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

[MarkCorrigan]

Let me phrase it better. The witnesses reported what they perceived to be a collision. More than one said they had travelled the route many dozens of times over many years and likened it to a scraping sensation as when in an icebreaker and something is obstructing the path causing a sense of heavy grinding.

But that doesn't mean that there was a collision.

They felt something, they presumed that it was a collision based upon previous experience, but that doesn't mean their assumption is correct.

 

[JayUtah]

You can know your toast is burning without having to stand over it.

No amount of analogizing or handwaving converts witness inference into evidence. If no witness actually saw the ship collide with something then no amount of second-guessing or analogizing or comparison or creates evidence that the hypothesized collision (i.e., with a surface vessel or submarine, as the conspiracy theorists claimed) actually occurred.

You claim there was witness testimony to a collision. The witnesses testified to sounds they heard, and motions of the ship that they experienced. No witness actually witness ed a collision.

You claim the JAIC ignored witness testimony to a collision. Since there was no such witness, the JAIC did no such thing. However, the JAIC did discuss witness testimony that has been interpreted later (and incorrectly) by conspiracy theorists as evidence of a collision. The JAIC presented physical evidence that the bow visor detached and fell away, and that it struck the bulbous bow. The subsequent actions of the ship pushing the detached bow visor out of the way creates (a) sudden increase in hydrodynamic drag, and (b) scraping or grinding as the bow visor falls away to the left or right. The JAIC has fully and properly harmonized the relevant evidence.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Think of all the lives that could have been saved had it been made of quality balsa wood.

And maybe an extra couple of kg of waterproofing?

Gone very quiet, do you think that post has been reached?

 

[JayUtah]

NONE of her CT ideas on why the Estonia sinking would've resulted in a sudden deceleration of the Estonia. Yet her own witness evidence, that is supposedly being ignored, supports a sudden deceleration.

True.

However, Vixen has expressed no interest in reconciling the inconsistencies among the various conspiracy claims she makes from day to day. This is not uncommon among conspiracy theorists, who often believe that simply making any claim (or set of claims) in contrast to the prevailing narrative is enough to demand credibility. So there's no point in requiring her to put all her various claims together into one coherent whole. She won't and doesn't see a need to.

In the real world, a plausible alternative must be consistent and must explain more observation with fewer assumptions than the narrative it's trying to replace. Not only can Vixen not do this, she doesn't see why such an approach would be necessary. She's fully down the conspiracy rat hole.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

No amount of analogizing or handwaving converts witness inference into evidence. If no witness actually saw the ship collide with something then no amount of second-guessing or analogizing or comparison or creates evidence that the hypothesized collision (i.e., with a surface vessel or submarine, as the conspiracy theorists claimed) actually occurred.

You claim there was witness testimony to a collision. The witnesses testified to sounds they heard, and motions of the ship that they experienced. No witness actually witness ed a collision.

You claim the JAIC ignored witness testimony to a collision. Since there was none, the JAIC did no such thing. However, the JAIC did discuss witness testimony that has been interpreted later (and incorrectly) by conspiracy theorists as evidence of a collision. The JAIC presented physical evidence that the bow visor detached and fell away, and that it struck the bulbous bow. The subsequent actions of the ship pushing the detached bow visor out of the way creates (a) sudden increase in hydrodynamic drag, and (b) scraping or grinding as the bow visor falls away to the left or right. The JAIC has fully and properly harmonized the relevant evidence.

Smelling burning toast can also indicate you're having a stroke. As an example of how divergent perception and cause can be.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Smelling burning toast can also indicate you're having a stroke. As an example of how divergent perception and cause can be.

I was just gonna suggest crumbs in the toaster...

 

[Andy_Ross]

NONE of her CT ideas on why the Estonia sinking would've resulted in a sudden deceleration of the Estonia. Yet her own witness evidence, that is supposedly being ignored, supports a sudden deceleration.

Or the bows pitched down suddenly

 

[P.J. Denyer]

I was just gonna suggest crumbs in the toaster...

A great example of how we can misinterpret the most familiar of situations.

 

[JayUtah]

I'm not qualified to judge how accurate that figure is, but I'm sure Jay can tell us if it's in the right order of magnitude. I'm sure it's closer to the correct value than 15kg though.

Yes, 64 tonnes is a plausible value for the mass of a significant portion of a ship's bow. I should add that even those of us who do this for a living make this sort of mistake all the time. It's just natural when you're flinging around lots of numbers with lots of SI units and lots of prefixes. It's even worse when we have to work in legacy designs that use EES units. This is why my company has full-time technical editors that review all our documents and drawings looking for exactly that sort of thing. No one person gets it right all the time, including me.

The funniest was one in which a junior engineer transcribed a whiteboard sketch that in which a certain electrical power specification was annotated as 20 mW, but due to the sketcher's handwriting looked an awful lot like like 20 MW and got transcribed that way because the engineer didn't really know the context and didn't recognize it as an absurd amount. I was amused by how long far that made it through the editing process. (Luckily we photograph all our whiteboards after meetings.)

