The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

[Vixen]

That conviction is incompatible with their being military trucks loaded at the last moment onto the Estonia. At Tallin, the Estonia loaded at the bow, so these mythical trucks would have been at the wrong end of the ship.

Ovberg and Hedrenius witnessing the trucks going on last doesn't preclude others going on first!

Criminal activity does tend to be covert and not flaunted.

 

[JayUtah]

I doubt a scientist could bend the results.

But you're not a scientist, so your inexperienced opinion isn't evidence.

Normally there will be a set statistical significance level...

No, this has nothing to do with forensic engineering. Thanks for playing.

 

[Vixen]

They weren't.

Found by magic and snatched from the sea, at night, in a storm, without any other rescuers even noticing the mystery helicopter, in a secret mission put together in minutes flat?

It's a loony tunes idea. Completely potty.

The captain is always the one person arrested in this type of accident. It happened with the Costa Concordia, Bow Belle, Herald of Free Enterprise, Park Victory.

Yet the JAIC are peculiarly completely uncurious as to the fate of Captain Arvo Andresson or his whereabouts and doings as of the time leading up to the accident.

As Kari Lehtola airily told Hesari, he leaves the criminal stuff to the police.

So what we are left with is the Cult of the Bow Visor for the plebs at home.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Whoa! We don't know why evidence of explosives is there, only the objective signifiers, and it is not just Braidwood & Fellows together with the reports of Institute for Materials Testing and Materials Technology Dr. Dölling + Dr. Neubert GmbH, The Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU), with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) labs equivocal. But also a more recent expert metallurgist in Dr Ida Westermann who conducted her own analysis on a different specimen of the bow visor at a different time.

It is always possible that the presence of explosive materials points to the prior presence of the military. Swedish naval divers were pottering around there after the sinking and their reports have remained classified and not shared with the JAIC, and to the annoyance of Estonian advocates.

The image seen by Braidwood for example in one of their released official videos was later mysteriously edited out once Braidwood had pointed the image out as looking like an explosives device.

What 'explosive materials'?

This is new!

It doesn't look like an explosive device.

 

[Andy_Ross]

It would depend on your intention, ability, access to explosives and desired outcome.

If a military operative you would possibly place explosive devices in several different areas, as they do not always go off as planned.

If you are a robber you might place a few explosives around a safe with the sole intention of grabbing whatever you think the contents were.

Were you a hostile military operative working in a team and your aim was to destroy the vessel you would almost certainly attack on more than one front to be certain the job is done.

You are just making stuff up again.

 

[JayUtah]

But also a more recent expert metallurgist in Dr Ida Westermann who conducted her own analysis on a different specimen of the bow visor at a different time.

No. When asked, Prof. Westermann explicitly denied that her findings supported the conclusion that explosives were used.

The image seen by Braidwood for example in one of their released official videos was later mysteriously edited out once Braidwood had pointed the image out as looking like an explosives device.

It doesn't look like an explosive device.

 

[JayUtah]

So what we are left with is the Cult of the Bow Visor for the plebs at home.

This "cult" is the version currently upheld by the entire engineering and shipping community, confirmed by two full-scale investigations.

Your version comes from disgraced crackpots and an apologia whose source materials I have to order from some Finnish web site.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Ovberg and Hedrenius witnessing the trucks going on last doesn't preclude others going on first!

Criminal activity does tend to be covert and not flaunted.

Are there now two sets of trucks?
One set going on first and another last?

 

[JayUtah]

We cannot second guess what the evidence of explosives signifies...

What do you think it means? You're the one presenting the evidence.

other than draw inferences from their relative positions, which coincidently are near the bow visor locks.

There's no coincidence about it. If those were the only places sampled and the only samples sent to the laboratory, you can draw no logical inference that relies upon the significance of the location of the samples.

The intention may not necessarily have been to sink the ship. Harri Ruotsalainen who was a naval intern who saw the sonar printouts at the time, is convinced someone (crew? smugglers? mafia types? saboteurs?) opened the back car ramp and got rid of two to four trucks...

This has nothing to do with explosives allegedly placed at the bow ramp.

The presence of explosive might be historical and have nothing to do with 28 Sept 1994. All we know for sure is that reputable metallurgy laboratories in Germany, USA and Norway confirm results compatible with a localised high velocity explosive with one laboratory not able to confirm it one way or another.

