Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[LondonJohn]

Silja Europa was coordinating the rescue effort from the start.

From the report Chapter 7 section 7.4.1



Time of receipt of distress signals and method of logging by shore stations.

MRSC Turku, 0124 hrs operator radio log and recording
Turku Radio, 0125 hrs operator and radio log
MRCC Turku, 0124 hrs operator and radio log
Utö coastal fortress 0124 hrs operator and radio log
Kökar coast guard station 0124 hrs radio log

From the report section 7.4.2 Action Taken



Table 7.5 has a timeline of all the important events and their time.

https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt07_1.html#4

And that damn audio recording of the Channel-16 communications provides incontrovertible proof that 1) Silja Europa was (as you say) coordinating the rescue effort - and communicating constantly not only with all the other ships coming to Estonia's aid, but also with MRSC Turku directly; and 2) all the rescue efforts - including the dispatching of multiple helicopters from the mainland - was underway within 10-15 minutes of the very first distress call broadcast from the Europa.

It really does take a special kind of malformed conspiracy theorising to see anything even improper/inefficient, let alone suspicious, in how the rescue efforts were initiated, organised and effected that night.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's not enough to be rescued. You have to be officially rescued or it doesn't count.

Haha yes. And let's not also forget: your rescue has to be recorded scrupulously accurately in real time, with your accurate identity (even if you happened to be too hypothermic, shocked or fatigued to be able to communicate properly), otherwise there must be something fishy going on......

 

[Vixen]

http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1611237/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Is this passage on p. 10 what you think is talking about submarines?

No.

There are several elongated marks seen in the multibeam bathymetry, of which three are visible in the hull, two of them clearly and one a bit vaguer (Fig. MB6). These resemble scrape marks after a dragged object, similar to when an anchor is dragged across the seafloor. The holes for the bow thrusters are also possible to distinguish in the detailed multibeam bathymetry (Fig. MB6).

ibid

 

[Vixen]

Submarines do not leave tracks, that makes no sense at all, they don't drag along the sea bed.
Someone is making things up.

They can leave tracks if they are on the seabed.

 

[LondonJohn]

No.

ibid

Sinister and ominous? Or not sinister/ominous?

 

[LondonJohn]

They can leave tracks if they are on the seabed.

You obviously don't understand how submarines actually work (Hint: perhaps the very last thing any submarine captain would want to do would be to slide/scrape its keel along the sea bed.)

 

[Steve]

You obviously don't understand how submarines actually work (Hint: perhaps the very last thing any submarine captain would want to do would be to slide/scrape its keel along the sea bed.)

It would only scrape the keel if the captain neglected to engage the landing gear!!!

 

[LondonJohn]

It would only scrape the keel if the captain neglected to engage the landing gear!!!

Errr, the landing skids.... D'uhhhhh!

 

[GlennB]

They can leave tracks if they are on the seabed.

Utterly ridiculous, even by your high standards of absurdity. You're suggesting that submarines scrape along the seabed here, a rocky one at that?

You've mixed up the noun with the adjective, as has already been pointed out.

 

[Vixen]

Was it one of the dancers? Tell us it was one of the dancers. Was it one of the really hot dancers? At least give us that. You know, a sexy FSB agent who seduces the captain, sinks the ship, and escapes on a mini-sub. But don't make it a Swedish mini-sub because I think I've already seen that movie.

You can scoff, as did I, the first time I saw Jutta Rabe's Baltic Storm 2003 (available on youtube), starring Greta Saatchi as herself and Donald Sutherland as the Head of CIA (or was it as POTUS Bill Clinton), plotting and scheming with the Swedish government (and remember, the previous Bildt government had secretly sent the CIA a copy of its proposed coalition government for approval [by a foreign power...!]. My initial thought was that it was a stereotypical B-list Movie with clichéd corny spy plot.

Then the more I found out about the case, the more I realised it was based on factual evidence. This was an astonishing eye-opener.

