield Military Academy] and Dr. Martin “The surviving passengers have unanimously reported two or three bangs they had heard at small intervals. All crashes were observed at the bow of the ship. - I'm assuming it was explosions. - I assume that a few explosive charges were placed in the side locks and the front bulkhead and at least one explosive charge on the car deck and on the front right side. Since the bangs happened shortly before 1 a.m., I conclude that all of the explosive charges were actually supposed to explode at the same time. The heavy vibrations and vibrations that followed the explosions, which were observable throughout the ship and which the survivors likewise unanimously describe, suggest, in my view, the typical setback that is characteristic of explosions. As a result of the frontal explosions in the bow visor, it broke, but only at a very late stage was it completely torn off. I further assume that the explosion on the car deck caused damage to the hull of the front of the ship above and directly below the waterline. This allowed the water to flood the lower decks, and in this way the air escaped naturally. The ship was able to sink in a short time. - Only on the basis of the type and intensity of the structural changes in the metal can it be assumed that the explosive was not in direct contact with the metal of the ship, ie there must have been something between them. According to experts, this is any substance that compresses and provides attenuation, such as sand, textiles, wood, plastic or air. - Unfortunately, no unambiguous conclusions can be drawn from the metal analyzes on the explosive used. (…) ”
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Now, I neither believe nor disbelieve Jutta Rabe or Brian Braidwood. However, for you and others to claim the explosion claim is unfounded despite the statements of survivor witnesses, the devices - if there were devices - timed to go off at the stroke of midnight, in international waters, with the VHF channel 16 jammed preventing proper May Day communications and the entire radio network down during the exact time of the accident 1:02 to 1:58 (Eastern European Time: 12:02 - 12:58 Swedish time) and with the chief of the Finnish Coastguards, Heimo Iivainon (sp?) confirming he believed there was a transmitter from the Russian military base at Hoagland Island deliberately jamming signals continuously, indicates people are more interested in ridiculing the reports for the sheer sake of it, not because there is anything intellectually wrong with the discussion.

No, you don't need to be a buildings demolition expert to qualify as an eye witness for the 9/11 event - or any other disaster - if you happened to be there when it happened. Eyewitnesses tend to be random members of the public, dispassionate and impartial and are rightly considered to be of great value to police and law courts.
 
Vixen said:
Really? Quote from explosives experts:



Now, I neither believe nor disbelieve Jutta Rabe or Brian Braidwood. However, for you and others to claim the explosion claim is unfounded despite the statements of survivor witnesses, the devices - if there were devices - timed to go off at the stroke of midnight, in international waters, with the VHF channel 16 jammed preventing proper May Day communications and the entire radio network down during the exact time of the accident 1:02 to 1:58 (Eastern European Time: 12:02 - 12:58 Swedish time) and with the chief of the Finnish Coastguards, Heimo Iivainon (sp?) confirming he believed there was a transmitter from the Russian military base at Hoagland Island deliberately jamming signals continuously, indicates people are more interested in ridiculing the reports for the sheer sake of it, not because there is anything intellectually wrong with the discussion.

No, you don't need to be a buildings demolition expert to qualify as an eye witness for the 9/11 event - or any other disaster - if you happened to be there when it happened. Eyewitnesses tend to be random members of the public, dispassionate and impartial and are rightly considered to be of great value to police and law courts.
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You are ignoring the very real issue under discussion. You have no clear statements from witnesses supporting the claim that there was an explosion. You have one person (who I mistakenly referred to as "she" previously -- it is Altti Hakanpää, a man) who said "I thought it sounded like an explosion." Otherwise absolutely no mention of explosions.

So, no, there is no significant eyewitness evidence of explosions, though there's lot of eyewitness evidence of various sorts of loud noises.

In short, at this point, you cannot be said to be mistaken. You are flat out lying about the eyewitness evidence.

I leave the rest of your comments to others.
 
Bad Guy #1: We will blow the hood off with shape charges.
Bad Guy #2: Great, I'll go down, wire them up, and blow it.
Bad Guy #1: No, no, it has to look like an accident. You'll have to use a timer?
Bad Guy #2: Seriously, in this weather?
Bad Guy#1: Yes, a timer.
Bad Guy#2 : [shrugs] Okay, lucky I brought one. What time should I set?
Bad Guy#1: After midnight, I'm a Clapton fan.
Bad Guy#2: Okay, the hood gets blown off at midnight.
Bad Guy#1: No, no, you have to blow it in sequence to make it looked like the bow failed.

Bad Guy#2: You're an idiot. I quit.
 
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