Disappearance of Rudolph Diesel

 

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (English: /ˈdiːzəlˌ -səl/, German: [ˈdiːzl̩]; 18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer who invented the Diesel engine, which burns Diesel fuel; both are named after him.

Early life and education

Diesel was born on 18 March 1858 at 38 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth in Paris, France, the second of three children of Elise (née Strobel) and Theodor Diesel. His parents were Bavarian immigrants living in Paris. Theodor Diesel, a bookbinder by trade, left his hometown of Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1848. He met his wife, a daughter of a Nuremberg merchant, in Paris in 1855 and became a leather goods manufacturer there.

Shortly after his birth, Diesel was given away to a Vincennes farmer's family, where he spent his first nine months. When he returned to his family, they moved into a flat at 49 Rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi. At the time, the Diesel family suffered from financial difficulties; thus, young Rudolf Diesel had to work in his father's workshop and deliver leather goods to customers using a barrow. He attended a Protestant-French school and soon became interested in social questions and technology. Being a very good student, 12-year-old Diesel received the Société pour l'Instruction Elémentaire bronze medal and had plans to enter Ecole Primaire Supérieure in 1870.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War the same year, his family was deported to England, settling in London, where Diesel attended an English-speaking school. Before the war's end, however, Diesel's mother sent 12-year-old Rudolf to Augsburg to live with his aunt and uncle, Barbara and Christoph Barnickel, to become fluent in German and to visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbeschule (Royal County Vocational College), where his uncle taught mathematics. He was enrolled at the Technische Hochschule (Technical High School).

At the age of 14, Diesel wrote a letter to his parents saying that he intended to become an engineer. After finishing his basic education at the top of his class in 1873, he enrolled at the newly founded Industrial School of Augsburg. Two years later, he received a merit scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, which he accepted against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to begin working instead.

Career

One of Diesel's professors in Munich was Carl von Linde. Diesel was unable to graduate with his class in July 1879 because he fell ill with typhoid fever. While waiting for the next examination date, he gained practical engineering experience at the Sulzer Brothers Machine Works in Winterthur, Switzerland. Diesel graduated in January 1880 with the highest academic honors and returned to Paris, where he assisted Linde with the design and construction of a modern refrigeration and ice plant. Diesel became the director of the plant a year afterwards.

In 1883, Diesel married Martha Flasche and continued to work for Linde, gaining numerous patents in both Germany and France.

In early 1890, Diesel moved to Berlin with his wife and children, Rudolf Jr, Heddy, and Eugen, to assume management of Linde's corporate research and development department and to join several other corporate boards. Since he was not allowed to use for his own purposes the patents he developed while an employee of Linde's, he expanded beyond the field of refrigeration. He first worked with steam, his research into thermal efficiency and fuel efficiency leading him to build a steam engine using ammonia vapor. During tests, however, the engine exploded and almost killed him. His research into high-compression cylinder pressures tested the strength of iron and steel cylinder heads. One exploded during a test run. He spent many months in a hospital, followed by health and eyesight problems. It was during this year that Diesel began conceptualizing the idea of a diesel engine.

Ever since attending lectures of von Linde, Diesel worked on designing an internal combustion engine that could approach the maximum theoretical thermal efficiency of the Carnot cycle. In 1892, after working on this idea for several years, he considered his theory to be completed. In the same year, Diesel was given the German patent DRP 67207. In 1893, he published a treatise entitled Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat-engine to Replace the Steam Engine and The Combustion Engines Known Today, which he had been working on since early 1892. This treatise formed the basis for his work on and development of the diesel engine. By summer 1893, Diesel had realized that his initial theory was erroneous, leading him to file another patent application for the corrected theory in 1893.

Diesel understood thermodynamics and the theoretical and practical constraints on fuel efficiency. He knew that as much as 90% of the energy available in the fuel is wasted in a steam engine. His work in engine design was driven by the goal of much higher efficiency ratios.

As opposed to outside ignition applied against the internal air and fuel mixture, air was compressed internally within the cylinder whilst heating. In order for the fuel to establish contact, the air immediately before the compression period would end, thus igniting on its own. Therefore, the engine was smaller and weighed less than most contemporary steam engines, not to mention the fact that further fuel sources weren't required. Fuel efficiency was measured at 75% above the 10% theoretical efficiency for steam engines.

In his engine, fuel was injected at the end of the compression stroke and was ignited by the high temperature resulting from the compression. From 1893 to 1897, Heinrich von Buz, director of Maschinenfabrik Augsburg in Augsburg, provided Rudolf Diesel the opportunity to test and develop his ideas. Diesel also received support from the Krupp firm.

Diesel's design utilized compression ignition as opposed to using spark plugs, similar to gas engines, with the ability to be run on biodiesel, if not petroleum-originating fuels. Compression engines are circa 30% more efficient than conventional gas-burning engines, being mixed through forced compressed air within the combustion chamber, leading to a higher internal temperature, expanding at a higher rate, and placing further pressure on the pistons that rotate the crankshaft at a quicker rate.

Biodiesel is often composed of synthesis gas originating from waste cellulose gasification, as well as the extraction of lipids from algae, most frequently used by combining vegetable oils and algae under methanol transesterification. Numerous firms have developed different techniques in order to achieve such.