[Aside.​

Also in deference to usage by other highly knowledgeable and qualified people, I will note that while SI doesn't specify whether a space should appear between the numerical quantity and the unit, NIST does. American engineers and scientists working in SI must properly introduce a space. For temperatures this annoys the [bleep] out of me, because now we have to say 72 °F and 22 °C, but still 295 K. If you remember my lecture on how we got primes notation, the ° is an Italian ordinal superscript (e.g., 22 °C = ventisecondo grado di temperatura Celsius or 22^o grado di..., 3^me arrondissement in France's visitor-hostile method of dividing Paris) and really properly belongs attached to the numerals. So I'll continue to write "15 kg" while understanding that "15kg" is acceptable and even required elsewhere.​

Clearly if Vixen wants to pursue the insinuation that the bow visor's mass was inconsequential and thus its striking the ship on its own journey to the seafloor shouldn't be considered to explain the witness testimony, she'll have to supply a credible value for the structuring including the units. Here's where we see whether this is just another example of her refusal to admit error.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Yes, 64 tonnes is a plausible value for the mass of a significant portion of a ship's bow. I should add that even those of us who do this for a living make this sort of mistake all the time. It's just natural when you're flinging around lots of numbers with lots of SI units and lots of prefixes. It's even worse when we have to work in legacy designs that use EES units. This is why my company has full-time technical editors that review all our documents and drawings looking for exactly that sort of thing. No one person gets it right all the time, including me.

The funniest was one in which a junior engineer transcribed a whiteboard sketch that in which a certain electrical power specification was annotated as 20 mW, but due to the sketcher's handwriting looked an awful lot like like 20 MW and got transcribed that way because the engineer didn't really know the context and didn't recognize it as an absurd amount. I was amused by how long far that made it through the editing process. (Luckily we photograph all our whiteboards after meetings.)

[Aside.​

Also in deference to usage by other highly knowledgeable and qualified people, I will note that while SI doesn't specify whether a space should appear between the numerical quantity and the unit, NIST does. American engineers and scientists working in SI must properly introduce a space. For temperatures this annoys the [bleep] out of me, because now we have to say 72 °F and 22 °C, but still 295 K. If you remember my lecture on how we got primes notation, the ° is an Italian ordinal superscript (e.g., 22 °C = ventisecondo grado di temperatura Celsius or 22^o grado di..., 3^me arrondissement in France's visitor-hostile method of dividing Paris) and really properly belongs attached to the numerals. So I'll continue to write "15 kg" while understanding that "15kg" is acceptable and even required elsewhere.​

Clearly if Vixen wants to pursue the insinuation that the bow visor's mass was inconsequential and thus its striking the ship on its own journey to the seafloor shouldn't be considered to explain the witness testimony, she'll have to supply a credible value for the structuring including the units. Here's where we see whether this is just another example of her refusal to admit error.

This is a remarkably generous post, I hope it's appreciated. I would say though that after the last debacle, getting units & conversions wrong to get contradictory values for the same speed in a needlessly complicated expansion of a one step conversion from knots to mph in order to compare with a maximum speed figure that was in knots anyway... Well, lets just say that to follow that up, after it's been pointed out, with an error of that magnitude is really indicative of how seriously she takes this subject.

 

[malbui]

Circular reasoning.

Circular, yes.

Reasoning, I have my doubts.

 

[Axxman300]

For someone to be able to definitively judge - just by feel - if the ship they're on has collided with something that person would have to have been present on many other ships that have both had collisions, and have had their massive bow visors get knocked loose in storms, bang the hull, and fall off.

That person would have to experience these events from multiple locations onboard the ships, as sound, and internal structure will dictate what is heard, and felt depending on where a person is standing at the moment of impact.

Now if your PhD witness has in fact been present in multiple ship collisions then he is a good source. Otherwise, he just heard something in rough seas, and made an assumption. They have surveyed the ship twice now, and guess what? It sank because the bow visor came off, ripping the car ramp open.

End of story.

 

[Vixen]

Citation asked for repeatedly over the years and never delivered. This is fiction. Bildt declined to speculate. You know this and you have nothing to gainsay it.

I have provided the newspaper interview in Helsingin Sanomat dated 29.9.1994, of which Kari Lehtola was the chairman and spokesperson and he clearly spells it out. What is it you do not accept about this press conference interview?

 

[lobosrul5]

For someone to be able to definitively judge - just by feel - if the ship they're on has collided with something that person would have to have been present on many other ships that have both had collisions, and have had their massive bow visors get knocked loose in storms, bang the hull, and fall off.

That person would have to experience these events from multiple locations onboard the ships, as sound, and internal structure will dictate what is heard, and felt depending on where a person is standing at the moment of impact.

Now if your PhD witness has in fact been present in multiple ship collisions then he is a good source. Otherwise, he just heard something in rough seas, and made an assumption. They have surveyed the ship twice now, and guess what? It sank because the bow visor came off, ripping the car ramp open.

End of story.

