The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part II

[JesseCuster]

I have always held that my default position is that things happen because of 'cock up' rather than evil intent.

But in the case of the Estonia, your position is that it was evil intent, you have made it clear that you think the sinking of the Estonia was obviously an act of sabotage.

So this statement is entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... At least his opinion was honestly held.

You don't know that.

 

[Vixen]

Here:

If you want to count yourself in as one of those persons, that is up to you. Nobody named you or anybody else personally.


Some people take everything as 'the natural order of things' others have better understanding of social constructs and how beliefs come about.

A thing is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.

 

[Vixen]

But in the case of the Estonia, your position is that it was evil intent, you have made it clear that you think the sinking of the Estonia was obviously an act of sabotage.

So this statement is entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing.

The act of timed explosives is clearly sabotage. The issue of the starboard collision - as it very possibly was - could either be a deliberate ram by, submarine, torpedo head or placed mine to make absolutely sure the vessel would sink as quickly as possible with no hope of rescue (an extremely aggressive act) or as I say, an accidental bump thanks to the unexpected explosives going off at the bow, if there was such an event.

Whichever way one looks at it , it is a highly suspicious 'accident' given the timing, the location and the passenger survivor accounts and Sweden's breakneck speed in rushing to claim it was nobody's fault.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

• it sank super fast
• survivors independently of each other related bangs going off at Swedsih midnight - indicating a timed device

• it sank slower than the HOFE
• survivors independently of each other related bangs going off at Swedsih midnight - indicating a timed device if you imagine you're in a movie where timing devices look like alarm clocks and always go off at the stroke of midnight. Or in this case midnight-ish, and then continue for about 15 minutes more.

 

[phiwum]

survivors independently of each other related bangs going off at Swedsih midnight - indicating a timed device

You know, an accident has equal likelihood of occurring at
midnight as at any other time, right? This is just crap evidence. There's no reason to think that natural events are unlikely to occur at midnight nor that timed devices are more likely to be set to go off at midnight.

For that matter, how precise were the recollections? Did they say the event noticed was right at midnight? (And if they did, were their watches well-calibrated?)

This is really a crap reason.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, I didn't say the divers faked any damage. Think about it. One of the biggest civilian maritime accidents of all time. PM Aho and PM Laar had no problem remembering how they found out about it and by whom. Bildt, when asked the same question at the time, replied 'I don't remember'.

Of course he remembers! It was his leaving do. He was called aside in the middle of it. Bildt just didn't want to reveal a highly significant fact: that he was likely informed immediately by his intelligence agents. Having decided very early on the whole thing was to be 'classified' the cover up started from Time Zero.

Who believes Bildt forgets who informed him and when?

Bildt did not interview any survivors until late afternoon 28 Sept 1994 the same day of the accident and that was Sillaste, together with Aho and Laar and the police. Laar confirmed Sillaste never mentioned the bow visor in that interview.

If you look at the JAIC report you'll see the other crew were not interviewed until 29 Sept 1994.

Bildt made the bow visor announcement as per press conference with the Swedish press at circa 4:00pm 28 Sept 1994 when nobody could possibly have known this for sure...unless they had military/intelligence personnel who were there at the time or ... actually carried it out.

This is ridiculous - and (of course) totally unsubstantiated by, y'know, evidence - conspiracy-theory bollocks.

I realise you don't want to believe that there are obviously feasible ways in which Bildt could have learned within that timeframe about the bow visor/ramp being the cause of the disaster - without needing to resort to this sort of desperate black-ops nonsense. What interests me though is why you don't want to believe it.


And let's go back, once again, to the physical evidence we do have (together with the evidence that is clearly lacking):

We have a bow visor which was found some way away from the ship (further back in its direction of travel), and which showed unmistakeable signs of having sheared off at one fixing point due to metal fatigue.

We have extensive damage to the bow ramp, which could clearly be demonstrated to have been caused by the bow visor when it (the bow visor) finally ripped itself free from the ship

We don't have any evidence whatsoever of explosive detonation.

We don't have any evidence whatsoever of a collision at the surface by any kind of object in the water (whether a submarine, a ship, or anything else).

We have the knowledge and experience to understand that the evidence provided by the bow visor and bow ramp - together with the knowledge that the ship continued sailing at a brisk speed until it literally began to sink - indicate that a massive volume/mass of seawater must have been able to enter the vehicle deck via the now-compromised bow of the ship, and we know that this, all by itself, would have easily been sufficient to cause the ship to sink.


As the saying goes: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..........

 

[JesseCuster]

What good is that? If someone attacks your protected vessel carrying ultra sensitive cargo, how will tracking by radar ensure its safety?