The first successful diesel engine, Motor 250/400, was officially tested in 1897, featuring a 25-horsepower four-stroke, single vertical cylinder compression. Having just revolutionized the engine manufacturing industry, it became an immediate success, with royalties amassing great wealth for Diesel. The engine is currently on display at the German Technical Museum in Munich.

Besides Germany, Diesel obtained patents for his design in other countries, including the United States.

He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1978.

Disappearance and death

On the evening of 29 September 1913, Diesel boarded the Great Eastern Railway steamer SS Dresden in Antwerp on his way to a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Company in London. He took dinner on board the ship and then retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m., leaving word to be called the next morning at 6:15 a.m., but he was never seen alive again. In the morning, his cabin was empty and his bed had not been slept in, although his nightshirt was neatly laid out and his watch had been left where it could be seen from the bed. His hat and neatly folded overcoat were discovered beneath the afterdeck railing.

Shortly after Diesel's disappearance, his wife, Martha, opened a bag that her husband had given to her just before his ill-fated voyage, with directions that it should not be opened until the following week. She discovered 20,000 German marks in cash (US$120,000 today) and financial statements indicating that their bank accounts were virtually empty. In a diary Diesel brought with him on the ship, for the date 29 September 1913, a cross was drawn, possibly indicating death.

Ten days after he was last seen, the crew of the Dutch pilot boat Coertsen came upon the corpse of a man floating in the Eastern Scheldt. The body was in such an advanced state of decomposition that it was unrecognizable, and they did not retain it aboard because of heavy weather. Instead, the crew retrieved personal items (pill case, wallet, I.D. card, pocketknife, eyeglass case) from the clothing of the dead man, and returned the body to the sea. On 13 October, these items were identified by Rudolf's son, Eugen Diesel, as belonging to his father. Five months later, in March 1914, Diesel’s wife, Martha, went missing in Germany.

There are various theories to explain Diesel's death. Some, such as Diesel's biographers Grosser (1978) and Sittauer (1978), have argued that he died by suicide. Another line of thought suggests that he was murdered, given his refusal to grant the German forces the exclusive rights to use his invention; indeed, Diesel had boarded Dresden with the intent of meeting with representatives of the Royal Navy to discuss the possibility of powering British submarines by diesel engine. Another theory is that his apparent death was a ruse staged by the British government to cover his defection to the British cause, and that he then went to Canada, worked for the Vickers shipyard in Montreal, and was responsible for a sudden acceleration in its ability to produce a successful Diesel engine for submarines. Given the limited evidence at hand, his disappearance and death remain unsolved.

In 1950, Magokichi Yamaoka, the founder of Yanmar, the diesel engine manufacturer in Japan, visited West Germany and learned that there was no tomb or monument for Diesel. Yamaoka and people associated with Diesel began to make preparations to honor him. In 1957, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Diesel's birth and the 60th anniversary of the diesel engine development, Yamaoka dedicated the Rudolf Diesel Memorial Garden (Rudolf-Diesel-Gedächtnishain) in Wittelsbacher Park in Augsburg, Bavaria, where Diesel had undertaken his early technical education and original engine development.

Legacy

After Diesel's death, his engine underwent much development and became a very important replacement for the steam piston engine in many applications. Because the Diesel engine required a more robust construction than a gasoline engine, it saw limited use in aviation. However, the Diesel engine became widespread in many other applications, such as stationary engines, agricultural machines, and off-highway machinery in general, submarines, ships, and, much later, locomotives, trucks, and in modern automobiles.

Diesel engines have the benefit of running more fuel-efficiently than any other internal combustion engines suited for motor vehicles, allowing more heat to be converted to mechanical work.

Diesel was interested in using coal dust or vegetable oil as fuel, and in fact, his engine was run on peanut oil. Although these fuels were not better replacements, in 2008, the rise in fuel prices, coupled with concerns about remaining petroleum reserves, led to the more widespread use of vegetable oil and biodiesel.

The primary fuel used in Diesel engines is the eponymous diesel fuel, derived from the refinement of crude oil. Diesel is safer to store than gasoline because its flash point is approximately 81 °C (145 °F) higher, and it will not explode.

Use of vegetable oils as diesel engine fuel

In a book titled Diesel Engines for Land and Marine Work, Diesel said that "In 1900, a small Diesel engine was exhibited by the Otto company which, on the suggestion of the French Government, was run on arachide [peanut] oil, and operated so well that very few people were aware of the fact. The motor was built for ordinary oils, and without any modification, was run on vegetable oil. I have recently repeated these experiments on a large scale with full success and entire confirmation of the results formerly obtained."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diesel

Sinking of the MS Estonia

 

MS Estonia, a cruiseferry built in 1980, sank on Wednesday, 28 September 1994, between about 00:50 and 01:50 (UTC+2) as the ship was crossing the Baltic Sea, en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, operated by Estline. The vessel carried 989 people, including 803 passengers and 186 crew, most of whom were Swedish and Estonian. Only 138 people were rescued, one of whom later died. Most victims succumbed to drowning or hypothermia in water around 10–11 °C (50–52 °F). In total, 852 people died, making the sinking of the MS Estonia one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a European ship, after the Titanic in 1912 and the Empress of Ireland in 1914. It remains the deadliest peacetime shipwreck to have occurred in European waters and was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century.

