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

[LondonJohn]

It is like the term "frigate". Nobody can rightly define what a "frigate" actually is. The definition has wandered all over the place for several centuries.

Fortunately we don't have any of that archaic nonsense in the RAF

(And the fact that the RAF's only been in existence for the past 103 years has nothing to do with that, of course..... )

 

[Vixen]

That is the point. I do not know how it is possible to get something so simple so wrong, but somehow you manage to do it.

If I say "Hi" and you reply "Hello" then I know you can hear me.

If I say "Hi" and you say nothing back, I know you did not hear me.

Basic radio discipline.

How hard is that to understand. Well, for you....

OK, so you are on a large passenger cruise car ferry. Your ship begins to capsize and it is happening rapidly. You put out a series of Mayday messages but nobody responds. Eventually half an hour later with sinking just five minutes away, the fourth mate at last hears something on his handset. It is Silja Europa with a high degree of scepticism in his voice, 'Abaddon, are you calling...mayday?'

'Need your coordinates'

'Got a blackout, will have to come back to you'.

Two minutes later, Abaddon's mate with the coordinates.

Line goes dead.

Nice.

 

[Vixen]

Is any of that supposed to justify your dishonestly implying that Lehtola cited Sillaste for claiming the bow visor had fallen off? Clearly it doesn't.

What? Lehtola clearly claimed to have got this information from Sillaste, who had been interviewed by the PM's of three countries, including Bildt, whose idea it was to push the bow visor fell off theory, even though the Estonian PM, Laar, suspected sabotage (not unreasonably).

30.9.1994 2:00 Suspicions of a passenger ship for betraying estonia's bow gate were confirmed on Thursday. "Something has happened in it," says Kari Lehtola, Member of the Research Commission. "People's observations of it are vague, but there are none." According to Lehtola, it is possible that both the liftable visor and the waterproof bow gate behind it have failed. However, he says they have by no means opened up. At least no serious omissions have occurred so far in the fastening of the trucks. According to Lehtola, the amount of water entering the car deck and the speed of the car deck is impossible to say. He does not yet dare to give an estimate of the speed of tilting and sinking. The time fork between tilting and sinking has now stretched between five minutes and an hour, after half an hour at the top on Wednesday. There are major differences in observations, mainly because some of the interviewees have woken up to the ship's tilt later than others. As early as Wednesday, it was believed that water was released from the bow gate to the Estonia car deck and brought down the ship. Henrik Sillaste, an Estonian machineman who survived the accident, said he saw on the TV monitor in the engine room control room that water was spraying in from the gate seams.

HS 30.9.1994 ibid

 

[Vixen]

Yes. Clearly the words "during the setting phase" a) are an imprecise translation, and b) must necessarily mean "at the time when it became necessary to deploy the EPIRBs" - in other words, once the crew know the ship is sinking and that they'll need to activate the EPIRBs and get them into the water.

No, they are automatically hydrostatically released when submersion of water reaches between three to thirteen feet of water.

I imagine the setting phase is when it is placed in the container with the HRU, possibly a different make, such as Hammar, as illustrated in the Kannad catalogue.

 

[Vixen]

Yup. I was going to put in the various possibilities, but then I remembered to whom the post was addressed and figured it would just cause confusion. Another possibility is that the recipient simply declines to reply. Just look at Europa. She arrived at her destination a day late, thereabouts (I would have to check the timeline to be accurate). A captain under pressure to meet a deadline might make the decision not to respond at all so as not to interrupt his/her progress. That more or less happened legitimately in at least two cases. Both asked Europa if they should divert to the scene having heard the c16 traffic but not responded on c16. Europa as acting OSC cleared them to proceed on their planned routes. Too far away to be of any use so what would be the point? OTOH, Mastera (oil tanker) did try to make contact on c16 with anyone involved. Mariella informed them that Europa was OSC. From then on it was clear that while Mastera could hear Mariella, they could not hear Europa.

As I understand it, ships are obliged to have the channel 16 switched on. Thus, when someone calls 'mayday' everybody in the region hears it. Everybody also hears the response. Normally the nearest MRCC, in this case, Turku, then sets the rescue into operation. However, what happened with Estonia is that no-one heard it, except Mariella, who responded but were not heard by Estonia. Then Silja Europa who had their radio tuned very finely to hear even the weakest broadcast responded, which Estonia heard. Mariella did not hear everything Silja Europa said and vice versa, which was also strange (as the Captain reflected later). Mariella switched to frequency 2182 - which should be heard all over the Baltic as far away as Gothenberg - and when it realised reception was poor, the captain of Mariella contacted MRCC Turku - on a personal mobile phone - who was relayed the Mayday that way. Stockholm never heard it at all.

