The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Andy_Ross]

Thanks for the info. However, I already said: Obviously the damage to the USS Cole is far greater than that seen on the Estonia.

So why did this small ho9le above the waterline cause the ship to sink so quickly?

Why does it not look like explosion damage?

Why is it above the waterline?

If the hole sank the ship why do you mention explosives supposedly blowing the bow visor off?

Why bother with a hijacking and shooting the captain?

Pick a story and stick to it.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Most of the other survivors had to jump off and into the sea to avoid going down with the ship in its concurrent whirlpool sucking them down in its wake.

What 'whirlpool' would that be?

 

[Axxman300]

Where do you get '4 out of 50' from?

From this link you continue to quote.

Interestingly:

http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb576311/factgroup/est/visorfind.html

Yet at the bottom of the page they say this:

It is also interesting to note that the later and official video of the visor filmed at the seabed the 18th of October is named "visiri". Tuomo Karppinen and others have claimed that it is due to the fact that they did not know the true meaning of "visiri" used this name when they did mean "ramp".

They were talking about the ramp, not the visor.

And this:

If the visor was found earlier and also removed from the Estonia it has not been possible yet to find evidence for such activities other than shown in earlier Fact Group reports

Which means they have no evidence the visor was still attached to Estonia when she sank.

If you recall, Lehtola claimed the visor had been found, in his memo of 8 October 1994 and then retracted it 9 October 1994, saying it hadn't been found and was still missing.

He obviously thought they had found it. And then corrected himself. Because information changes in the days following a disaster as facts are collected. Not all sonar is created equal, and some sonar operators are better than others.

It is a fact that the initial reports following such an event, official and otherwise, are often wrong.

The explanation given is that the Finns had mistakenly referred to the car ramp as the 'visori'. (This does have a faint ring of truth as Finnish is nothing like other languages and they will take a foreign word and simply Finnish-ify it by adding an 'i'. For example, a senior becomes a 'seniori' or a pub a 'pubbi'.)

It IS the truth.

Just as the correct name is HOOD, not visor.

 

[Axxman300]

How can it be a 'simple chain of events' if

1. There was significant damage to the starboard compatible with a collision

1. 
   
   The starboard side crack would not have been visible to divers in 1994 due to the angle of the ship as she rested on the sea floor. The only reason a few years back is because the ship's list had shifted allowing physical access.
   
   The fact the crack is on the seams of the hull plating suggests a stress fracture combined with impact with the sea floor.
   
   

   All fo the senior crew ere missing - the divers saw three bodies on the bridge and could have brought them up for ID, given a diver reporting a ptoential crime scene.

   
   Spolier alert: They're still on the ship.
   
   And though incompetence should be a crime, Estonia was an accident scene.
   
   

   34 out of the 79 passenger survivors describe bangs and sensations of collisions, as of the time of the accident.

   
   Which is compatible with the hood getting knocked loose, and then knocked off by large waves.
   
   
   

   At least two passengers indicate they noticed something seeming to glide away in the water (Reintaam; Barney.)

   
   Weird, almost as if materials on the Estonia's decks had been somehow washed overboard as the ship rolled in the storm.
   
   

   All of these issues could have been cleared up by the JAIC and then we wouldn't be having all of these frantic rumour mills.

   
   Some people are spreading rumors, most are not. And they're re-investigating the wreck, and all you are doing is help cloud the air with wild speculation that will inevitably set up the next round of conspiracy theories when a certain fringe is not happy with the outcome...as always.

 

[LondonJohn]

Paul Barney said he contacted the relevant department to enquire the reasons for the UK signing the Estonia Gravesite Treaty and had no reply. That is why he thinks MI6 is involved as it appears to be classified information. Graham Phillips appears to have followed Barney's lead, having interviewed him for his film yet doesn't seem to have had better luck.

Nothing to do with 'brightness'.

I'll repeat:

The person who made the FOI request to the Foreign Office got all the information he/she had requested back in reply: there was a link to the document explaining how/why the UK had acceded to the treaty, and a suggestion of who to ask if the person required any info on the ongoing UK-side management of the situation.

Then, whoever made the second request to the DfT, they clearly didn't understand that 1) the FCDO had in fact already answered the question about how/why the UK acceded, and 2) the matter of the how/why of the UK's accession was nothing to do with the DfT. So yes, whoever made that second request to DfT - given that it appears they already knew about the response to the first request to FCDO - was not particularly bright.

Now, you keep telling us that Barney sees something necessarily sinister in not being able to get answers re "the UK Parliament not having voted on the treaty" and so on. And i'm telling you once again: this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality: this was all covered off under previous Acts of (UK) Parliament which provided/provide for the UK to accede to these very simple types of treaty without having to go back to Parliament for approval each and every time.