'Corny scenes' from the film that are actually based on fact or evidence:

• the military trucks loading into the vessel at the last minute
• a man in a red/brown jacket with an attache case chained to his wrist there really is such a person who travelled regualrly on this sip and route. An unidentified red-brown coated man was found dead in the doorwell fo the bridge by Rockwater divers(
• semtex-style devices are attached to the sides of the car ramp, which causes the initial explosions.
• Captain Piht is seen helping people into a lifeboat. Piht shared the same cabin as Voronin, whose entire family escaped. Rockwater divers retrieved an attaché case from his cabin. Voronin was an arms trader to Israel, being a Russian Jew who was strongly Zionist. The retrieval of the attache case was part of a police investigation, so a crime scene, in effect.
• Piht survived but was 'disappeared' shortly after. Rabe has him in a secret USA military Zone detained in Germany.
• the perpetrators are embittered old stalinist speznats types resentful of their military secrets being stolen by the west.

Strangely, the cabins of Piht , Voronin, another former sea captain and his wife, were the luxurious front cabins with a magnificent view of the sea ahead, and four-bed cabins. The idea that landlubbers, such as the grossly overweight Voronin and his family should escape successfully - and they were in the prime position near the life boats and rescue equipment - yet were are told to believe the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Engineer in cabins adjacent to the Voronins - somehow got listed as 'survivors' but then vanished?

Yes, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

 

[Vixen]

That does not imply automatic activation. We know how the buoy in question was meant to be operated. You're still conflating what you think should have been the case with what we know factually to have been the case.



"Release" and "activate" are not the same words. Dozens of pages later, you still can't concede this.



Why would the crew be governed by "mass hysteria panic?" The crew has specific roles assigned to them in an emergency and are trained to respond according to those roles. Granted we are arguing that the crew was to some degree incompetent in this incident, and that might include failing to activate the secondary emergency equipment. But the notion that manual activation of emergency buoys can't be made part of an abandon-ship procedure because the crew would be panicking is just silly.

Don't put words in my mouth. I did not say emergency meant automatic activation.

 

[Vixen]

Wow.

No less than 5 vessels responded to the call to ready their helicopter decks to receive incoming helicopters. And possibly more, since some were on channel 6 or channel 10.

You want the recording of the channel 16 traffic (that you say was blocked)? Is that what you want? Fine. It is 30 minutes of not very happy listening, but it certainly wrecks your idiotic claims.

For anyone else, it is subtitled for convenience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5tbah19qo8. Yes, On the channel that Vixen claims to be blocked, for helicopter decks she claims they don't have. One even states that hey have readied their conference rooms as reception for casualties.

I did not "yt" tag it. Don't click it, unless you want to see the lies that are spouted by some people.

But 16 minutes in, 5, read it, 5 of the responding ships prepare their helicopter decks. Over a channel that is claimed to be blocked

You really can't grasp it, can you? The ships were only told to prepare their fo'c'sle decks as helicopter pads at 0205 after the profession official coordinated rescue was ordered by MRCC at 0148, the exact time Estonia vanished off the radar.

Sure, everything started running smoothly and communications were up again once Estonia was on the seabed. Mission accomplished by the saboteurs, if that is what happened, yet the JAIC never bothered to investigate this suspicious blockage.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Errr, the landing skids.... D'uhhhhh!

Tch! Landing skids indeed. I've seen The Matrix. They have those glowing things that look like kitchen scouring pads so they can just hover.

 

[abaddon]

You really can't grasp it, can you? The ships were only told to prepare their fo'c'sle decks as helicopter pads at 0205 after the profession official coordinated rescue was ordered by MRCC at 0148, the exact time Estonia vanished off the radar.

Sure, everything started running smoothly and communications were up again once Estonia was on the seabed. Mission accomplished by the saboteurs, if that is what happened, yet the JAIC never bothered to investigate this suspicious blockage.

Orly?

Here is Silja Europa's helipad.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FTT88H/e...e-ship-is-leaving-port-of-tallinn-2FTT88H.jpg

 

[LondonJohn]

You really can't grasp it, can you? The ships were only told to prepare their fo'c'sle decks as helicopter pads at 0205 after the profession official coordinated rescue was ordered by MRCC at 0148, the exact time Estonia vanished off the radar.

Sure, everything started running smoothly and communications were up again once Estonia was on the seabed. Mission accomplished by the saboteurs, if that is what happened, yet the JAIC never bothered to investigate this suspicious blockage.

LMAOOOOOOO

ETA: And.... do you do no proper research of your own?

Take another listen to the recording of the Chan 16 radio comms that night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5tbah19qo8

If you listen with an open ear, you'll hear very clearly that Silja Europa made contact with the relevant shore-based services to initiate a rescue operation within 5 (five) minutes of the very first distress message from the Estonia.