The Swedish helicopter pilots had problems communicating, too, as the network was down at Arlanda Airport (Stockholm).

It's all very well JAIC only reporting that '14 ships' got the message but then one has to ask why they have glossed over the very real problems which have been widely reported, when they are supposed to be investigating the accident.

An opinion in Helsingin Sanomat 7.10.1994:

A radio electrician increases safety

Radio electricians were once placed on ships under an international agreement to protect human life at sea. The state of the art at the time made communication possible only by electrification. The current state of the art is largely explained by voice connections. Enthusiastic about this, electricians began to be eliminated as an unnecessary cost factor. The probabilities of obtaining and operating radio communications were relied upon. The probabilities have always been known, but professionals were not wanted to be consulted. Now it's paid once. If Estonia's distress alert had been issued with the right equipment that Estonia had, the distress in Sweden would have been heard immediately and more shipwrecked people would have been rescued. The safe management of radio communications is a broad matter and there is no room for it. No more can be expected from the current "radiators" of the ships than anyone in Estonia did. VALLE SIRKIÄ radio electrician (ex) Järvenpää

This guy is blaming Estonia's radio equipment but Mariella, Turku MRCC and Helsinki Radio had problems, too.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

What? Lehtola clearly claimed to have got this information from Sillaste

Not in the material you quoted as evidence, he didn't.

You claimed Lehtola had said early on that the visor appeared to have broken off and that he had used Sillaste as a source. And you said Sillaste hadn't said anything of the kind. And you quoted what Sillaste had actually described seeing - water spraying in, up both sides of the ramp. The thing that's missing is the thing you originally said: that Lehtola said Sillaste was his source for the claim that the visor fell off.

 

[Vixen]

Lol. Understood. But in this case we have a mayday from the ship that is sinking. We have a sackload of ships responding. We have EPIRBs that have not been released yet, let alone activated since the ship had not sunk yet. We have the crew of Estonia identifying their name and position on the supposedly blocked c16 rendering the EPIRBs redundant anyway. The position and vessel name were ALREADY KNOWN before it sank.

My question to Vixen remains

In what way would the EPIRBs of any type have accelerated the emergency response?

Vixen cannot answer that.

You are approaching the issue from the wrong way. If you are appointed as in investigator, you invariably have to start from scratch, as of the point of the accident. It is all very well saying, 'Oh the airbags would not have saved lives anyway', if they are discovered to have been disabled, or mysteriously not working as they should have done.

At that point you do not know if it is sabotage or not.


The JAIC's attitude, 'we do not want to blame anybody' is truly pathetic. It was their task to pinpoint blame.

 

[Vixen]

We've been over this. The Aftonbladet says that the Y64 rescue man pulled eight human beings out of the water. Not eight "or nine". Eight. And the JAIC agrees on this point. The eighth person was not ultimately successfully rescued. Thus, seven people were rescued.

The only thing Aftonbladet gets wrong is the timeline.

On the Swedish defence forces web page, archiving the accident, it clearly states:

Swedish Navy helicopter Y 64 1 (rescued)

This is official.

 

[Vixen]

I think her idea is that the buoys that were found weren't from the Estonia. They had been removed by the saboteurs and two fake buoys that just happened to transmit the ID code registered to the Estonia were planted in the sea.

No, I haven't said that at all. If it was a planned sabotage, then it is quite possible the EPIRB's, life rafts and vests were removed and the radio frequencies jammed, to ensure top secrecy whilst the attack was underway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_jamming_and_deception

 

[Vixen]

But why? Estonia identified itself and it's location on the supposedly blocked c16 before it sank and thus before any EPIRBs would be released, let alone activated. Help was on the way long before EPIRBs could possibly be released.

Sure, an automatic version could have identified "Vessel: Estonia Location: whatever" after it had sunk. But what use would that be? The name and location were already known before it sank.

Is Vixen next going to claim that the Estonia's radio messages were after it sank? Subterranean messages. perhaps?

