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

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Kurm: "Car deck doors being shut contradicts the JAIC report"

TS today reports an interview with Margus Kurm, leading the private investigation on RS Sentinel in which Kurm believes that having filmed inside the car ramp deck and found two doors completely shut and intact, then this directly contradicts the JAIC findings that the ingress of water from the bow ramp quickly led to the flooding in deck four (decks one and two of the ground level car ramp represented Decks 3 and 4 on the ship).


The color images show that the two sliding doors leading to the stairs leading up and down the car deck are closed and intact.

Margus Kurm , the former prosecutor leading the investigation team, considered the finding significant. He recently commented on the research ship to Postimees that closing the doors is inconsistent with the previous official version.

One sure achievement Kurm considered was the fact that the Swedish diving robot operator Linus Andersson managed to photograph almost the entire wreck. The images are intended to be a detailed three-dimensional imaging.
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I have looked into the JAIC report. It clearly concludes that the water quickly flooded deck four (upper car deck) - NB the entire car deck is 5m high or about 16 feet - causing windows to break and thus the ship began to sink rapidly.

Had the water just remained in the car deck, it would have cause instability but wouldn't necessariy have caused the ship to sink, due to buoyancy from the lower decks. The JAIC takes it for granted that the ingress of water via the [undoubtedly] defective bow visor and car ramp flooded the entire deck four breaking the windows at the aft and thus quickly filling the air spaces that gave buoyancy to the vessel causing it to sink within minutes. It cites a long list of other bow visor deficiencies in other vessels, yet all of these other vessels had no problem reaching port for repairs and one even sailed twice more before being fixed.

Fact is, the Estonia sank within 35 minutes. Even if the windows on the other decks began to systematically break as the ship listed, it would still take a lot of time before it caused the vessel to sink as the ferry was divided into about 700 cabins and it takes time for ingressing seawater to replace the air in each one of them, separated as they are by walls from each other.

The JAIC has assumed that the water ingress via the car deck rapidly spread to other decks. However, if the doors to the car deck remained shut and intact - there were 16 of them - as Kurm now suggests, then the JAIC's assumption this water incursion led to breaking windows and rapid flooding elsewhere cannot be correct.

In any case, if that was their conclusion, should they not have tested it by sending down ROVs into the car deck. They claim they never did as the car ramp was hut with just a small space at the top but this doesn't sound likely to me, as the Rockwater divers drilled a couple of square panels in the hull in order to gain access to the vessel and thus could have got in by that means. In addition, the divers report they had to break the bridge window to get in so how likely were the windows smashed, given windows on vessels tend to be reinforced glass and ultra thick?


From the JAIC Reporrt [excerpts] re Ingress of water via the car deck


12.6.1

Even though the list developed rapidly; the water on the car deck would not alone be sufficient to make the ship capsize and lose its survivability. As long as the hull was intact and watertight below and above the car deck, the residual stability with water on the car deck would not have been significantly changed at large heel angles. The capsize could only have been completed through water entering other areas of the vessel.

According to the hydrostatic calculations, a continuously increasing amount of water on the car deck would make the aft windows of deck 4 the first possible flooding point to other areas. Soon thereafter the windows and the aft entrance doors of deck 5 would also be submerged. A little less than 2,000 t of water on the car deck would be sufficient to bring the first flooding points down to the mean water surface. In this condition the list would be about 35° . The lowest corner of the ramp opening would here be still a little above the mean water surface.


As soon as water was free to enter the accommodation decks all residual stability would be impaired and the ship in practice lost. Without an intact superstructure above deck 4, the largest possible equilibrium heel angle before a complete capsize would be 40° . This condition would be exceeded with about 2,000 t of water on the car deck.
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- this assumes water flooded out of the car deck to the accommodation decks ceteris paribus, i.e. the hull and all other parts intact as of this point.

The physics:

12.6.2
During the first phase of the accident, the ESTONIA is assumed to have been sailing at a speed of about 14 knots into bow-incoming waves with a significant wave height of about 4 m. The average water inflow at the instant when the ramp was torn fully open has been calculated to be in the range of 300-600 t/min depending on what assumption is made regarding forward freeboard in running condition. This means that within just one or a few minutes a heel angle of about 20° could possibly have developed.
The speed of the vessel greatly influences the inflow rate. If the speed is reduced from 15 to 10 knots, the inflow rate in head and bow seas decreases by about 50 %. This effect is due partly to reduced inflow velocity and partly to reduced bow wave height.

