Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part V

[Jack by the hedge]

Let's go back to the sonar tape displayed in Talinn "according to him". Who got to see this display? Did anyone else remark on "two neat rows" of square objects or had he some unique insight that nobody else spotted?

What location were these rows in, in relation to the wreck? We know the ship changed its course when it listed heavily, lost power and drifted before it sank, so the idea of a neat double line of trucks leading like a trail of breadcrumbs to the wreck is obviously silly.

Before we go galloping off to speculation about how the ship might have shed a neat double row of trucks on the seabed behind it, can we perhaps question whether there is actual evidence of this or whether chinese whispers have created a myth out of noise and clutter on a sonograph seen by a non-expert.

 

[Vixen]

Let's go back to the sonar tape displayed in Talinn "according to him". Who got to see this display? Did anyone else remark on "two neat rows" of square objects or had he some unique insight that nobody else spotted?

What location were these rows in, in relation to the wreck? We know the ship changed its course when it listed heavily, lost power and drifted before it sank, so the idea of a neat double line of trucks leading like a trail of breadcrumbs to the wreck is obviously silly.

Before we go galloping off to speculation about how the ship might have shed a neat double row of trucks on the seabed behind it, can we perhaps question whether there is actual evidence of this or whether chinese whispers have created a myth out of noise and clutter on a sonograph seen by a non-expert.

From the article:

Such is the Finnish witness in Estonia - Harri Ruotsalainen says that he saw the reasons for the sinking of the evidence: "It was the outgoing cargo"
Harri Ruotsalainen, a retired fire engineer, saw something in Tallinn in November 1994 that took him to testify before the Estonian Parliament's Estonian Research Commission this autumn, 27 years later. Ruotsalainen, who participated in the latest Estonian surveys of Estonians, now reports for the first time in the Finnish media, which, according to his theory, caused Estonia to sink.

Rescue veteran Harri Ruotsalainen believes he has seen something that has been tightly concealed and locked in the Swedish authorities' safe deposit box for another 75 years in the three-state investigation into Estonia's sinking.
This is an eyewitness observation made by a Finnish fire engineer in Tallinn in November 1994 - a couple of months after the catastrophe - which, in his opinion, contains a decisive clue as to the real reasons for Estonia's sinking.

The document shown to Ruotsalainen is not mentioned in a word in the final report of the Estonian, Swedish and Finnish official commission of inquiry of December 1997. His allegations have not been confirmed in the official investigation.

<snip>

Ruotsalainen says he is confident that significant new information on the causes of the sinking will be revealed in the coming months from investigations conducted by Estonians at the Estonia accident site. The diving robot and camera have recorded views from the car deck, but at the same time the seabed has been mapped along the route of Estonia’s last fatal minutes.

Ruotsalainen finds that route strange.

He has concluded that cargo was dropped from Estonia before sinking into the sea. The secret cargo was probably, in complete silence, military technology carried on a passenger ship, perhaps nuclear weapons, or Soviet space equipment.

<snip>

- In November 1994, I specifically visited Tallinn to agree on the program for next spring and when I will go there on the rescue side as an advisor. That's when I came across this diagonal sonar tape, Ruotsalainen says.

He states:

- After a while, the men of the maritime service company Alfons Håkans came, and my local counterpart at the Rescue Board, the Estonian Rescue Service, was Igor Volke . A couple of other men supported a long strip of paper on a roll, and they asked me what these echoes might be.

- It had echoes in two queues, square echoes, and from the trip I saw, there were quite a lot of them.

<snip>

According to Ruotsalainen, the result of the oblique sonar was seen at the same time by six other people, some of whom were Norwegian. Later, he has not seen the tape or heard anyone else talk about it.

TS

Youtube of Ruotsalainen addressing the Estonian government working party. Unfortunately, it is in Estonian.

 

[LondonJohn]

Has it not occurred to you that there is a reason Sweden has declassified the information about the transportation of military trucks on passenger ferries between Tallinn and Stockholm a month ahead of the release of the next report into the accident?