No sir, he was working on a PhD so he knows everything, about everything. There is no experience he has not had in which he cannot make 100% accurate inference as to the exact cause. He is the alpha and the omega! And if he felt a collision it meant that a cargo fire sunk the MS Estonia dammit!

 

[Mojo]

Read the reports for yourself.

Quote and link to the eye witness reports of a collision, and I'll read them.

But you can't, can you? Because your claim that there are eye witness reports of a collision is a lie.

 

[KDLarsen]

I suppose on the bright side, this trainwreck of a thread has at least caused me to go back and revisit some of the remarkable stories from that night. There's a Swedish TV documentary on Youtube with some remarkable stories, and I happened across an article in the Atlantic detailing some stories I hadn't heard before.

 

[Mojo]

And, because Vixen has almost certainly forgotten how we got here, here she is saying that nobody could have seen a collision but maintaining her claim that there were eye witness reports of it.

He said he thought there had been a collision. You are not going to be able to see anything (a) in the dark and (b) lower than the side of the ship.


Be sensible.

You're the one who claimed that there were eye witness reports of a collision, and that the JAIC had "never dealt with" them.

Are you now withdrawing that claim?

Read the reports for yourself.

 

[Vixen]

What we know about the location of the MV Estonia Wreck

Aim

Here I plan to show how the disaster of MV Estonia could have been a well-planned militarily precise operation, by looking at the location where the catastrophe unfolded by use of precise coordinates.

MV Estonia’s journey

MV Estonia started off from Tallinn, following along the coast at 262°, W, at 19 kn full speed.

(NB: 270°= W. 360° = N )

So, it is travelling pretty much due westwards until the waypoint at 59°20’ to the Söderarm route, where it turns a gentle angle of 25° to bear 287° (WNW) for its remaining major course. If you look at the coordinates, barely heads north at all, just 2’ = 2nm before it is wrecked.

59° 45' 00" N, 19° 24' 00" E Söderarm coordinates
59°22,9´ N, 21°41,0´ E Estonia Wreck coordinates
73 nm

Waypoint 59°20’ = 2.9' = 3nm


59° 26' 13'', 24° 45' 13'' E Tallinn coordinates
59°22,9´ N, 21°41,0´ E Estonia Wreck coordinates
94 nm
=======================’
59° 45' 00" N, 19° 24' 00" E Söderarm AB coordinates
59° 26' 13'', 24° 45' 13'' E Tallinn coordinates
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
163nm



Frihamnen coordinates (the final port after the Swedish archipelago).

59°20'34"N 18°7'21"E

Frihamnen 109 nm from wreck Tallinn 94 nm

Diff Midpoint
Frihamnen 109 nm from wreck; Tallinn 94 nm: Full distance 202; half way point 101nm diff 15 nm
Söderarm 73nm from wreck; Tallinn 94 nm: Full distance 163nm; halfway point 83nm diff 21nm
Tallinn to Frihammen 202 nm
Tallinn to Söderarm 163 nm
Official length of route 173 nm midpoint 86.5
With Frihammnen +54 227 nm midpoint 113.5

As can be seen, in the Frihamnen route, the wreck is 8 nm and 7nm either side of the midway point.

In the Söderarm route it is 10 nm and 11 nm either side of midpoint.

In the official length of route, 173 nm, the midpoint is 86.5nm. MV Estonia is 94nm from Tallinn so just 7.5nm away.

If we include the further 54nm for it to reach Frihamnen* on the official route (173nm + 54nm), the midpoint is 113.5 nm. The MV Estonia wreck at 94nm is just 19.5 nm away from midpoint.

International Waters

As can be seen from this map here, the International Waters between Estonia-Finland-Sweden commence at the 59°. The MV Estonia wreck lies at 59°22,9´ N, 21°41,0´ E, just 23 nm over the boundary. Another chance fact, or precise advance planning?

International waters boundary by Username Vixen, on Flickr


Source: http://iilss.net/maritime-boundaries-between-finland-and-estonia/

Conclusion

If the disaster of MV Estonia was a preplanned military operation, then it happened within a precise window. At 01:00am (Swedish Midnight) and within a very tight window of between 15 nm to 40 nm, or, 15 nm to 21 nm if we disregard the Frihammen lap - bearing in mind a sea is not like a hard physical road, but is subject to the travails of wind and waves.


Notes: 1 ° = 60 nautical miles. 1’ = 1 nm.

Distance calculator used: https://stevemorse.org/nearest/distance.php

Rounded up to nearest 2-digit minutes, seconds disregarded.

*Would a would-be saboteur have factored in the Frihamnen route, given it would have reached Sweden already at Söderarm?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I have provided the newspaper interview in Helsingin Sanomat dated 29.9.1994, of which Kari Lehtola was the chairman and spokesperson and he clearly spells it out. What is it you do not accept about this press conference interview?

I do not accept it says what you claimed. i.e. It does not quote Bildt saying it was the design of the bow visor which caused the disaster.

 

[Vixen]

But that doesn't mean that there was a collision.

They felt something, they presumed that it was a collision based upon previous experience, but that doesn't mean their assumption is correct.

I didn't say it did mean that.