The amount of water on the car deck also affects the inflow rate. When the ship heels over, the freeboard to the ramp opening decreases and the inflow accelerates. To some extent this effect is contradicted by changed motion characteristics in heeled condition. The separate studies produced some differences regarding the motion characteristics and the results diverged with respect to heel angles; however, the inflow rate is generally 2-3 times larger than the initial upright condition when 1,800 t has entered the car deck and the heel is around 35° .
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All well and good, the water flooding into the vessel and at what rate, but does it explain the core cause of flooding?

The JAIC's description of the flooding

13.2.6
While the ramp was partly open in- side the visor, water entered the car deck along the sides of the ramp, as observed first by the third engineer at 0110- 0115 hrs on the TV monitor showing the forward part of the car deck. The water noted by the first passengers fleeing from their cabins on deck 1 could at this stage have poured down to the accommodation on deck 1. Later, during the evacuation, several passengers observed on deck 2 that water entered the staircases through the slots around the fire doors to the car deck.
After the main engines stopped, the ESTONIA drifted with a list of about 40 degrees and the starboard side towards the waves. Water continued to enter the car deck through the bow but at a significantly lower rate. Waves were pounding against the windows on deck 4. Window panels and aft doors broke, allowing flooding of the accommodation to start. As the flooding progressed, the list and the trim by the stern increased and the vessel started to sink.

13.6
The speed of flooding, however, depended on the size of the openings to the sea and on the escape of air from inside the. hull regarding Which there are several witness observations. Calculations indicate - as an example - that 18,000 tons of water on board, distributed between the car deck and decks 4 and 5, would have given a heel angle of about 75 degrees. This amount of water had entered the vessel in about 15 minutes, indicating an average flow rate of 20 tons per second. This is feasible through openings which have a total area of 5-10 m2. Progressive flooding was under way to several decks and compartments at the same time as the upper decks gradually sank under the mean water level.


However, it has to assume a broken window to conclude the rapid sinking. The car deck doesn't have windows, so it is assumed the water breached the car deck so violent as to smash windows in the accommodation areas.

If the windows and doors had remained unbroken the vessel may have remained in a stable heel condition for some time. It is, however, less likely that any reasonable strength of the large windows would have been adequate to with- stand the wave impact forces.

It can be concluded that, although the vessel fulfilled the SOLAS damage stability requirements valid for its building period, she had no possibilities to withstand progressive flooding through the superstructure openings once the heel angle approached 40o. When windows on the accommodation decks were broken by wave forces, subsequent sinking was inevitable.
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However, it never ascertained whether these windows were actually broken. If so, why would the divers need to use cutters to enter the vessel or need to cut the windows out of the bridge to get in? These windows simply do not 'smash' like ordinary glass.

The JAIC from these assumptions - which could be erroneous if the water never breached the car deck doors as violently as claimed:

Chapter 21: Conclusions
Capsize
• The ESTONIA capsized due to large amounts of water entering the car deck,1oss of stability and subsequent flooding of the accommodation decks.
• The full-width open car deck contributed to the rapid increase in the list. The turn to port - exposing first the open bow and later the listed side to the waves - shortened the time until the first windows and doors broke, which led to progressive flooding and sinking. The design arrangement of bow ramp engaging with visor through the boxlike housing had crucial consequences for the development of the accident.
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But what if the car deck doors remained shut and intact as Kurm's investigations seem to suggest? That surely renders the JAIC's assumptions and findings misconceived.
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Vixen said:
If the bow visor was banging about it would be impacting the lower bow area, would it not, below the car ramp, thus below the waterline. See blue area in pic.
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Why when it was pivoting from the top and the bulb is ahead of it?
 
Vixen said:
TS today reports an interview with Margus Kurm, leading the private investigation on RS Sentinel in which Kurm believes that having filmed inside the car ramp deck and found two doors completely shut and intact, then this directly contradicts the JAIC findings that the ingress of water from the bow ramp quickly led to the flooding in deck four (decks one and two of the ground level car ramp represented Decks 3 and 4 on the ship).





