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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part II

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Vixen said:
It goes to show that people with likely far more expertise in t hese matters than London John did think a mine was possible. This was 3 Oct 1994 and James Meek for the GUARDIAN reported it.

It is no more and no less conjecture that Carl Bildt's claim on the date of the accident itself saying it 'must have been the bow visor falling off'.
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To be fair to London John, I don't think any shops have been lost to mine in that region since, so perhaps the odds were slim.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
Vixen said:
It goes to show that people with likely far more expertise in t hese matters than London John did think a mine was possible. This was 3 Oct 1994 and James Meek for the GUARDIAN reported it.

It is no more and no less conjecture that Carl Bildt's claim on the date of the accident itself saying it 'must have been the bow visor falling off'.
Click to expand...

Bildt's claim has the merit of referring to something known to actually exist: The bow visor. Mines in the Baltic shipping lanes are not known to exist.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Which 'entire phone network'?

How did Russia take down the entire phone network?
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Communication problems on the night of the incident:

  • When Viking Mariella and Silja Europa got the May Day from Estline Estonia, they used VHF Channel 16 to alert Finland Coastguards but *there was no reply*.
  • The two ships then used Channel 2182 which covers the entire Baltic: *again, no answer*.
  • After a while of no response, they had to *pull out their mobile phones* and call the rescue centres on their landlines.
  • Nearby Russia, likewise, which is linked to the US-Russian COPSAS-SARSAT satellite system that picks up emergency beacon signals and sends the location, *picked up NOTHING*.
  • This is because the EPIRB buoys which are designed to activate in an emergency such as sinking *had been switched off*, against all convention.
  • It was Werner Hummel, a reputable marine professional, who said the entire phone network was down from 1:02 to 1:58. The ship vanished off the radar at 1:52.
  • Finnish Rear Admiral Heimo Iivonen believes the Russians had a continuous signal jamming from Hoagland Island (Suursaari) which interfered with Channel 16 - the International Distress Channel.
  • On this occasion, it had been going on for at least a month.
  • An American Estonian from New Jersey brought the issue up in Parliament 1994 and called for a Russian explanation.


So, together with the passengers reporting a series of bangs going off at Swedish midnight and an extremely rapid sinking (cf USS Cole which never sank at all despite 700lbs of explosives and two suicide bombers in a small boat) there are questions that need to be answered but never were. There was third mate Tammes desperately trying to send a May Day, albeit rather late in the day and he was forced to call back with the coordinates as the GPS was down! He had to call back with Kaunusaar calling out the coordinates in the background, which Tammes misrepeated a couple of times.

Of the people who made it out to the deck, 300 or so, maybe two hundred of them would not have died of drowning and hyperthermia had the communications network functioned as it should, even if 700 were doomed anyway below deck.
 
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phiwum said:
To be fair to London John, I don't think any shops have been lost to mine in that region since, so perhaps the odds were slim.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
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Not all car ferries have bow visors. So wow, a double whammy with both the visor and the car ramp falling off/open. All thanks to a few strong waves. Who knew the Baltic was such a raging leviathan.
 
Vixen said:
It goes to show that people with likely far more expertise in t hese matters than London John did think a mine was possible. This was 3 Oct 1994 and James Meek for the GUARDIAN reported it.
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I googled James Meek. I cannot find any evidence that he is an expert in nautical matters.

It is no more and no less conjecture that Carl Bildt's claim on the date of the accident itself saying it 'must have been the bow visor falling off'.
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At the original point Bildt made the claim, yes. However, the dive on the ship strongly supports his conjecture.
 
Vixen said:
Communication problems on the night of the incident:

  • When Viking Mariella and Silja Europa got the May Day from Estline Estonia, they used VHF Channel 16 to alert Finland Coastguards *there was no reply*
  • The two ships then used Channel 2182 which covers the entire Baltic: *again, no answer*
  • After a while of no response, they had to *pull out their mobile phones* and call the resuce centres on the landlines.
  • Nearrby Russia, likewise, which is linked to the US-Russian COPSAS-SARSAT satelite system that picks up emergency beacon signals and sneds the location picked up NOTHING.
  • This is because the EPIRB buoys which are designed to activate in an emergency such as sinking *had been switched off* against all convention.
  • It was Werner Hummel, a reputable marine professional, who said the entire phone network was down from 1:02 to 1:58. The ship vanished off the radar at 1:52.
  • Finnish Rear Admiral Heimo Iivonen believes the Russians had a continuous signal jamming from Hoagland Island (Suursaari) which interfered with Channel 16 - the International Distress Channel.
  • On this occasion it had been going on for at least a month
  • An American Estonian from New Jersey brought the issue up in Parliament 1994 and called for a Russian explanation.
Click to expand...

