Welcome to a chapter of the e-book Disaster Investigation.
1.10 How much Water did actually enter the Car Deck at the forward Ramp?
You should ask how the Commission on 17 October 1994 could have made its second statement 1.8.2 - water entered into the superstructure 2.5 meters above waterline - based on some video films.
The ramp at the forward end of the superstructure was found 18 October 1994, according to the Commission, only 'partly open' at the top as seen on the wreck, 1.12-3 and page 22 in (5), and it had only been observed from the outside by an ROV (but compare 3.10) sent down from the Finnish vessels 'Halli' and 'Tursas' on 1, 2 and 9 October 1994. Silver Linde (8) had said that the ramp was closed and the bow high above the water, when he was in a life raft close to the bow at 01.30 hrs 1.8, before the ship sank.
Divers had at that time not investigated the bow ramp locks - it was also not done six weeks later, 1.16 (v) and 3.10, in spite of the fact that the divers then, according to Tuomo Karppinen, got written instructions (9) to verify that the ramp had actually been open. In German magazine 18/96 (10) Forssberg said that the ramp opening found was too small for a diver to get into the superstructure (when? October or December 1994?) and that it would have been necessary to cut steel to get into the garage and that was why the inside of the car deck and the inside of the ramp and its locks were not examined.
There was no evidence on the video films, when and if the bow ramp had in fact been open and how much - under way, before the sudden listing, after or when the ship sank to the bottom.
The three key witnesses in the ECR were reported that they had seen the ramp at the forward end of the superstructure leaking but closed, 1.3 and 1.48. Linde had evidently not seen the ramp open, because he was never at the ramp, when it was supposed to have been ripped open.
In spite of all this the Commission states, without any evidence whatsoever, in several places in the Part and Final reports (16), (5) that the ramp had been fully open38, but in either reports (16) and (5) not one witness is quoted to have seen an open ramp in the superstructure. And if the ramp was not open - how could water get into the superstructure?
Copies of the video films (act B40b, c) of the ramp taken 9 October 1994 were not available until 1998. Persons, who have seen the films 1999 say to this writer, who has never seen any of the films, that there are no signs that waves or the visor should or could have pulled open the ramp and that the ramp later should have closed itself. The ramp seems to be deformed inboard and to be stuck in its frame 3.10 (damages probably caused when the visor was removed be explosives at the bottom of the sea). The quality of the copies of the video films is very bad and no written video logs of what was filmed exist that is indicating manipulations and fraud.
The video films - the only evidence that the ramp in the superstructure had been open - do not prove that the ramp was open.
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38 You ask: How did the Commission on 17 October know that the ramp had been ripped open from its six locks and that the locks were broken, when not one lock had been filmed or examined? The Commission simply lied 3.10!