Are you suggesting a scenario in which there was both a hostile Russian submarine that attacked the Estonia and an escorting Swedish or British submarine that was there to defend the Estonia against exactly that kind of attack?

If that's what happened, then what did the escorting submarine actually do to defend the Estonia, and what evidence is there that an escorting submarine actually did something to defend the Estonia from the hostile Russian submarine that had just attacked the Estonia?

Sources, citations and proper references please. Just like all your other posts (haha!).

 

[Vixen]

You don't know that.

You don't know it was not. If you are claiming Johanson suggesting a mine was in bad faith, the onus is on you to provide reasoning for this view.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The act of timed explosives is clearly sabotage.

No. The timing is only suspicious in your head. There was no explosion.

The issue of the starboard collision - as it very possibly was - could either be a deliberate ram by, submarine, torpedo head or placed mine to make absolutely sure the vessel would sink as quickly as possible with no hope of rescue (an extremely aggressive act) or as I say, an accidental bump thanks to the unexpected explosives going off at the bow, if there was such an event.

There was no such event.

Whichever way one looks at it , it is a highly suspicious 'accident' given the timing, the location and the passenger survivor accounts and Sweden's breakneck speed in rushing to claim it was nobody's fault.

No. All that suspicion is in your head, and the evidence for any of it is a house of cards.

 

[Vixen]

You know, an accident has equal likelihood of occurring at
midnight as at any other time, right? This is just crap evidence. There's no reason to think that natural events are unlikely to occur at midnight nor that timed devices are more likely to be set to go off at midnight.

For that matter, how precise were the recollections? Did they say the event noticed was right at midnight? (And if they did, were their watches well-calibrated?)

This is really a crap reason.

One survivor said she knew it was midnight because her cabin mate's alarm clock went off. Michael Oun said his alram clock crashed onto the floor and the battery fell out. He stuffed it in his pocket as it was in his way as he fled and it had stopped at 1:00. This would have been the same time the ship was at the half-way point on its journey, the last point it was in international waters, the ship's watch was changing shifts, etc.

 

[phiwum]

If James Meek flew all the way to Tallinn, or his stringer on his behalf, there will also have been research assistants who automatically made their way to the British Library Newspaper Library which was then situated in Colindale and had a collection of original newspapers going back to year dot, and foreign newspapers mostly on microfiche. The place was daily jampacked with hacks doing research (often on the past foibles of celebrities in the news) or lawyers looking for trade (ambulance chasers or noting who inthe local papers was going to court, and thereby getting the office to send out fliers to the individuals named offering their services).

One can always spot the articles that are well researched. I am betting that Meek's team will almost certainly have looked up the possibility of a mine being the culprit for the shocking disaster.

Uh huh.

This article says that Estline officials think it was a mine, ergo it's well-researched and the reporter concluded the claim was plausible even though he didn't say so.

You can just tell.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

You don't know it was not. If you are claiming Johanson suggesting a mine was in bad faith, the onus is on you to provide reasoning for this view.

It doesn't matter whether I believe he was sincere or not, but the reasoning is obvious. He was motivated to want people to consider reasons for the sinking for which they had no responsibility.

You claimed he was sincere. Your turn.

 

[Vixen]

This is ridiculous - and (of course) totally unsubstantiated by, y'know, evidence - conspiracy-theory bollocks.

I realise you don't want to believe that there are obviously feasible ways in which Bildt could have learned within that timeframe about the bow visor/ramp being the cause of the disaster - without needing to resort to this sort of desperate black-ops nonsense. What interests me though is why you don't want to believe it.


And let's go back, once again, to the physical evidence we do have (together with the evidence that is clearly lacking):

We have a bow visor which was found some way away from the ship (further back in its direction of travel), and which showed unmistakeable signs of having sheared off at one fixing point due to metal fatigue.

We have extensive damage to the bow ramp, which could clearly be demonstrated to have been caused by the bow visor when it (the bow visor) finally ripped itself free from the ship

We don't have any evidence whatsoever of explosive detonation.

We don't have any evidence whatsoever of a collision at the surface by any kind of object in the water (whether a submarine, a ship, or anything else).

We have the knowledge and experience to understand that the evidence provided by the bow visor and bow ramp - together with the knowledge that the ship continued sailing at a brisk speed until it literally began to sink - indicate that a massive volume/mass of seawater must have been able to enter the vehicle deck via the now-compromised bow of the ship, and we know that this, all by itself, would have easily been sufficient to cause the ship to sink.


As the saying goes: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..........

Translated: 'This is what the JAIC report says and we must believe it blindly'.