If the coordinates Estonia gave are where it sank, then why would it take over two weeks to locate the wreckage?

By the time Helsinki Radio got the coordinates - from Silja Europa - it was 0142. It had to wait for a command from MRCC Turku to convey an official Mayday on Estonia's behalf and this happened 0148, the exact moment Estonia disappeared off the radar.

Quit saying 'everybody got the mayday and the coordinates' when the salient issue is getting them on time not after the horse has bolted, as it were.

 

[Vixen]

At 0642 the Y64 rescue man got one man aboard the helicopter but the winch failed and he was left in the water.
Y64 called for assistance.
Y74 went to Y64's assistance.
The Y64 rescue man was holding onto a body, which was winched up to Y74 with the assistance of Y74's own rescue man. When the body had been recovered, the Y74's rescue man fell receiving a heavy blow to the lower part of his body.
Nonetheless, he requested that he be lowered to bring up one more body. This body, however, had become badly tangled with the ropes on the raft and could not be winched up.
At this stage the pilot decided to interrupt the recovery of the body, since there might still be survivors in the sea and on rafts.
Finally a spare harness was lowered to the Y 64's rescue man and used to winch him up to the helicopter.
Y64 left the scene to offload survivors and repair.
The injury to the Y74 rescue man proved so serious that he was unable to do more and the work was continued by Y64's rescue man.
At 0715 hrs Y74 found a raft with three survivors, who were winched up into the helicopter.
At 0740 hrs Y69 reported that it too had had to leave its rescue man in the water because of a malfunction of the winch.
In addition, this rescue man was suffering from concussion, since he had hit his head on a lifeboat.
Y74 went to Y69's assistance and the rescue man was recovered to Y74.
Y 64's rescue man recovered three survivors who were hanging on to an upturned lifeboat.
In connection with the rescue of the last of the three, a strong wave threw the rescue man against the lifeboat, injuring him.
Since Y74 now had three injured rescue men, it had to interrupt its rescue operations.
The six survivors, the injured rescue men and the body were taken to Huddinge Hospital, where the helicopter arrived at 0930 hrs.
Y74 returned to Berga at 0940 hrs to change crew and refuel.

That's why a medal was awarded to the Y64 rescue man

Then why does the Swedish Defence Forces page show the following table:

Participating helicopters:
Nationality Helicopter Number saved
Finnish Sea rescue helicopter OH-HVG 37
Swedish Air Force helicopter Q 97 15
Finnish Border Guard helicopter OH-HVD 14
Swedish Air Force helicopter Q 99 9
Finnish Border Guard helicopter OH-HVF 8
Finnish Air Force Helicopter X 92 8
Finnish Air Force Helicopter X 42 6
Swedish Air Force helicopter Q 91 6
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 68 6
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 74 6
Swedish Air Force helicopter Q 95 6
Finnish Border Guard helicopter OH-HVH 4
Finnish Air Force helicopter X 62 1
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 65 1
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 64 1
Finnish Air Force Helicopter X 82 -
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 69 -
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 72 -
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 73 -
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 75 -
Swedish Navy helicopter Y 76 -
Swedish Air Force helicopter O 98 -

I believe both Y64 and Y74 left shortly after 0200 as stated in the early day papers but this was later censored as they were responsible for securing delivery of the big shot guys - the Chief Engineer, the Second Captain and the Chief Medical Officer - to Huddinge Hospital. All of these were listed as survivors in early lists.

I believe Y64 and Y74 then returned to perform the above arriving at 0552 and 0642 respectively as stated in the JAIC report.

The JAIC rather than explain how come originally 149 were listed as survivors but later reduced to 137 or why Aftonbladet and Helsingin Sanomat gave the first take-off time as just after 0200 - and this fits with the timeline of Stockholm at last being contacted by MRCC Turku - just decided to not mention it at all, probably to avoid lying outright, but nonetheless lying by omission, as how simple would it have been for them to state, 'Initially it was thought 149 survived but this turned out to be a mistake'.

 

[LondonJohn]

OK, so you are on a large passenger cruise car ferry. Your ship begins to capsize and it is happening rapidly. You put out a series of Mayday messages but nobody responds. Eventually half an hour later with sinking just five minutes away, the fourth mate at last hears something on his handset. It is Silja Europa with a high degree of scepticism in his voice, 'Abaddon, are you calling...mayday?'