I have looked into the JAIC report. It clearly concludes that the water quickly flooded deck four (upper car deck) - NB the entire car deck is 5m high or about 16 feet - causing windows to break and thus the ship began to sink rapidly.

Had the water just remained in the car deck, it would have cause instability but wouldn't necessariy have caused the ship to sink, due to buoyancy from the lower decks. The JAIC takes it for granted that the ingress of water via the [undoubtedly] defective bow visor and car ramp flooded the entire deck four breaking the windows at the aft and thus quickly filling the air spaces that gave buoyancy to the vessel causing it to sink within minutes. It cites a long list of other bow visor deficiencies in other vessels, yet all of these other vessels had no problem reaching port for repairs and one even sailed twice more before being fixed.

Fact is, the Estonia sank within 35 minutes. Even if the windows on the other decks began to systematically break as the ship listed, it would still take a lot of time before it caused the vessel to sink as the ferry was divided into about 700 cabins and it takes time for ingressing seawater to replace the air in each one of them, separated as they are by walls from each other.

The JAIC has assumed that the water ingress via the car deck rapidly spread to other decks. However, if the doors to the car deck remained shut and intact - there were 16 of them - as Kurm now suggests, then the JAIC's assumption this water incursion led to breaking windows and rapid flooding elsewhere cannot be correct.

In any case, if that was their conclusion, should they not have tested it by sending down ROVs into the car deck. They claim they never did as the car ramp was hut with just a small space at the top but this doesn't sound likely to me, as the Rockwater divers drilled a couple of square panels in the hull in order to gain access to the vessel and thus could have got in by that means. In addition, the divers report they had to break the bridge window to get in so how likely were the windows smashed, given windows on vessels tend to be reinforced glass and ultra thick?


From the JAIC Reporrt [excerpts] re Ingress of water via the car deck


- this assumes water flooded out of the car deck to the accommodation decks ceteris paribus, i.e. the hull and all other parts intact as of this point.

The physics:



All well and good, the water flooding into the vessel and at what rate, but does it explain the core cause of flooding?

The JAIC's description of the flooding
13.2.6
While the ramp was partly open in- side the visor, water entered the car deck along the sides of the ramp, as observed first by the third engineer at 0110- 0115 hrs on the TV monitor showing the forward part of the car deck. The water noted by the first passengers fleeing from their cabins on deck 1 could at this stage have poured down to the accommodation on deck 1. Later, during the evacuation, several passengers observed on deck 2 that water entered the staircases through the slots around the fire doors to the car deck.
After the main engines stopped, the ESTONIA drifted with a list of about 40 degrees and the starboard side towards the waves. Water continued to enter the car deck through the bow but at a significantly lower rate. Waves were pounding against the windows on deck 4. Window panels and aft doors broke, allowing flooding of the accommodation to start. As the flooding progressed, the list and the trim by the stern increased and the vessel started to sink.

13.6
The speed of flooding, however, depended on the size of the openings to the sea and on the escape of air from inside the. hull regarding Which there are several witness observations. Calculations indicate - as an example - that 18,000 tons of water on board, distributed between the car deck and decks 4 and 5, would have given a heel angle of about 75 degrees. This amount of water had entered the vessel in about 15 minutes, indicating an average flow rate of 20 tons per second. This is feasible through openings which have a total area of 5-10 m2. Progressive flooding was under way to several decks and compartments at the same time as the upper decks gradually sank under the mean water level.


However, it has to assume a broken window to conclude the rapid sinking. The car deck doesn't have windows, so it is assumed the water breached the car deck so violent as to smash windows in the accommodation areas.



However, it never ascertained whether these windows were actually broken. If so, why would the divers need to use cutters to enter the vessel or need to cut the windows out of the bridge to get in? These windows simply do not 'smash' like ordinary glass.

The JAIC from these assumptions - which could be erroneous if the water never breached the car deck doors as violently as claimed:



But what if the car deck doors remained shut and intact as Kurm's investigations seem to suggest? That surely renders the JAIC's assumptions and findings misconceived.
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There are more than two access points to the lower decks, as well as passageways and stair wells there are huge ventilators and air intakes for the machinery spaces.

