Cont: The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VI

[Jack by the hedge]

Since we have some selective quoting/translations from this: https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-1440209, I thought I could add some more:

The main proponent of the sabotage theory is the German documentarian Jutta Rabe. She believes that Russian military-industrial circles sank Estonia to prevent top military technology from being smuggled via Sweden to the United States.

In the newest edition of Die Estonia (2019), she introduces a new witness, border guard Janno J, who claims to have seen four Russian military trucks drive aboard last of all in Estonia for the final journey.

[...]

The triathlete Ain-Alar Juhanson, who lost three fellow athletes in Estonia, can firmly dismiss Rabe's new testimony.

- We drove last on board with our van. We carefully looked around at the car deck, since the teamlead Jaan would illegally sleep in the car. He had no cabin space. Besides, he wanted to guard our precious bikes. We saw absolutely no armed guards and no military vehicles anywhere.

That's fascinating; thanks for raising it and as always for translating.

It's ironic that it's Rabe's attempt to add fresh claims to her conspiracy theory which provokes a rebuttal from an eye witness flatly denying claims there were military trucks loaded onto the Estonia on its last voyage.

Vixen does love to insinuate that the two admitted previous occasions that ex-Soviet material was carried on the Estonia somehow mean the same thing happened on its last voyage. The fairy tale seemed to grow and grow with every added detail vying to make it seem more plausible (two army trucks, or maybe four, and they were escorted by uniformed soldiers, or maybe US marines, and they turned up at the last minute and the ferry was held up for them...) but it's really great to get an eyewitness claim that all this simply isn't true. They know who was really last to board the Estonia because it was they themselves.

I'm reminded of a certain poster scolding us early on in these threads about the importance of respecting what the survivors told us about what they saw and heard. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as the saying goes.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

• IMO Chapter III regulations making Float Free Automatic EPIRB's a mandatory requirement from Aug 1993 latest.

In this instance does IMO stand for International Maritime Organisation or for In My Opinion? I have a feeling it's the latter even if that was not the intention.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

• The JAIC had to investigate why the EPIRB's did not automatically emit a signal after being immersed as they shoouldl have done.

They weren't switched on.

You wish to insinuate there's something fishy going on here. I put it to you (again) that if a vital piece of safety equipment had failed to operate for an unknown reason then the JAIC is very far from being the only group who would be deeply concerned to learn what went wrong and to make sure whatever the failure was got rectified.

I would expect the entire shipping industry to be alarmed by it and at the very least for the model involved to have its certification suspended until the matter was resolved. How would vessels continue to sail with a model of EPIRB which has failed to operate for an unidentified reason? How would they get insurance?

Your EPIRB conspiracist insinuation is as clear a case of the dog which did not bark in the night as I have ever seen.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

• You cannot mount a manually operated buoy onto a bracket meant for auto EPIRB's.

Fiction.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

• An expert presented to the JAIC his bemusement the EPIRB's were not tuned and were turned off.

You are propounding on the contents of a report which cannot now be found, made by the man who now declines to be interviewed on the subject. How conventient for you.

Again, the dog which did not bark in the night time is here the fact that you wish us to infer the entire shipping industry merely shrugged at Koivisto's "bemusement" and carried on. No. That did not happen. It's so far from plausibility you couldn't see it with a telescope from the top of Mount Plausibility. Try harder.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

There is no information at all about why the communications were down that night

Garbage. You have combined a series of unrelated problems into an inference of a concerted, deliberate effort to hamper communication which does not withstand scrutiny. Stitching together a string of cockups and inviting us to call it a conspiracy does not impress.

A Russian station was apparently left transmitting on VHF emergency channel 16. Finnish coast guards complain they had done this before. This caused interference over a small area of the eastern Baltic, due to the short range of VHF. Probably completely irrelevant here.

The Estonia got into trouble so fast that they did not attempt to send a distress call until the ship was listing heavily which would have swung its radio antennae far from the vertical, shortening their effective range. Their call may eventually even have gone out from a handheld radio.

Nearby ships which did receive the call then had to relay that message to the Finnish coast guard and they in turn took some time to relay that message to their Swedish counterparts.

Nothing about this suggests some criminal mastermind stroking his white cat and muttering "excellent" in his stylish lair beneath a volcano.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...is the latest tentative theory, with two investigative reporters having brought it to public attention.