To recap, Harry Ruotsalainen (not 'Westermann' as cited earlier) claims the following, in recent news:

Turun Sanomat 17.10/2021

It is pretty obvious the real cause of the disaster is classified information. Think about why after having promised to recover the bodies, a decision was quickly made to cover the whole thing in concrete? Think hard!

"Pretty obvious", you say?

And your rank unfamiliarity with all things maritime means you don't understand that attempting to recover and remove bodies from within the sunken wreck of a large passenger ship in strong currents and frigid waters is extremely dangerous. Plenty of very experienced technical divers have died trying to get people or objects out of the labyrinthine interior of large ships.

I'm a very experienced and highly-qualified scuba diver (not a technical diver though), and I've dived several wrecks - but always of small ships with no more than 3 or 4 decks and relatively large interior spaces, and in calm waters warm enough to use a wetsuit. And I've only dived to observe of course - not to try to remove anything bulky from the interior of the wreck.

But add in strong currents, a bulky dry suit, the extra air/trimix bottles required, the complex network of multiple decks, corridors, small cabins and tight spaces, and the requirement to wrangle the bulk/mass of a dead body (not to mention the very real chance of the wreck itself shifting/fracturing while a diver is deep inside it)....and it's a completely different ball game. I guarantee that most of the best technical divers in the world would strongly hesitate to take on contract of that nature.

So in that context, it's actually not at all surprising that initial (over-optimistic) ideas of recovering all the bodies from within the wreck were nixed once the reality of the situation became properly understood to those in charge. It's not surprising that lay people such as you can't understand this, though - especially when an over-enthusiastic imagination can invent conspiracy theories to "explain" the change of mind over body recovery.....

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Has it not occurred to you that there is a reason Sweden has declassified the information about the transportation of military trucks on passenger ferries between Tallinn and Stockholm a month ahead of the release of the next report into the accident?

Has it not occurred to you that you do not have the slightest idea what you're talking about? At least not when it comes to, well...just about anything? If not, then you are alone in that lack of realization.

For example, you recently suggested with a straight face that, given a vehicle that's on fire on the car deck of a ferry pitching in heavy seas, the thing to do is, not to grab fire extinguishers and put the thing out while it's immobilized and the fire contained, but rather to unchain it so that it can roll about freely, open the bow ramp to aforementioned heavy seas, and then push the flaming truck by hand off the ramp. There are about twenty different reasons that doesn't make *any* frickin' sense, and you don't seem to be aware of them.

To recap, Harry Ruotsalainen (not 'Westermann' as cited earlier) claims

Yes, he claims. And the only thing that can be inferred from a claim is that the claimant believes something, and/or wants the audience to believe something.

Turun Sanomat 17.10/2021

It is pretty obvious the real cause of the disaster is classified information. Think about why after having promised to recover the bodies, a decision was quickly made to cover the whole thing in concrete? Think hard!

I have a better suggestion: study.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Let me see if I have this straight: Harri Ruotsalainen is the Finnish guy who told the Estonians he saw an unrolled paper trace of a side sonar scan and says it showed two "queues" of square objects on the seabed which he took to be cargo.

And he's the same guy who thinks the Estonia's drifting back and across its previous course (which most people recognise was due to it's drifting after it lost power) was best explained by someone ordering the captain to reverse course and try to sink his ship directly on top of one item of secret cargo which had somehow been jettisoned previously, as had lots of other cargo, in two "queues".

That guy. Okay.

So what do you think of his idea, Vixen? Do you think it realistic that a sinking ship in heavy seas at night could feasibly navigate back to the spot where it had dropped one particular piece of cargo into the sea and then attempt to finally sink itself right on top of that item, 80+ metres below? What do you reckon are the chances of success? What do you think the chances are of failure, which would lead to the wreck landing as close as they could manage to the secret cargo and thereby increasing the likelihood that the cargo would be spotted when the wreck was investigated?