It then would have taken Helsinki Radio at least a few minutes to disseminate instructions to the appropriate air-sea rescue operations, and another several minutes to allow for the ground crew to ready the helicopters for take off and for the crew to embark.

At least one helicopter was already in the air and on its way when the 2.05am request was made to ready the helicopter landing pads on the assisting ships.

Of course, had a crew member on the Estonia followed proper procedures and broadcast a Mayday at something like 1.10am (at which point it should already have been apparent to any competent crew that the ship was inevitably going to sink), everything could/would have played out some 20 minutes earlier. And more people would very probably have been saved.

But that didn't happen. And given that the first anyone at all outside the Estonia knew of the emergency was at 1.30am, everything from that point onwards happened about as fast as it reasonably could/should have happened.

 

[LondonJohn]

Orly?

Here is Silja Europa's helipad.

[qimg]https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FTT88H/editorial-2019-09-27-tallinn-estonia-people-at-the-helipad-of-ms-silja-europa-when-the-ship-is-leaving-port-of-tallinn-2FTT88H.jpg[/qimg]

Nice photo of the fo'c'sle deck there

 

[Vixen]

Hypothesizing that the crew is incompetent is not the same as accusing them of being criminal. You have a whole crew of straw men in this thread.



But since the evidence for sabotage is comically flimsy, and there's nothing that can't be just as easily explained by crew incompetence, we have a parsimonious conclusion.



You say from your vast personal experience in such matters. But it's not a conspiracy theory!

But almost the same thing happened with The Herald of Free Enterprise: the boatswain was asleep in his cabin, his shipmate who was supposed to check the ramp was shut said he just assumed the baotsawain would be along soon and another when asked by the court why he did nothing, replied, 'Not my job'.

Whilst we can sympathise that these crew did not mean to harm or kill anyone, the judge threw out the case of corporate manslaughter despite grave criticisms of the crew because of the view 'they've suffered enough' and the boatswain used his body for people to walk across as a gangway to get off, and it seems the JAIC took a similar stance, being careful not to blame anybody and being sensitive to the feelings of the Estonians: why shouldn't they be held to account legally? If someone drinks and drives and kills someone, sure, they 'didn't mean it' but they still get their time in prison, albeit, often a pathetically short sentence.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

'Corny scenes' from the film that are actually based on fact or evidence...

"Based on" provides movies with plenty of artistic licence. Braveheart was "based on" historic facts but if torturing facts was a crime, Mel Gibson would have hanged.

 

[Here_to_learn]

Here to Learn patiently explained a couple of times that it is not enough to send and receive a Mayday. As with an EPIRB emitting a signal to COSPAS-SARSAT, the professional coordinated rescue instruction has to come from an official MRCC centre. Ships making their way to the scene is part of a vessel's responsibility to go to the aid of persons in distress in the sea.

Nope, you still haven't got it.

I explained that the EPIRB goes from the satellite system to the relevant MRCC, that decides what to do with it.

The mayday call however goes out over VHF, and all nearby ships should react as soon as possible. If MRCC does not respond, at least one of the ships that hear the MAYDAY responds, and starts communications, both with the the ships that is in peril, as well as with MRCC.

At last Helsinki Radio (the official purveyor of an alert for a military/paramilitary coordinated professional rescue effort, who had to wait the instruction from an MRCC) did not get the instruction from the MRCC until 0148, when it was told to send the officially approved mayday.

Formally they send a mayday relay, the actual mayday call was from M/S Estonia.

But the way the coastal radio is setup in Finland, MRCC (in Turku) is responsible for the west coast radio stations, while MRSC (...Sub Centre) is responsible for radios in the Gulf of Finland. So the Hanko transmitter belongs to Helsinki radio, while the Utö mast belongs to Turku. (At least today from what I can understand). Given the distances, they have to figure out what transmitter to use, to have the best reach.

 

[Here_to_learn]

You really can't grasp it, can you? The ships were only told to prepare their fo'c'sle decks as helicopter pads at 0205 after the profession official coordinated rescue was ordered by MRCC at 0148, the exact time Estonia vanished off the radar.

No need to prepare the helicopter decks until somebody has made the decision to send helicopters, helicopters have been found that can operate in the weather and at the distance, and with the proper equipment and personel onboard to be able to do surface operations.