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

[Vixen]

And vanishingly unlikely IMV, especially if there was a crewman close to the ramp at the time. Who on earth would come up with a plot like that? They seemingly needed the ship to sink, but also needed it to look like an accident. So how big a bomb dare you use? What then were the chances the sabotage would fail, and what were the chances that survivors would report the detonation?

It's a stupid risky plan and what's the motive anyway? Do you need the Estonia to sink, or do you want to kill some individuals, or destroy some cargo? If it's cargo, how can you be certain that that particular cargo will be on that particular sailing? Why not just go after the cargo directly, or the people transporting it, instead of this elaborate high-risk sabotage?

It fails the Dr Evil test: If you brought this plot to Dr Evil your chair would tip straight back and drop you into the mutant sea bass tank. Some other henchmen would be tasked with just killing the cargo smugglers.

And look who the crew member was who made a statement he was at the car ramp at 1:00 when he heard a huge bang which caused the ship to swell up and almost knock him off his feet. This crew member changed his story many times. He was jailed a couple of years later for drug smuggling. The prosecutor wanted eleven years. Just sayin'.

 

[LondonJohn]

I pointed out that Paul Barney is convinced he saw the bow intact as it went down.

Engineers Treu and Sillaste, together with AB Seam Linde, all said the ramp was up. Two passengers appear to have described what would be the car ramp features were it up.

Personally, I believe there is no doubt at all the bow visor and ramp were in poor maintenance condition, with the door ramp held in place by mooring rope as the inner eight locks had long been dodgy and water often seeped in on the port side of the bow visor as it did not align.

When the bow visor fell off is secondary to the fact of what caused it to fall off IMV. Whether it fell off before or after the sinking is a moot point. However, I think there is clear evidence of some kind of explosive device was used at the bow.

What "clear evidence"?

I very much hope that by "clear evidence" you have something more than "an unusual and unidentified object attached to the bow, as seen on a survey of the wreck", plus evidence suggesting that parts of the bow visor may have been exposed to 1200 celsius heat at some point.

I'd hope you have (credible, reliable) evidence of explosive deformation of the bow visor and/or hull. And/or that you have evidence of the tell-tale chemical by-products of an explosive detonation present on the metal surface of the bow visor/hull.

Any of the above?



(I thought not)

 

[Vixen]

And vanishingly unlikely IMV, especially if there was a crewman close to the ramp at the time.

Who on earth would come up with a plot like that? They seemingly needed the ship to sink, but also needed it to look like an accident. So how big a bomb dare you use? What then were the chances the sabotage would fail, and what were the chances that survivors would report the detonation?

It's a stupid risky plan and what's the motive anyway? Do you need the Estonia to sink, or do you want to kill some individuals, or destroy some cargo? If it's cargo, how can you be certain that that particular cargo will be on that particular sailing? Why not just go after the cargo directly, or the people transporting it, instead of this elaborate high-risk sabotage?

It fails the Dr Evil test: If you brought this plot to Dr Evil your chair would tip straight back and drop you into the mutant sea bass tank. Some other henchmen would be tasked with just killing the cargo smugglers.

Compare and contrast to SV Wilhelm Gustloff a German ship blown up by the Soviets with military precision. Then think of the saying, 'All is fair in love and war'.

The Russians had fired two shots, as it were, across the bows of Sweden about smuggling their military and space secrets and as far as they were concerned this continued smuggling was a casus belli. That could be the motivation. And why the KSI/CIA/MI6 decided it best it made the whole thing 'classified'.

 

[LondonJohn]

And look who the crew member was who made a statement he was at the car ramp at 1:00 when he heard a huge bang which caused the ship to swell up and almost knock him off his feet. This crew member changed his story many times. He was jailed a couple of years later for drug smuggling. The prosecutor wanted eleven years. Just sayin'.

1) What reason would a person - even a drug smuggler - have for lying about what he witnessed on the night of the sinking?