Lovely alternative theory but it doesn't wash.

LOL! I have a tentative new theory that the earth is not flat. It'll knock your socks off.

 

[Here_to_learn]

A couple of points: Sweden did not make the material freely available. It only recently allowed a couple of Norwegians to examine th bow visor kept at Kronsberg (_sp?). There is no information at all about why the communications were down that night, including the EPIRB's being turned off.

I'm pretty sure most people understood that I was referring to material that can be scanned and published, not physical evidence.

EPIRB and VHF communications information is of course in the JAIC material.

Juhansson say he knows there were no military truck/s loaded at the last minute because his car was last on. But how does he know he was last as you are required to leave your car. He says his colleague, Jaan slept in the car, and this poor chap is presumed drowned, so he is not around to confirm he was last and nothing else came on board. The other point is, lorries and trucks are directed to a different lane from the cars anyway.

Well, here I can only speculate. But based on my own personal experience from travelling with a car on a ferry, I can say that after the last car has been driven on, they close the ramp. When you are last you will be there when this happens, you will not have had the time to exit the car deck. Although I have never been the last car to drive onboard, I have been in the last group a couple of times, and seen the ramp close behind me.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...
The other point re Ain Alur Juhansson, the Estonian athlete who testified to climbing down the car ramp with his fellow athlete, according to JAIC this could not have been possible.

We've been around this before, yet here you are again desperatly trying to cast doubt on a survivor who contradicts your favourite conspiracy theory.

Juhansson say he knows there were no military truck/s loaded at the last minute because his car was last on. But how does he know he was last as you are required to leave your car. He says his colleague, Jaan slept in the car, and this poor chap is presumed drowned, so he is not around to confirm he was last and nothing else came on board. The other point is, lorries and trucks are directed to a different lane from the cars anyway.

You and your passengers are required to leave your car after driving it onto the ship, and if you're among the last to board you have an excellent view of the ramp closing and whoever else got on last.
My experience is that trucks tend to be loaded into lanes one behind another but those lanes are spread across the deck, which makes sense so as to distribute the weight. They're not isolated or hidden from the passenger cars.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Are we still in the dead parrot sketch? You have been shown:

• IMO Chapter III regulations making Float Free Automatic EPIRB's a mandatory requirement from Aug 1993 latest.
• The JAIC had to investigate why the EPIRB's did not automatically emit a signal after being immersed as they shoouldl have done.
• The EPIRB's were affixed externally to each side of the bridge in a freefloat only cage with an HRU.
• Rockwater divers confirmed the cages were empty and an HRU recovered.
• You cannot mount a manually operated buoy onto a bracket meant for auto EPIRB's.
• An expert presented to the JAIC his bemusement the EPIRB's were not tuned and were turned off.
• The expert who specializes in multimillion pound maritme radar equipment knows exactly how the €500 EPIRBS's are supposed to work.

I know it is fun to play euphemisms and alternatives, like the guy in the sketch, whilst at the same time enjoying winding up the irate customer just because his straightforward blunt and to the point telling of truth is perceived as arrogant and stuck up. I think in the end, the shopkeeper really believes that if he carries on denying what is an obvious truth, he never has to give the customer his due credit for having been sold a dead parrot. And of course the audience falls into two camps: those who love the inventiveness and wriggling out of the obvious by the shopkeeper because of the comedy value and those who recognise the type perfectly and prefer the integrity, directness and factuality of the customer.

Everything you have written in that post is wrong.

You made most of it up yourself.
You are deliberately telling lies even after they have been shown to be lies.

Anything further you say on this subject can be ignored.

 

[junkshop]

..Juhansson say he knows there were no military truck/s loaded at the last minute because his car was last on. But how does he know he was last as you are required to leave your car. He says his colleague, Jaan slept in the car, and this poor chap is presumed drowned, so he is not around to confirm he was last and nothing else came on board. The other point is, lorries and trucks are directed to a different lane from the cars anyway.

What car are you talking about?

...We drove last on board with our van...

 

[JayUtah]

Are we still in the dead parrot sketch? You have been shown:I have stubbornly claimed

FTFY

Every single claim you list has been addressed and refuted multiple times. As usual, you give no indication that even a little bit of it has put a scratch on your fantasy.