 

[Mojo]

If you want to count yourself in as one of those persons, that is up to you. Nobody named you or anybody else personally.

It was clear from the rhetorical question tagged on the end of the post that that accusation was aimed at the posters here.

I do not consider an inability to believe six mutually exclusive things before breakfast to be a weakness.

 

[Vixen]

It doesn't matter whether I believe he was sincere or not, but the reasoning is obvious. He was motivated to want people to consider reasons for the sinking for which they had no responsibility.

You claimed he was sincere. Your turn.

No, it's your turn. Why is Johanson trying to cover his back but Carl Bildt is not? You can't make that scurrilous claim of one but not of the other.

I have provided detailed information as to why Johanson was right to believe Utö was a heavily mined area of the Baltic, where the Estonia went down. I don't see anything cynical, damage limitation or bad faith about that.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

One survivor said she knew it was midnight because her cabin mate's alarm clock went off. Michael Oun said his alram clock crashed onto the floor and the battery fell out. He stuffed it in his pocket as it was in his way as he fled and it had stopped at 1:00. This would have been the same time the ship was at the half-way point on its journey, the last point it was in international waters, the ship's watch was changing shifts, etc.

So which is it: Did your saboteur need his bomb to go off at exactly Swedish midnight to send some kind of message? Or because he couldn't adjust the timer? Or did he need the ship to founder in international waters? Or did he need the ship to get exactly halfway then sink because he was a really OCD saboteur?

If any of these was a reason then the rest are coincidences.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

No, it's your turn. Why is Johanson trying to cover his back but Carl Bildt is not? You can't make that scurrilous claim of one but not of the other.

Why does Bildt need to be covering anything? What exactly is Bildt's motive? Who was going to blame the Swedish ex-Prime Minister for the sinking of a Estonian car ferry?

 

[LondonJohn]

I have not instructed anyone we have to accept his conclusion because he is well qualified and dispassionate. We are all adults capable of making up our own minds. It was you who cast aspersions on Professor Amdahl's expertise and thus his qualifications became relevant: he is (a) an expert in marine collisions - he has investigated them first-hand, he knows what they look like; he knows how to do the calculations and (b) he has no dog in this fight: he is Norwegian and thus has no bias conscious or unconscious one way or another.

No. Amdahl's conclusions were challenged - entirely rationally and fairly - with reference to the evidence (and lack of evidence) and to the generally-understood application of science to the matter at hand. And Amdahl's conclusions were found to be significantly lacking. You might perhaps gain more insight into why that might be so by asking Amdahl himself directly.

The JAIC never even considered the possibility of a collision - despite the huge hole in the starboard - so IMV you err when you claim it did its job properly and thoroughly.

They never considered the possibility of a collision because a) there was never any credible evidence of a collision, and b) there was easily sufficient credible & reliable evidence to show that the bow visor and bow ramp had failed so catastrophically as to ensure that more than enough seawater could enter the vehicle deck to cause the ship to sink. The (stop calling it "huge") hole and deformation in the starboard hull was almost-certainly caused by the ship's impact onto rocks on the sea bed when it initially impacted after sinking; and the evidence shows that it's a near-certainty that a) this deformation/damage was not visible to those who surveyed the wreck for the official inquiry (because the ship was, at that point, still lying in the position in which it had originally impacted the sea bed) and b) the ship shifted at some point between 1994/1995 and 2019, such that the damage to the hull - and the rocks which had caused that damage - were now visible.

I don't stamp my feet because I could not care less whether people agree with me or not. Unlike you, I can accept that people disagreeing with my views is their prerogative and does not mean they should be told off and given a dressing down over all of their perceived and imagined short-comings and grilling them on whether they ever studied physics or advanced rocket science and space aerodynamics to shut them down.

Oh dear.

You seem unable to grasp the concept that if a person participates in a serious debate, and if they espouse beliefs or conclusions within that debate, then they should expect a) to face the possibility of challenges to those beliefs/conclusions, and b) to defend their beliefs/conclusions in the face of any challenges to them.

And furthermore, if a person claims that their beliefs/conclusions are justified/supported/proved by the application of science & the scientific method, they should expect to face the possibility of being challenged on their understanding of the science in question.

 

[LondonJohn]

It was a perfectly reasonable supposition at the time by Johanson of Estline. Given the sheer speed of sinking.

But it's entirely irrelevant to this debate, because a) we know for certain that the ship wasn't sunk by a mine (and even you concede this), and b) in any case there are obvious ulterior motives behind someone in his position speculating (baselessly and incorrectly) that the blame for the sinking lay somewhere other than at his door.