The Estonia's EPIRB buoys were of the type that had to be activated manually. Regulations were subsequently written requiring ships to keep a type that automatically deploy if a ship sinks.

If the entire phone network went down, how was the call via mobile phone completed??

The supposed jamming had been going on for a month? Are you suggesting the Russians planned an attack on the Estonia for an entire month? And that they jammed channel 16 so that perhaps fewer people would survive which accomplishes what exactly??
 
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theprestige said:
You think the Estonia's bow visor is something I made up?
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Not all car ferries have bow visors so the bow visor is not the essential plug you appear to believe it is.


The Estonia does have a whopping great hole in the starboard. Er, the Behemoth in the room. How long can you pretend not to have noticed it?
 
lobosrul5 said:
The Estonia's EPRIB buoys were of the type that had to be activated manually. Regulations were subsequently written requiring ships to keep a type that automatically deploy if a ship sinks.

If the entire phone network went down, how was the call via mobile phone completed??
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I am guessing one of those hand-held jobs that are really landline phones recharged to be carried around. This was 1994, remember!!!
 
Vixen said:
It was Werner Hummel, a reputable marine professional, who said the entire phone network was down from 1:02 to 1:58.
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Why would a marine professional be considered an expert in telephony? His reputation is irrelevant; the question of whether a service was or was not available is a purely factual matter. What evidence does he present for the claim, and where may we view it?
 
Vixen said:
The Estonia does have a whopping great hole in the starboard. Er, the Behemoth in the room. How long can you pretend not to have noticed it?
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It also has a misplaced visor. There is evidence that the visor departed the ship while it was yet on the surface. There is no evidence that the hole in the starboard side was made while the ship was still on the surface. Piles upon piles of conjecture, yes, but no evidence.
 
Vixen said:
I am guessing one of those hand-held jobs that are really landline phones recharged to be carried around. This was 1994, remember!!!
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Really a landline phone... are you suggesting it was a cordless phone? That would require Estonia to have a phone line spooled and connected to the shore. But how would that bypass the "entire phone network" being down :confused:
 
lobosrul5 said:
The Estonia's EPIRB buoys were of the type that had to be activated manually. Regulations were subsequently written requiring ships to keep a type that automatically deploy if a ship sinks.

If the entire phone network went down, how was the call via mobile phone completed??

The supposed jamming had been going on for a month? Are you suggesting the Russians planned an attack on the Estonia for an entire month? And that they jammed channel 16 so that perhaps fewer people would survive which accomplishes what exactly??
Click to expand...

Citation please for your claim about Estonia's EPIRB buoys. These buoys are always 'switched on' as it were, so that should they touch the surface of the sea, their GPS signal is activated. There is no reason to 'switch them off' and a manual 'switching on' in distress is not necessary as they are designed to activate themselves.

For the record the radio and telecommunications was the old system in 1994, which was replaced in 1999.

Re the EPIRB buoys:

In both systems, the radio equipment on board a vessel also includes an emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB). The EPIRB is a small radio buoy of “float-free” structure. If the vessel sinks, the buoy is released, rises to the surface and begins to transmit a distress alert. Three (or two) portable VHF radiotelephones are also required. They can accompany the lifeboats or liferafts when the vessel is abandoned.
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Re radio and telecommunications:

In the old system the radio station on board a vessel may be either a radiotelegraph station or a radiotelephone station. The international distress and safety frequencies are: 500 kHz for radiotelegraphy and 2182 kHz and VHF channel 16 for radiotelephony. In a radiotelegraph station all these frequencies are required and a vessel must carry a radio officer holding a radiotelegraph operator's certificate. For radiotelephone stations the telephone frequencies are required and the station is operated by deck officers holding a radiotelephone operator's general certificate (GOC).
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https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt07_1.html
 
lobosrul5 said:
Really a landline phone... are you suggesting it was a cordless phone? That would require Estonia to have a phone line spooled and connected to the shore. But how would that bypass the "entire phone network" being down :confused:
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Werner Hummel makes that claim.

'Mobile phone' was obviously not the right word as I am not sure they were in general use at the time. 'Hand held phone' is the correct term.
 
Vixen said:
You seemed to be claiming that whilst it was perfectly normal for a ship to sink by bow visor, a mine OTOH would be most unusual.

Are you sure you have your sense of probabilities in perspective?
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I agree with his sense of perspective. It is far more probable in my estimation for a ship to perish by accident than by a sea mine in a heavily-traveled area.
 
Vixen said:
I am guessing one of those hand-held jobs that are really landline phones recharged to be carried around. This was 1994, remember!!!
Click to expand...

A landline. On a ship.

Of course, back in the '90s all ships trailed physical telephone lines back to their home port. The kids these days with their whiffy and whatnot, they don't understand. Still, at least it was an improvement over the 1980s, when they only had old baked bean cans and a length of string.
 
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