Actually they don't, if you read the summaries provided by Braidwood and his ham-fisted handling of them. I've addressed that, and for the second time in this thread you've simply let it pass in silence. You've admitted you don't know metallurgy, so while you brag that you've slogged through all 200 pages of the original lab reports, I can't imagine you understood a single word of any of it. It doesn't seem to have helped you put my commentary in a more proper perspective.

Sure, I can try to figure out how to get a 20 € book shipped from Finland and spend a week reading those original reports. But if you can't even address a single paragraph quoted from them and badly interpreted by your boy Braidwood, where do you think the discussion will go?

Tell you what: you photograph or scan the "Findings" sections of each of those reports and post them here, up to five pages from each report so it's not too onerous. Those should only be a few pages at most, since most of any such report will—as you note—be supporting data and relatively uninteresting. Tell me in your own words what you think those findings suggest in terms of evidence for explosives as a cause for the sinking of MS Estonia. If you can satisfy me on that basis that you're competent to discuss the findings of the independent labs, then I'll figure out how to order the book. That seems fair to me.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Ovberg and Hedrenius witnessing the trucks going on last doesn't preclude others going on first!

Criminal activity does tend to be covert and not flaunted.

So it's decoy trucks now? Or are you just giving up on your insistence that military trucks full of Soviet contraband arrived last, escorted and very far from covertly?

 

[GlennB]

So it's decoy trucks now? Or are you just giving up on your insistence that military trucks full of Soviet contraband arrived last, escorted and very far from covertly?

Nah, it's Vixenesque crap slapped on to disguise previous crap. Except now the layer of crap is thicker.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The captain is always the one person arrested in this type of accident.

But he wasn't arrested.

Your bonkers tale has the Swedes pull a daring mission-impossible-style snatch plot out of their arses in no minutes flat the very moment they learned the ship was in trouble.

You somehow imagine they had a helicopter full of henchmen standing by to fly out to sea at night at the drop of a hat and somehow find a ship in trouble and locate specific people and spirit them away without anyone else noticing. It's cartoonishly insane.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Nah, it's Vixenesque crap slapped on to disguise previous crap. Except now the layer of crap is thicker.

You noticed too?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I never said they weren't. What point do you think i was making, exactly?

.

Well Vixen? You never replied to me.

 

[Axxman300]

Whoa! We don't know why evidence of explosives is there, only the objective signifiers, and it is not just Braidwood & Fellows together with the reports of Institute for Materials Testing and Materials Technology Dr. Dölling + Dr. Neubert GmbH, The Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU), with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) labs equivocal. But also a more recent expert metallurgist in Dr Ida Westermann who conducted her own analysis on a different specimen of the bow visor at a different time.

They are wrong. Period.

I know this because that bow visor has been in storage in Sweden for 29 years. Easily accessible, and yet not one other team, researcher, or casual observer has ever noted evidence of shape charge damage. And they raised the ramp this year in full view of 4K video cameras. Again, even after 29 years there are no signs of explosives anywhere on that structure, while the ramp shows damage consistent with being forced open by the weight of the bow visor as it was wrenched loose, and tore away from the hull.

You can play looney tunes all you want, but the physical evidence is on shore, and is reviewable at leisure. All the damage to both pieces is consistent with structural failure due to high seas, and unsound sailing decisions, and likely poor maintenance.

This new investigation is going way beyond the normal parameters in order to full explain as many aspects of their findings as scientifically possible, to the extent they're going to carbon-date the rock samples drilled from the bottom (which to my knowledge no other investigation has ever felt the need to do). The preliminary computer animations are state of the art, and the final product with be illuminating.

The only people who will have a problem with the new investigation will be the same people who had a problem with the old one. And that's their failure.

 

[Axxman300]

If a military operative you would possibly place explosive devices in several different areas, as they do not always go off as planned.

Wait, what about "Military Precision"? You mean military hardware sometimes fails? I better call my Congressman, this is shocking news. Shocking, I say!

But since Andy_Ross was in the RN, and hence a "military operative", why would one of his counterparts do anything different than what he stated as being the best/easiest way to put a ship on the bottom? They don't just hand explosives to any one, training is required, and not just the safe use of the materials, but what kind of charge to use, and placement.

If you are a robber you might place a few explosives around a safe with the sole intention of grabbing whatever you think the contents were.