So in a very real sense - if (and it's a big if, I realise) what you say about Barney's position on all this is correct - Barney is indeed not being very bright when it comes to his (mis)understanding of the situation wrt things being laid before Parliament. And those who advocate for Barney on this matter are similarly lacking in brightness.

 

[JesseCuster]

Andi Meister's book 'the Unfinished Log Book'. Andi Meister was the Head of the JAIC, leading Sweden, Finland and Estonia.

In summary this would explain the three bodies as found by the divers, viz.

1) close to the door leading out to the aft on port side, across the door leading to the inside stairway.
2) inside the chart room without further details.
3) in the starboard wing below the broken loose flagbox.

The above is revealed from the voice communication between two divers and the supervisors on board the SEMI 1 according to video tapes B40c and B40d which are available and from the Finnish report of the JAIC, page 131. In addition, more information about the bodies became publicly known partly through the Andi Meister book "The Unfinished Logbook" and partly through the Estonian media. These are:

- the body at the aft port door was wearing a brown or red/brown suit.
- the body underneath the flagbox in the starboard bridge wing had a tattoo on his right hand.

Reportedly neither Captain Andresson nor Juhan Herma nor Kaimar Kikas had a tattoo on their right hand and certainly none of them was wearing a brown or red/brown suit. So, who are the three bodies on the bridge and where does this information come from?

I don't see anything there speculating about a hijacking, just a question about who 3 bodies were.

Can you quote where Andi Meister speculated that the bridge might have been hijacked?

 

[LondonJohn]

Given that the mines are certainly there, especially around the old so-called Baltic States governed by the Soviet Union, including East Germany (whose main port along the Baltic is Rostock) and Poland, it is something you might expect the JAIC to have ruled out?

Do you know how much unexploded ordnance (mostly a legacy from the WWII era) there is strung across the mouth of the Skagerrak between Norway and Denmark? Well, it lights up a map in a manner far more extreme than anywhere else in the Baltic Sea.

Now, the Skagerrak - being the relatively narrow channel through which all maritime traffic going to or from the Baltic Sea must travel - has been one of the most crowded and intensive shipping areas in the entire World over the 75-odd years since the end of WWII. And yet...... over all these years there's not been one single loss of (or serious damage to) a ship in the Skagerrak. Or anywhere else in the Baltic Sea.

"But how can that be?!!", I don't hear you ask. Well, since you don't ask, the reason is this: all of the shipping lanes, and everywhere remotely near those shipping lanes, was cleared of mines and other ordnance at a surface- or sub-surface level within a decade or so of 1945. Of all the UXMs etc that remain in the Baltic Sea to this day, they are all either a) way clear of the shipping lanes, or they're lying on or near the sea bed (thereby posing no risk at all to ships passing overhead at surface level).

There is effectively zero chance that the Estonia somehow hit a left-over mine (or similar) from WWII (or similar). Literally dozens of ships sailed that lane every single day, and had/have done so for the past 75 years. It's functionally impossible that one or more mines (or similar) suddenly materialised close enough to the surface, and close enough to that shipping lane, as to pose a mortal risk to the Estonia - when this had/has never happened at any other time before or since.

 

[Mojo]

If the hole sank the ship why do you mention explosives supposedly blowing the bow visor off?

Maybe they were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.

 

[LondonJohn]

Can't rule it out? In the Al-Quaeda terrorist attack on USS Cole in 2000 a small boat did exactly that: ram into the side of the vessel with a load of explosives:

wiki

Interestingly, USS Cole did not sink. Obviously the damage to the USS Cole is far greater than that seen on the Estonia.

And guess what: anyone with the right qualifications and experience who'd examined that ship after the incident would quickly & easily have been able to identify/recognise the tell-tale signs of adjacent-proximity explosives detonation. There would have been pitting and other metallurgical signs on the outer sheet steel of the hull. And there would have also been unmistakeable chemical signatures of an explosion (which would almost-certainly have been so detailed as to tell investigators precisely which type(s) of explosive were used, and in what quantity).

Had the Estonia been similarly attacked by means of an explosive detonation against/near the hull, then those tell-tale pieces of evidence would have been present here as well (even with the ship lying on the sea bed). But there's no such evidence present. Meaning that it's possible to conclude with extremely high accuracy & reliability that nothing like this actually happened to the Estonia.

 

[LondonJohn]

Not sure that this post displays a competent grasp of the concept of irony.

 

[Agatha]

Please go to the continuation thread for further discussion

Posted By: Agatha