Windows are above the car deck, they would break after the ship capsized.
 
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Vixen said:
There is plenty of material at your disposal about fire and nuclear waste on the internet. For example, https://www.foe.org.au/fire
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Nothing there about how nuclear waste can "dissolve" large metal structures. You said it was "elementary chemistry" that such things were possible, and you told us you did well in chemistry at school. Therefore it shouldn't be too difficult for you to describe the substances involved in your claim and give us the elementary chemical or nuclear reaction formulas that you think govern the reactions you're claiming occurred or could have occurred.

Alternatively, this could be one of those times when your critics have amassed enough evidence that you really don't know the answer. Therefore the continued deflection and bluffing actually works against your credibility because it isn't fooling anyone. This could be one of those times when you're more credible when you admit, "I don't know the answer, and therefore I withdraw the claim."
 
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Captain_Swoop said:
Who are these people that are 'in the know'?
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SHIP RECKONING
I swam for my life in freezing seas as hundreds died in MS Estonia disaster – now I want the truth over ‘MI6 cover-up’
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12916...er-documentary-britian-spies-soviet-missiles/

The Swedish government, moreover, had hired divers from Rockwater, a British-based division of the American Halliburton group, run between 1995 and 2000 by Dick Cheney, now US vice-president. They produced 13 videotapes showing the wreck, they said, from every angle. But one angle was missing and some Swedish politicians argued that the videos had been edited. As Lennart Berglund, chairman of the Foundation of Estonia Victims and Relatives, said after Bemis’s expedition: “There’s still a lot of evidence down there. Their major argument was that there was nothing new – now there is something new.” The Baltic nations, however, remained firm in saying there would be no new inquiry.

Last November, Lennart Henriksson, a former head of customs in Stockholm, confirmed my MI6 friend’s story to Sveriges Television. The Estonia, he said, had been used for smuggling stolen Russian military equipment to the west. The shipments had been let through on orders from “the highest authorities”. He had personally witnessed two such shipments.

<snip>

The most likely explanation is that British intelligence was behind the smuggling operation, working with the Swedes, and that a mine was placed by people acting for the Russian government in an attempt to stop them. The Russian mine was designed to prevent the Estonia from completing its journey, to damage it and force it back to port. The aim was to stop the specific shipment or the smuggling operation in general – or possibly just to issue a warning to western intelligence agencies. But the operation went wrong and the mine caused more damage than was intended, possibly because of the poor state of repair of the locks on the bow door. The ship sank and 852 people died.

The British and Swedish governments were secretly using public transport to smuggle stolen Russian military equipment. Did the Russians find out about it and warn them to stop? We may never know, but it is clear that the western intelligence agencies were taking a risk by using the Estonia, in effect turning the passengers on the ferry into a form of human shield. The major signatories to the treaty – Britain, Russia and Sweden – still have every reason to want the truth about the disaster buried.
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NEW STATESMAN

And in case you are still not sure:

The television show names known MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson as confirming this story to investigative reporter Stephen Davis in 1998.

In the show, Tomlinson’s evidence is backed up by another unidentified MI6 agent, who told Davis that the ferry was carrying information about a then cutting-edge Russian ballistic missile programme.

This agent also claimed that the Russians had warned the West to end its smuggling activities or face unspecified consequences.

Paul Barney admits that he will ‘not hold my breath’ in the hope that the British Government will explain what its interests were in signing the Estonia treaty, but he believes that any cover-up could now prove difficult.

‘It does look like Estonia has a genuine interest in finding out what happened, so it seems they really want to get to the truth,’ he says.

‘As to Britain, I don’t think anyone is remotely interested. There is no political will. I have never had any official contact since the accident.’
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DAILY MAIL
 
Vixen said:
Same way phone masts triangulate, in order to pinpoint an exact location.
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Except Captain_Swoop has the right answer here. Triangulation requires the lines connecting you to two or more signal sources to be a triangle -- or rather, to exhibit a large variation in angular separation proportional to a small movement on your part. If you have three sources in a tight grouping a hundred meters away from the area of interest, you cannot use them to triangulate position near the wreck with any useful degree of accuracy. If you want to place sonar locators for use in triangulating a position while you're working near the wreck, they have to be placed in a pattern with the wreck at the center.