No. If you're an idiot, yes. But no.

There are plenty of ways to crack a safe without explosives, depending on the safe. Some safes can't be opened without explosives without destroying the contents. And more burglars will steal the safe to open it later with tools, not explosives. I can't overstate what a big deal explosives are in the real world, and how experts don't just slap them on doors, and locks like refrigerator magnets. I've watched EOD crews work at Fort Ord clearing old munitions. There is no screwing around.

Were you a hostile military operative working in a team and your aim was to destroy the vessel you would almost certainly attack on more than one front to be certain the job is done.

If you're a hostile military team, wouldn't it be smarter to just find the truck, and hide in that truck, wait until the ship reaches port, kill the driver, and put the truck on the next ferry back to Estonia? Or track down the smuggler to his cabin, quietly kill him, and recover the whatchymacallit, instead of sinking the ship...that you're currently on...sailing in bad weather...?

How are you from the same island as the SBS, and James Bond?

 

[JayUtah]

And they raised the ramp this year in full view of 4K video cameras. Again, even after 29 years there are no signs of explosives anywhere on that structure, while the ramp shows damage consistent with being forced open by the weight of the bow visor as it was wrenched loose, and tore away from the hull.

Correct: an entire album of very high resolution photographs was posted. The car ramp has been photographed in enough detail to verify whether damage consistent with explosives occurred. It has not. And no, microscopic metallurgical examination of selected samples is not the sine qua non of such analysis. If you look through your microscope and see a particular crystal distribution, one of whose causes is high strain rate deformation, then you don't just pack it up there. When you look at the actual giant chunk of steel and you see that no part of it has been deformed at any strain rate, you should be thinking of the other ways in which those crystal arrangements form.

And yes, we can reject the findings of Braidwood and the scientists he contracted without calling them "frauds." Metallurgy is not some sort of magically dispositive mode of analysis, superior to all else.

The "German group of experts" had the job of injecting just enough fog into the analysis to suggest that causes other than failure of the ship should be considered, so that Meyer Werft wouldn't come out of the investigation looking too bad. Hiring a known explosives guy (but not an expert in general shipbuilding failure analysis) got them a serviceable result: they took a few isolated metal samples and looked at them under a microscope and found something they could plausibly say could come from explosives. What a surprise.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

"Indicator X could signify A or maybe B"

"It's B!"

"Well, no. We've also done a different study and there's no sign of B at all, and it would be really obvious so it's A"

"But this person who knows B says it's indicative of B!"

"Well yes, but it's equally indicative of A and the rest of the evidence shows that A is extremely likely and B is impossible"

"But my expert says B, so it's B"

"But your expert is ignoring all the other evidence. Indeed they're hyper focusing on one small thing that could be A OR B and just claiming it's B despite everything else showing it isn't"

"My expert is a good man! He says it's B! You wouldn't be accusing him of being dishonest would you?"

"Well yes, he's deliberately ignoring the mountain of evidence against B and focusing entirely on one thing that might suggest B. That's dishonest"

"But he's an expert in B! He says it's B so it's B."

and on and on...

 

[SpitfireIX]

As for the first thing the M is for Motor vessel, the S is for steam. I have come across a few common variations. MV for Motor Vessel, MS for Motor Ship, SS for Steam Ship, ST for Steam Turbine and TT for Twin Turbine.
There aren't any steam ships left in regular service They died out in the late 70s when big diesels started giving comparable power and fuel costs went up. Steam lasted in warships a bit longer where economics weren't as important as total power available for a given installation size.
There used to be RMS named ships, it stood for Royal Mail Ship and denoted they held a contract to carry fast international mail. They were usually big, fast liners. They disappeared when long distance air services got more able to carry larger cargo loads.

Actually, there are a handful of oil-fired steamships left on the Great Lakes, including the SS Arthur M. Anderson, which was famously the last vessel to communicate with the Edmund Fitzgerald. For those unfamiliar, ships that only operate in fresh water can last up to a century, as they're not subjected to saltwater corrosion.

 

[Andy_Ross]

They are what I would call 'heritage ' ships rather than viable commercial vessels. There are a number that still sail around the UK coast. There hasn't been a company producing marine, high pressure steam boilers or turbine sets for decades. There are specialists who will repair and refurbish existing stuff though. I suppose if you had the money you could comission a one off boiler but I don't know where you would get a turbine set.