The crash of the ferry “Estonia” on September 28, 1994 may have been caused by a collision with a Swedish submarine – the assumption was made on Monday by the former head of the crash investigation commission Margus Kurms, commenting on the latest information regarding the death of “Estonia”.
According to the Postimees newspaper, a group filming a documentary on the disaster discovered a four-meter-long and 1.2-meter-wide hole in the ferry hull last autumn that was partially covered by seabed sediments.
According to Kurma, the hole was below the water line, but also extended above it – to the car deck.
“It makes me think that Estonia has collided with something big that could have pierced the hull, (..) for example, a fishing vessel with a speed of four knots could have crashed into it,” he said in the show “Otse Postimehest” Postman “)”.
According to Kurm, this excludes the possibility that the front visor, which has been broken by the waves, has crashed into the hull of the ship.
“In that case, the visor should have been twenty times larger. It could have been a collision with an object commensurate in size,” he said.
At the same time, Kurm pointed out that the part of the hull in which the hole was discovered had never hit the seabed, so there is no reason to conclude that it could have been caused by the impact.
The former head of the commission of inquiry added that this part of the corps was also visible in 1994, when the first divers landed at the wreck.
“There are two possibilities. The first is that the ferry hull may not have been surveyed in 1994. The second was that the damage was recorded but not communicated to the public,” he said, drawing attention to the fact that the Swedish authorities had covered it with a grant after the ferry sank. which also covered the damaged area.
“It is very possible that the object that Estonia collided with was actually a submarine,” Kurm added.
According to him, it is possible that it swam in the same direction as “Estonia” and the ferry caught it, so there was a leak.
“You have to ask what this submarine did on the Estonia track. Swedish military exercises took place in the area at that time. The second version – the submarine caught the ferry” Estonia “because it contained sensitive content. I tend to think that the second version is true,” .
According to a representative of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, the makers of the documentary “Estonia – a discovery that will change everything” informed the Estonian authorities several months ago about the new conditions discovered during filming, and in September their footage was viewed by technical experts. that the impact on the hull of the ferry came from the outside and the damage was not caused by an explosion.
The five-series film was commissioned by Discovery Norway.
According to Prime Minister Jiri Ratass, Estonia will conduct a new technical investigation into the circumstances of the Estonia disaster in connection with this information.
“On our part, the investigation will include underwater observations, we have informed Finland and Sweden about it,” he said. “We want the truth to come to light.”
The ferry “Estonia”, built in 1980 at the German shipyard “Meyer Werft”, sank on the stormy night of September 28, 1994 on the way from Tallinn to Stockholm. It carried 989 passengers and crew. Only 138 people were rescued, one of whom later died in hospital. 852 people were killed or missing, but only 94 were found dead. There were also 29 Latvian residents among the passengers, of whom only six survived.
This is the disaster with the highest number of casualties in the Baltic Sea during peacetime.
The sea depth at the place of sinking of the ferry is 83 meters. Estonia is the only ship sunk that is protected by the law of the fallen peace, and diving to see the ferry wreck is prohibited.
The Estonian, Finnish and Swedish intergovernmental commission to investigate the causes of the disaster concluded that the ferry sank due to structural deficiencies, high speeds and storms.
According to the official version, strong wave shocks broke the front visor door of the ferry and threw thousands of tons of water into the ship in a matter of minutes, sinking it.
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