 

[JayUtah]

You are propounding on the contents of a report which cannot now be found, made by the man who now declines to be interviewed on the subject. How conventient for you.

Vixen's sole source for many of these EPIRB claims is a single article written for a Swedish publication 25 years after the fact. The author in turn gives no specific authority for most of the claims he makes, most notably the claim that Koivisto presented to the JAIC on the subject of the EPIRBs (and the whole basis for the claim of a missing report). The only allegedly documentary evidence is the frame-grab from Helsinki television, which simply shows Koivisto in the same room as an EPRIB—not the same model as used on MS Estonia, and not the ones recovered. The author names a few sources, but attributes to them only ephemeral tidbits. The principal source for his article is Margus Kurm: you know, the guy who thinks submarines can fly. Kurm is cited over and over in the article, which goes on to make quite a lot of the same insinuations as we've heard from the other Estonia conspiracy theorists.

Here's the thing :—

I know why Koivisto was in Helsinki and I know what subject he really presented on to JAIC. It's actually in one of Vixen's sources (no, not that guy). And no, it wasn't on the EPIRBs. No, Koivisto wasn't the only person presenting that day, and no he wasn't the only presenter in the room alongside the EPIRB.

This whole story is most likely dreamed up by Kurm from a single photograph that can be interpreted so many ways. And all he needed was a writer looking for some bombshell article.

Now let's see if Vixen is smart enough to go through all her sources (instead of repeatedly making false claims here) and prove she can actually absorb what they say. Let's give her, oh say, six months.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I think we all know the answer to that.

It doesn't matter if she is or isn't, she won't do it because she is almost physically incapable of admitting she is wrong.

 

[lobosrul5]

Are we still in the dead parrot sketch? You have been shown:

• IMO Chapter III regulations making Float Free Automatic EPIRB's a mandatory requirement from Aug 1993 latest.
  Those regs did not come into force until 1998.
  https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Safety/Pages/SummaryOfSOLASchapter-3-default.aspx Like its literally right there plain as day Vixen from their official website.
• The JAIC had to investigate why the EPIRB's did not automatically emit a signal after being immersed as they shooulld have done.
  -yes, and they did investigate. Its because they weren't switched on they did not have a water immersion sensor. That is not an equivalent to an HRU
• The EPIRB's were affixed externally to each side of the bridge in a freefloat only cage with an HRU.
  -True, your point being?
• Rockwater divers confirmed the cages were empty and an HRU recovered.
  -True, your point being?
• You cannot mount a manually operated buoy onto a bracket meant for auto EPIRB's.
  -Wrong, You can mount any type of buoy in a hydrostatic release bracket.
• An expert presented to the JAIC his bemusement the EPIRB's were not tuned and were turned off.
  -What is your source for this?
• The expert who specializes in multimillion pound maritme radar equipment knows exactly how the €500 EPIRBS's are supposed to work.
  -where is your source for him being quoted on this?

Italicized are my replies.

I know it is fun to play euphemisms and alternatives, like the guy in the sketch, whilst at the same time enjoying winding up the irate customer just because his straightforward blunt and to the point telling of truth is perceived as arrogant and stuck up. I think in the end, the shopkeeper really believes that if he carries on denying what is an obvious truth, he never has to give the customer his due credit for having been sold a dead parrot. And of course the audience falls into two camps: those who love the inventiveness and wriggling out of the obvious by the shopkeeper because of the comedy value and those who recognise the type perfectly and prefer the integrity, directness and factuality of the customer.

Is that why you are doing it?

ETA: goddamn and this is all so ******* ridiculously pointlessly dumb. Like all the idiotic minutia of CT's. WHAT DIFFERENCE WHAT IT HAVE MADE IF THE EPIRB's HAD BEEN SWITCHED ON EXACTLY?! They did not receive GPS back then (to transmit the exact location). Rescuers would've gotten to the Estonia in precisely the same amount of time.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

In this instance does IMO stand for International Maritime Organisation or for In My Opinion? I have a feeling it's the latter even if that was not the intention.

I think it's a transposition error on "MOI" because the OP's immunity to facts means that this may as well be a Matters of Interest thread.