There's an alternative method of locating using one locator. You can use a distance-bearing method, however that requires a more sophisticated transponder in the locator and a much more sophisticated sonar transceiver on the vessel using it. Ship-mounted receivers can localize sonar pulses to within a small angle. If the ship interrogates the locator, and the locator responds, that gives you distance to the locator. The good Captain will have to correct me, but I believe the minimum distance for such a reading is about 300 meters. So now you have too many locators too close to the wreck.

As to why an expedition wouldn't pick them up again after their work is done, grabbing something off the seabed is more expensive, difficult, and dangerous than placing something on the seabed, and vastly more expensive and difficult than simply turning them off remotely and leaving them on the seafloor. Yes, it's littering, but it's not uncommon.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Windows are above the car deck, they would break after the ship capsized.
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After capsizing, which means it couldn't have caused the capsizing.

I've just noticed this:

The full-width open car deck contributed to the rapid increase in the list. The turn to port - exposing first the open bow and later the listed side to the waves - shortened the time until the first windows and doors broke, which led to progressive flooding and sinking.
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JAIC

If the winds were southwesterly with the vessel travelling near westerly forwards, thus waves almost full on to the port side of the bow, why would Captain Andresson steer the vessel headlong into the 4m waves? Was he in control fo the vessel or was it someone who had no idea what they were doing. There were four officers on the watch (or should have been): Andresson, Kaunusaar, Ainsalu and Tammes. Hard to believe they had no idea how to turn the ship away from the onslaught. Even if they were only veering to shallower waters, that would have still been towards the east (Finnish coast) and to starboard.
 
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JayUtah said:
Nothing there about how nuclear waste can "dissolve" large metal structures. You said it was "elementary chemistry" that such things were possible, and you told us you did well in chemistry at school. Therefore it shouldn't be too difficult for you to describe the substances involved in your claim and give us the elementary chemical or nuclear reaction formulas that you think govern the reactions you're claiming occurred or could have occurred.

Alternatively, this could be one of those times when your critics have amassed enough evidence that you really don't know the answer. Therefore the continued deflection and bluffing actually works against your credibility because it isn't fooling anyone. This could be one of those times when you're more credible when you admit, "I don't know the answer, and therefore I withdraw the claim."
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We were talking about Hikipedia's claim there was a fire - causing the panels on the car ramp to darken - so the crew - it claims - hastily opened the car ramp and visor in an attempt to dispose of it, whilst opening the stern ramp door slightly at the top to let the fumes out. It doesn't specify what substance the nuclear waste was but we know it is dangerous for it to catch fire.
 
Vixen said:
We were talking about Hikipedia's claim ...
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Hikipedia is a spoof site, as you've been told several times. Check out its entry for The Moon which, it tells us, is an inflated cube and has the universe revolving around it. Its ideas on Estonia offloading radioactive waste are at that level of nonsense.
 
GlennB said:
Hikipedia is a spoof site, as you've been told several times. Check out its entry for The Moon which, it tells us, is an inflated cube and has the universe revolving around it. Its ideas on Estonia offloading radioactive waste are at that level of nonsense.
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Yes, and because we know it is a satirical site, why are people insisting in having proof.
 
Vixen said:
We were talking about Hikipedia's claim there was a fire - causing the panels on the car ramp to darken - so the crew - it claims - hastily opened the car ramp and visor in an attempt to dispose of it, whilst opening the stern ramp door slightly at the top to let the fumes out. It doesn't specify what substance the nuclear waste was but we know it is dangerous for it to catch fire.
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The parody site you quoted said the crew opened the stern ramp to let out "tobacco smoke." Also in the paragraph you cited was the claim that "nuclear waste" dissolved the bow door. We'll get to the issue of the alleged fire in a minute. You're being asked right now about the "nuclear waste" claim, so please answer only that question. Do you agree or disagree that "nuclear waste" can dissolve large steel structures? Provide details to support your answer.
 
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