 

[Vixen]

Let me see if I have this straight: Harri Ruotsalainen is the Finnish guy who told the Estonians he saw an unrolled paper trace of a side sonar scan and says it showed two "queues" of square objects on the seabed which he took to be cargo.

And he's the same guy who thinks the Estonia's drifting back and across its previous course (which most people recognise was due to it's drifting after it lost power) was best explained by someone ordering the captain to reverse course and try to sink his ship directly on top of one item of secret cargo which had somehow been jettisoned previously, as had lots of other cargo, in two "queues".

That guy. Okay.

So what do you think of his idea, Vixen? Do you think it realistic that a sinking ship in heavy seas at night could feasibly navigate back to the spot where it had dropped one particular piece of cargo into the sea and then attempt to finally sink itself right on top of that item, 80+ metres below? What do you reckon are the chances of success? What do you think the chances are of failure, which would lead to the wreck landing as close as they could manage to the secret cargo and thereby increasing the likelihood that the cargo would be spotted when the wreck was investigated?

He saw the squares, physically, on a sonar print-out. That is fact as far as it was witnessed by a credible source (he was an intern investigating the accident; he was there, he claims to have seen this print-out).

The rest is his theory. However, it is intriguing that the ship did backtrack on itself, ostensibly to correct the list, and did cross over the same spot again, just before it sank. So interesting theory, no?

 

[Axxman300]

He saw the squares, physically, on a sonar print-out. That is fact as far as it was witnessed by a credible source (he was an intern investigating the accident; he was there, he claims to have seen this print-out).

The rest is his theory. However, it is intriguing that the ship did backtrack on itself, ostensibly to correct the list, and did cross over the same spot again, just before it sank. So interesting theory, no?

No, he's not credible source.

A credible source would know that vehicles that have just gone into deep water are hard to see on even the best sonars. This is due to the lack of silt buildup, which creates a better echo return. A new, shiny vehicle, even one that lands upside down takes a trained eye, and multiple passes to detect. If he saw objects on the bottom that were truck-sized, there's a good chance they'd been there are a while.

And it also begs the question, if they are trucks, why couldn't they have rolled out of the front, since we know the ramp was down?

You continue to be really bad at this.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

He saw the squares, physically, on a sonar print-out. That is fact as far as it was witnessed by a credible source (he was an intern investigating the accident; he was there, he claims to have seen this print-out).

The rest is his theory. However, it is intriguing that the ship did backtrack on itself, ostensibly to correct the list, and did cross over the same spot again, just before it sank. So interesting theory, no?

He was an intern. Not suggestive of expertise in interpretation. He saw shapes on a sonar printout which he decided were potentially items of cargo from the ship. We don't know what any actual experts made of them.

He also came up with the perfectly bonkers idea that a ship in distress in heavy seas at night might try to turn back and attempt sink itself right on top of some item of cargo it dropped *somewhere* behind it, in order to conceal it under its own wreck. The most interesting thing about that is the light it sheds on his grasp on reality. Tenuous.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

He saw the squares, physically, on a sonar print-out. That is fact as far as it was witnessed by a credible source (he was an intern investigating the accident; he was there, he claims to have seen this print-out).

What is his expertise in interpreting sonar imagery? Did he make a copy of the image? Can we even be sure that his recollection is correct, or that the print-out he saw was what he thought it was? Until the sonar printout itself is produced and assessed by at least one other qualified pair of eyes, all we have here is: "Some guy says he saw something once, and he just *knows* it means this."

There isn't even anything worth rebutting here.

 

[LondonJohn]

What is his expertise in interpreting sonar imagery? Did he make a copy of the image? Can we even be sure that his recollection is correct, or that the print-out he saw was what he thought it was? Until the sonar printout itself is produced and assessed by at least one other qualified pair of eyes, all we have here is: "Some guy says he saw something once, and he just *knows* it means this."

There isn't even anything worth rebutting here.

Exactly. History has more than ample precedent that in virtually every so-called "mysterious" extreme happening (such as an assassination, a major disaster, a world-famous event of some sort...), there are usually people who crop up with this sort of stuff. Some of these people are honestly mistaken; some of them are deluded; some of them are flat-out liars and fantasists, looking for a chance to make an impact upon history. And almost always, they are simply wrong.