 

[Disbelief]

Are we still in the dead parrot sketch? You have been shown:

• IMO Chapter III regulations making Float Free Automatic EPIRB's a mandatory requirement from Aug 1993 latest.
• The JAIC had to investigate why the EPIRB's did not automatically emit a signal after being immersed as they shoouldl have done.
• The EPIRB's were affixed externally to each side of the bridge in a freefloat only cage with an HRU.
• Rockwater divers confirmed the cages were empty and an HRU recovered.
• You cannot mount a manually operated buoy onto a bracket meant for auto EPIRB's.
• An expert presented to the JAIC his bemusement the EPIRB's were not tuned and were turned off.
• The expert who specializes in multimillion pound maritme radar equipment knows exactly how the €500 EPIRBS's are supposed to work.

I know it is fun to play euphemisms and alternatives, like the guy in the sketch, whilst at the same time enjoying winding up the irate customer just because his straightforward blunt and to the point telling of truth is perceived as arrogant and stuck up. I think in the end, the shopkeeper really believes that if he carries on denying what is an obvious truth, he never has to give the customer his due credit for having been sold a dead parrot. And of course the audience falls into two camps: those who love the inventiveness and wriggling out of the obvious by the shopkeeper because of the comedy value and those who recognise the type perfectly and prefer the integrity, directness and factuality of the customer.

A lot of words to say that you have no understanding of how they work. Those of us who have a background in similar things and have actually read the technical specs and literature, fully understand how they function.

 

[Steve]

I think we all know the answer to that.

It doesn't matter if she is or isn't, she won't do it because she is almost physically incapable of admitting she is wrong.

Or even, perhaps, understanding.

 

[JayUtah]

Is that why you are doing it?

We aren't allowed to speculate on the motives of posters here, but I long ago drew my conclusions. Vixen's contribution here is in no way consistent with actually discovering the reason why the Estonia sank or examining the issues—if any—surrounding the subsequent investigation of the accident. I will refrain from saying what I believe her contribution is more consistent with, but I'm not alone in making assessments.

Insofar as the new investigation is meant to quell conspiracy theories, it was misguided from the start. Those conspiratorial questions raised in the wake of the first investigation have no footing in sound science, sound engineering, and sound investigative practice. Tragedies compel us to look for answers, and they sadly compel a few miscreants to feed conspiratorial answers more consistent with acquiring attention than with learning the truth. Some people want there to be a conspiracy because that soothes their souls more than the grim, unremarkable truth. No amount of new investigation makes that desire go away. Conspiracy theories didn't fundamentally arise out of fact and they cannot be dispelled by fact.

Insofar as the new investigation was meant to address new observations, it has succeeded in confirming the prosaic hypotheses for such things as the holes in the hull.

Insofar as the new investigation was meant to address legitimate forensic engineering questions, it has confirmed the findings of the prior investigation. If anything, it has suggested that the prior investigation was too lenient on the owners and operators of the vessel. MS Estonia was not seaworthy for the voyages she was assigned to undertake nor operated safely. Undoubtedly new investigative techniques such as greatly enhanced flooding models will expand our understanding of the accident, but nothing so far has transformed the conclusion first reached. The sniping and bickering from the lay sidelines has been profoundly ignorant of the relevant disciplines of study and practice, and remains so.

But it does generate attention, and that seems to more closely explain why some in society advocate conspiracy theories. Some like Alex Jones make a lot of money lying to people and playing into their desire to believe in imaginary monsters. Others like to cloak themselves in faux virtue. And some just like to stir the pot because they're bored. Those people thrive on baiting people to keep giving attention to the pot-stirring itself, knowing the irresistible urge among some skeptics to set every record straight.

 

[Here_to_learn]

The Estonian Investigation Bureau have released a report on the hole in the side.

https://estonia1994.ee/en/news/numerical-assessment-bottom-contact-mv-estonia-published

Main conclusions of the study are:
- The ship experiences extensive damage due to the bottom contact, even when descending in a nearly statical manner.
[...]
- The location of the calculated side damage corresponds well to the location of the reported side damage in the wreck.
- The reported damage has been formed on the edge of the extensive damage located under the wreck (above the fender line).
- The numerical simulations propose a highly probable scenario of the side damages occurring as a result of the contact between the ship and the sea bottom.