2) Even if one chooses to disregard his testimony entirely (and remember, witness testimony is far from empirically infallible in any case), there's still ample physical evidence proving how and why this ship sank.

Just sayin'

 

[theprestige]

In your utterly ill educated, totally unscientific sensationalist view that is based on nothing but what you think would make for a good story.

If it actually made for a good story, that would be a redeeming quality at least.

 

[Vixen]

Well if you're convinced by that piss-poor bit of animation, I guess you also believe that the Estonia is in a museum:



And that the Titanic sank without breaking:



After all, the same youtuber animated those, so they must be true too.

I like the first video as it gives one the true scale of the size of the vessel.

 

[LondonJohn]

Compare and contrast to SV Wilhelm Gustloff a German ship blown up by the Soviets with military precision. Then think of the saying, 'All is fair in love and war'.

The Russians had fired two shots, as it were, across the bows of Sweden about smuggling their military and space secrets and as far as they were concerned this continued smuggling was a casus belli. That could be the motivation. And why the KSI/CIA/MI6 decided it best it made the whole thing 'classified'.

Hoooooooooo boy

 

[Mojo]

Compare and contrast to SV Wilhelm Gustloff a German ship blown up by the Soviets with military precision. Then think of the saying, 'All is fair in love and war'.

The Russians had fired two shots, as it were, across the bows of Sweden about smuggling their military and space secrets and as far as they were concerned this continued smuggling was a casus belli. That could be the motivation. And why the KSI/CIA/MI6 decided it best it made the whole thing 'classified'.

The point of a casus belli is that it is a justification for overt action. Have the Russians used the smuggling as justification for sinking the Estonia?

 

[Vixen]

1) What reason would a person - even a drug smuggler - have for lying about what he witnessed on the night of the sinking?

2) Even if one chooses to disregard his testimony entirely (and remember, witness testimony is far from empirically infallible in any case), there's still ample physical evidence proving how and why this ship sank.

Just sayin'

And lie, he did. And quite blatantly.

Think about it he, the fourth engineer and the motorman were in a life raft together in their survival suits at 1:24 which was... about the same time Tammes, third officer, made his May Day call. Ahem.

And what about the senior officers. They all had the posh cabins on the top deck near the front of the ship. This included Lembit Leiger, Chief Engineer, Arvo Piht, Second- Captain, Bogdanov, Chief Medical Officer, an off-duty captain travelling with his wife. These people who were in the prime position to escape were actually listed as survivors and their names appear on a pilots logbook. So suddenly they were 'disappeared'.

Anyone sniff a rat..?

So the guy in the engine room, Deck 0, Treu, third engineer, who only escaped up the funnel at 1:30 and the three or four junior crew all survived (in their survivor suits) yet their much more experienced colleagues with good access to rescue equipment all mysteriously drowned...<fx brummie accent, 'Yes, mate!'>

 

[Vixen]

The point of a casus belli is that it is a justification for overt action. Have the Russians used the smuggling as justification for sinking the Estonia?

The message clearly was not missed by the KSI and the MI6. They wanted to bury the thing in concrete and signed a Treaty making it a hands-off exclusion zone. However, being in international waters, it has no legal weight.

So the victims' loved ones were denied a decent burial and a proper investigation.

Even Hirschfedt is backpedalling to pre-empt anyone accusing him of being less than truthful in the Riksdag 2005 by saying the KSI withheld information from him.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Oh are we back to claiming that you know about Intelligence Studies? It's so good to roll out the classics again.

 

[Mojo]

The message clearly was not missed by the KSI and the MI6. They wanted to bury the thing in concrete and signed a Treaty making it a hands-off exclusion zone. However, being in international waters, it has no legal weight.

You’re begging the question again.

 

[LondonJohn]

And lie, he did. And quite blatantly.

Think about it he, the fourth engineer and the motorman were in a life raft together in their survival suits at 1:24 which was... about the same time Tammes, third officer, made his May Day call. Ahem.