'Need your coordinates'

'Got a blackout, will have to come back to you'.

Two minutes later, Abaddon's mate with the coordinates.

Line goes dead.

Nice.

Except all of the above is entirely a figment of your (over-fertile) imagination.

There's not a single shred of evidence to suggest anything like that ever happened in reality.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, they are automatically hydrostatically released when submersion of water reaches between three to thirteen feet of water.

I imagine the setting phase is when it is placed in the container with the HRU, possibly a different make, such as Hammar, as illustrated in the Kannad catalogue.

You "imagine" ignorantly, in an attempt to support your a priori (mis)understanding.

You're wrong. And you don't know what you're talking about. We know for certain that the EPIRBs on the Estonia were manual-activation only.

 

[LondonJohn]

You are approaching the issue from the wrong way. If you are appointed as in investigator, you invariably have to start from scratch, as of the point of the accident. It is all very well saying, 'Oh the airbags would not have saved lives anyway', if they are discovered to have been disabled, or mysteriously not working as they should have done.

At that point you do not know if it is sabotage or not.


The JAIC's attitude, 'we do not want to blame anybody' is truly pathetic. It was their task to pinpoint blame.

What are you on about now?

The JAIC investigated the EPIRB issue properly and professionally. They determined - correctly - that the electronic circuitry and transmitter had not been manually switched on as should have been the case. They came to this (correct) finding on account of finding and testing the EPIRBs after the incident, and finding that they worked perfectly as designed as soon as they were (manually) switched on. And therefore, the fact that they hadn't worked on the night of the disaster meant, by definition, that nobody among the crew had remembered to (manually) switch them on.

The JAIC solved the matter of the non-transmitting EPIRBs correctly and thoroughly. The fact that you don't understand this, and that nor do you understand the science behind EPIRBs in general and these specific EPIRBs in particular, is neither here nor there.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, I haven't said that at all. If it was a planned sabotage, then it is quite possible the EPIRB's, life rafts and vests were removed and the radio frequencies jammed, to ensure top secrecy whilst the attack was underway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_jamming_and_deception

Oh..........

You don't know what you're talking about wrt VHF radio communcations. Every time you masquerade as someone who knows what they're talking about, it becomes more and more painfully obvious.

And if this (ridiculous and entirely unworkable/far-fetched) "sabotage" plan truly had been in place (which it patently was not), then they screwed up royally in allowing an Estonia crew member to reach several other nearby ships on the portable VHF set. Didn't they? Were these saboteurs so clever that they could tamper with the EPIRBs and jam VHF frequencies, yet they somehow were so stupid that they forgot to jam Ch16 beyond 1.22am? What part of the plan allowed for that to happen, Vixen?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... It is all very well saying, 'Oh the airbags would not have saved lives anyway', if they are discovered to have been disabled, or mysteriously not working as they should have done.

"If". That is the point we keep making and you keep ignoring. It would be a very big deal indeed if the buoys had been found to be sabotaged or have failed to operate as designed. Nobody (not only the JAIC, but nobody in any authority over safety at sea or in commercial shipping or in marine insurance) noted the buoys not working as they should or thought that they had been tampered with in any way. The only problem with the activation of the buoys was user inaction on the night in question.

 

[LondonJohn]

If the coordinates Estonia gave are where it sank, then why would it take over two weeks to locate the wreckage?

Because........ 1) the Estonia was still travelling forwards, and in a haphazard direction, for some time after its last location transmission; 2) in any case, ships don't sink directly below their last surface location (let alone their last transmitted surface location); and 3) you clearly have zero understanding of how difficult it can be to locate a shipwreck in low-visibility conditions, when you have something like 100 square miles to search in.

At the risk of repeating myself: you don't know what you're talking about, Vixen.

By the time Helsinki Radio got the coordinates - from Silja Europa - it was 0142. It had to wait for a command from MRCC Turku to convey an official Mayday on Estonia's behalf and this happened 0148, the exact moment Estonia disappeared off the radar.

Quit saying 'everybody got the mayday and the coordinates' when the salient issue is getting them on time not after the horse has bolted, as it were.

Please tell the assembled group what could/should have been done - in your expert opinion, of course - to get ship-borne and helicopter-borne assistance to the area of the sinking "before the horse had bolted".

In detail, please.