As you say, this guy just doesn't have the credentials, the credibility, or the (reliable) evidence. It's nothing more than smoke-blowing. As such, it's worthy of being completely disregarded at source.

 

[Vixen]

What is his expertise in interpreting sonar imagery? Did he make a copy of the image? Can we even be sure that his recollection is correct, or that the print-out he saw was what he thought it was? Until the sonar printout itself is produced and assessed by at least one other qualified pair of eyes, all we have here is: "Some guy says he saw something once, and he just *knows* it means this."

There isn't even anything worth rebutting here.

The problem is, the tape or whatever it was was put into the 'archives' and never heard from again.


The results should have been presented to the JAIC, just as Nuoterva's was. (the guy who did the sonar image of the visor).

 

[Mojo]

Vixen has also had the HOFE listing at more than 90 seconds:

Er, Justice Sheen who issued the The Herald of Free Enterprise Report 1987, himself said the The Herald of Free Enterprise would have turned over completely but for the sand bar on its port.

Thereafter the HERALD capsized to port rather more slowly until eventually she
was at more than 90". It is not possible to say whether the ship reached more than while
still floating or whether this was only when she reached the sea bed. There is some reason for
thinking that the ship floated more or less on her beam ends for about a minute before finally
resting on the sea bed.

Section 9.3

 

[LondonJohn]

And by the way (and notwithstanding the fact that the Estonia actually took longer than 35 mins to sink, once the correct "start point" is used):

Your contention that "it's not a problem if I write 35", because everyone must know that I'm referring to 35 minutes of time" is utterly ludicrous. Logically, it's exactly the same as claiming "it's not a problem if I write 35 camels, because everyone must know that I'm referring to 35 minutes of time".

Again: if you insist (for whatever bizarre reason) on using prime notation to express units of time, the ONLY correct way to write 35 minutes is 35'. But you could save yourself all this embarrassment and confusion by writing what literally everyone else discussing science/engineering would write - which is 35 minutes or 35 min(s). Why will/can you not do that, Vixen?

 

[LondonJohn]

Vixen has also had the HOFE listing at more than 90 seconds:

That's quite some extreme list! I imagine that 0.025 degrees of list would be enough to sink any ship!

 

[JesseCuster]

A bit like:

• a ship 155m long will sink with no trace within 0.35' because all of the windows on the listed side will have smashed thus letting in water rapidly!

0.35' ?

Are you determined to get the notation wrong for how long the Estonia took to sink in every possible way you can?

Also, I'm pretty sure the Estonia did not sink without a trace. It's wreckage is at the bottom of the Baltic in a known location and you talked a lot about what has been discovered at and about the wreckage at length in this interminable thread. If it sank without a trace then there would be no wreckage to discuss.

 

[LondonJohn]

0.35' ?

Are you determined to get the notation wrong for how long the Estonia took to sink in every possible way you can?

Also, I'm pretty sure the Estonia did not sink without a trace. It's wreckage is at the bottom of the Baltic in a known location and you talked a lot about what has been discovered at and about the wreckage at length in this interminable thread. If it sank without a trace then there would be no wreckage to discuss.

Ahh no, but Vixen's logic leaves her at liberty to write "sank without trace" to mean "sank with trace", because we all know that the wreck's position is precisely known - and therefore we should by definition know that this is what Vixen actually means by "sank without trace" in this context.....

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If the Estonia had sunk without a trace there wouldn't have been anything for the rescue ships and helicopters to do.

 

[Steve]

Logic is out of place in this thread. We are expected to believe without question the fantasies presented.

 

[GlennB]

Logic is out of place in this thread. We are expected to believe without question to respond to the fantasies presented.

And we do. Mea culpa in this respect.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Logic is out of place in this thread. We are expected to believe without question the fantasies presented.

There isn't all that much to be said about the real Estonia sinking. 90% or more of this thread is about fantasies.