And what about the senior officers. They all had the posh cabins on the top deck near the front of the ship. This included Lembit Leiger, Chief Engineer, Arvo Piht, Second- Captain, Bogdanov, Chief Medical Officer, an off-duty captain travelling with his wife. These people who were in the prime position to escape were actually listed as survivors and their names appear on a pilots logbook. So suddenly they were 'disappeared'.

Anyone sniff a rat..?

So the guy in the engine room, Deck 0, Treu, third engineer, who only escaped up the funnel at 1:30 and the three or four junior crew all survived (in their survivor suits) yet their much more experienced colleagues with good access to rescue equipment all mysteriously drowned...<fx brummie accent, 'Yes, mate!'>

None of this vindictive strangeness in any way addresses the question I actually asked: what motivation did this guy have to lie wrt what he says he witnessed? And what evidence do you have that he did lie in that regard?


ETA: and dialogue is not annotated as an effect in a screenplay/script. Just FYI.

 

[LondonJohn]

The message clearly was not missed by the KSI and the MI6. They wanted to bury the thing in concrete and signed a Treaty making it a hands-off exclusion zone. However, being in international waters, it has no legal weight.

So the victims' loved ones were denied a decent burial and a proper investigation.

No. They knew it would be difficult-to-impossible to recover most of the victims' bodies that were within the wreck, so they wanted to make sure the sanctity of the wreck was both recognised and protected in law. And you have no idea what you're talking about when you claim that the treaty has no legal weight on account of the wreck lying in international waters. You're wrong.

(And it's just "MI6". Not "the MI6". Or, if you're into the whole accuracy thing, "SIS")

 

[Vixen]

None of this vindictive strangeness in any way addresses the question I actually asked: what motivation did this guy have to lie wrt what he says he witnessed? And what evidence do you have that he did lie in that regard?


ETA: and dialogue is not annotated as an effect in a screenplay/script. Just FYI.

See EFD.

A brummie accent is.

 

[JayUtah]

A brummie accent is.

No, accents are not effects. If the character is written to have an accent, it's noted in the stage direction when the character is introduced and described. (Some screenplays have a separate page to describe the main characters, but this is rare.) If a character briefly performs an accent that is not his, as in an affectation, then it's noted in square brackets under the character's name and before the indented paragraph of dialogue.

 

[Mojo]

No, accents are not effects. If the character is written to have an accent, it's noted in the stage direction when the character is introduced and described. (Some screenplays have a separate page to describe the main characters, but this is rare.) If a character briefly performs an accent that is not his, as in an affectation, then it's noted in square brackets under the character's name and before the indented paragraph of dialogue.

Possibly Vixen is imagining a sort of Brummie Greek chorus being played as a sound effect (but would that be ‘grams’ rather than ‘fx’?).

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Come on now Jay, Vixen is an accountant and as such knows more about screenplays than you could ever do. It comes as part of being a scientist.

 

[Vixen]

No, accents are not effects. If the character is written to have an accent, it's noted in the stage direction when the character is introduced and described. (Some screenplays have a separate page to describe the main characters, but this is rare.) If a character briefly performs an accent that is not his, as in an affectation, then it's noted in square brackets under the character's name and before the indented paragraph of dialogue.

I'll bear it in mind, should I ever decide to write a screenplay.

 

[LondonJohn]

The point of a casus belli is that it is a justification for overt action. Have the Russians used the smuggling as justification for sinking the Estonia?

Not only did "the Russians" (TM) not claim responsibility for the sinking..... and not only did they (apparently) sink the ship in such a clandestine and improbable manner that they left no evidence whatsoever of their dastardly methods.......

..... but they magnificently managed to engineer things such that all the (credible, reliable) evidence pointed clearly - and solely - towards the accident having been caused by the bow visor failing due to fatigue and stress.


These GRU/FSB guys really do have a flair for this sort of stuff!