 

[Vixen]

Not in the material you quoted as evidence, he didn't.

You claimed Lehtola had said early on that the visor appeared to have broken off and that he had used Sillaste as a source. And you said Sillaste hadn't said anything of the kind. And you quoted what Sillaste had actually described seeing - water spraying in, up both sides of the ramp. The thing that's missing is the thing you originally said: that Lehtola said Sillaste was his source for the claim that the visor fell off.

Another report from Helsingin Sanomat dated 29.9.1994 at 0200 - almost exactly 24 hours after the accident - which was a Wednesday early hours of the morning - quotes Sillaste and blaming the bow visor and car ramp, when they had not even finalised the accident investigation committee as of that stage.

". Against the gate [bow visor] theory of Sillaste, water could have come out of the ramps," Lehtola points out. Henrik Sillaste, the ship's Estonian aircraftman, said on Wednesday that the bow gate of the ferry was not completely closed and before the accident water flowed from the bow gate onto the car deck. Sillaste said he saw this on a surveillance camera monitor in engineering [Engine Control Room in the hull]. Estonia sank about 35 kilometres from Utö into the southern southeast, in the international sea area but within Finland's fishing zone.

There's water in the area from 200 to 200 feet.

The exact location of the wreckage is not yet known - an estimate of it is based on where the life rafts were after the crash. Today, Thursday, estonia will be searched with technical equipment, and investigators have already asked the Border Guard and the Navy for official assistance in the work.

Estonia is setting up a multinational commission to investigate the accident. Estonia is responsible for the management, and the chairman will reportedly be the country's Minister of Transport. Members from Finland and Sweden will be included. Finland's representatives are expected to be appointed today, Thursday, at a government session. The Planning Board for Major Accident Investigation, led by Kari Lehtola, began investigating the accident with interim powers as soon as Wednesday morning. JOHANSSON / HS "Everything has been relatively fast" On its side or stern first The search for the wreck will begin today by the Multinational Research Board

Helsingin Sanomat

Seriously, an accident involving an estimated 1,051 and already on Day One they have concluded - or pointed to a conclusion via this press release - that taking the word of someone who was in the Engine Control Room ostensibly having gone done to fix some passenger toilets - who happened to notice water spraying over the cameras surveying the car deck from his monitor. Why was Sillaste even in the watertight ECR anyway as various security details have to be operated to ensure the water tight doors open and lcose as they should. He seems to have joined third engineer Treu and Kikas, a newbie AIUI and one can only speculate they were busy pumping the bilge pipes and were up to their knees in the water seeping in. Sillaste describes a series of bangs, which caused him to look in the monitor but he doesn't say whether this was immediately or ten minutes later, by the by.

It is certainly useful information but it doesn't really explain why the bow visor would have fallen off in the first place, especially with all the reported bangs.

In addition, how could they possibly be convinced this was the case, given nobody saw the bow visor fall off or even saw the car deck itself and the shipwreck was yet to be found, when there could be any number of possible causes, with the bow visor coming of a result of which not the primary cause,

 

[LondonJohn]

Vixen: please stop quoting media reports from the immediate aftermath of the disaster (ie for those published within as long as two weeks after the sinking, and absolutely definitely for those published within the day or two following the sinking).

Why?

Because those sorts of early-stage media reports are often (and provably) wrong. They're often based on semi-informed supposition, and are often under-sourced or even unsourced.

We've been through this several times now. Yet you keep going back to newspapers from as little as a day or two after the incident.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If the coordinates Estonia gave are where it sank, then why would it take over two weeks to locate the wreckage?

"If" again. How precise were the coordinates Estonia reported in its Mayday? How far did it then drift before it sank? How close to those coordinates is the wreck? How long do you expect locating a wreck to take?

By the time Helsinki Radio got the coordinates - from Silja Europa - it was 0142. It had to wait for a command from MRCC Turku to convey an official Mayday on Estonia's behalf and this happened 0148, the exact moment Estonia disappeared off the radar.

Quit saying 'everybody got the mayday and the coordinates' when the salient issue is getting them on time not after the horse has bolted, as it were.

They already had the Mayday and coordinates. The salient issue is that the ships which were closest and could get there first had the coordinates and turned towards the Estonia a good ten minutes before 01:42. They didn't wait for Helsinki Radio to tell them what they already knew, no matter how "salient" you think that is.