On the night of the accident, severe weather was reported in the Baltic Sea. The ship began its voyage behind schedule and was noted to have a slight starboard list from cargo distribution before leaving port. The accident began shortly after 01:00, when noises from the bow were reported. A mayday was sent at 01:22, but did not follow international formats, delaying the wider emergency response. By 01:50, the ship had capsized and disappeared from radar screens, sinking in international waters south of the Finnish island of Utö. Rescue operations were launched under the 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. Nearby ferries and helicopters participated, but the scale of the disaster, coupled with rough seas and the rapid loss of the ship, limited survival.

The official investigation concluded that the vessel’s bow visor failed in rough seas, allowing water to flood the car deck and causing the ship to capsize rapidly. The sinking highlighted the vulnerability of roll-on/roll-off ferries to flooding, similar to the MS Herald of Free Enterprise accident seven years earlier. Renewed investigations in the 2000s and 2020s examined hull damage and structural flaws, while conspiracy theories have alleged cover-ups and secret military cargo, claims rejected by official inquiries. The wreck site was declared a protected grave in 1995 under an international treaty, and memorials have been erected in Tallinn and Stockholm to commemorate the victims. In its aftermath, new international safety regulations were introduced, including automatic activation of distress beacons, stricter standards for ferry design and inspection, and expanded training for passenger-ship crews.

Final voyage

Estonia departed slightly behind schedule at 19:15 on 27 September and was expected in Stockholm the next morning at about 09:00. She was carrying 989 people: 803 passengers and 186 crew.

Most of the passengers were Swedish, although some were of Estonian origin; most of the crew were Estonian. The ship was fully loaded and was listing slightly to starboard because of poor cargo distribution.

According to the final disaster report, the weather was rough, with a wind of 15 to 25 m/s (29 to 49 kn; 34 to 56 mph), force 7–10 on the Beaufort scale and a significant wave height of 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) compared with the highest measured significant wave height in the Baltic Sea of 7.7 m (25 ft 3 in). Esa Mäkelä, the captain of Silja Europa who was appointed on-scene commander for the subsequent rescue effort, described the weather as "normally bad", or like a typical autumn storm in the Baltic Sea. According to modeled satellite data, gusts were in excess of 85–100 km/h (24–28 m/s) at 01:00 that night over the Baltic Sea, although the ship had not yet reached the areas with the heaviest gusts before its sinking. There was some rain and temperatures around 10 °C (50 °F). All scheduled passenger ferries were at sea, something not unusual for this weather in the Baltic Sea. The official report says that while the exact speed at the time of the accident is not known, Estonia had very regular voyage times, averaging 16 to 17 kn (30 to 31 km/h). The chief mate of the Viking Line cruiseferry Mariella tracked Estonia's speed by radar at approximately 14.2 kn (26.3 km/h) before the first signs of distress, while the Silja Europa's officers estimated her speed at 14 to 15 kn (26 to 28 km/h) at midnight.

Sinking

The first sign of trouble aboard Estonia was when a metallic bang was heard, presumably caused by a heavy wave hitting the bow doors around 01:00, when the ship was on the outskirts of the Turku archipelago, but an inspection—limited to checking the indicator lights for the ramp and visor—showed no problems.  Over the next 10 minutes, similar noises were reported by passengers and other crew.  At about 01:15, the visor is believed to have separated and torn open the loading ramp behind it. The ship immediately took on a heavy starboard list (initially around 15 degrees, but by 01:30, the ship had rolled 60 degrees, and by 01:50, the list was 90 degrees) as water flooded into the vehicle deck.  Estonia was turned to port and slowed before her four engines cut out completely. 

At about 01:20, a quiet female voice called "Häire, häire, laeval on häire", Estonian for "Alarm, alarm, there is alarm on the ship", over the public address system, which was followed immediately by an internal alarm for the crew, then one minute later by the general emergency signal. The vessel's rapid list and the flooding prevented many people in the cabins from ascending to the boat deck, as water not only flooded the vessel via the car deck, but also through windows in cabins, as well as the massive windows along deck 6. The windows gave way to the powerful waves as the ship listed and the sea reached the upper decks. Survivors reported that water flowed down from ceiling panels, stairwells, and along corridors from decks that were not yet underwater. This contributed to the rapid sinking. A mayday was communicated by the ship's crew at 01:22, but did not follow international formats. Estonia directed a call to Silja Europa, and only after making contact with her did the radio operator utter the word "Mayday". The radio operator on Silja Europa, chief mate Teijo Seppelin, replied in English: "Estonia, are you calling mayday?" After that, the voice of third mate Andres Tammes took over on Estonia, and the conversation shifted to Finnish.

Tammes was able to provide some details about their situation, but due to a loss of power, he could not give their position, which delayed rescue operations somewhat. Tammes would later die in the sinking. Some minutes later, power returned (or somebody on the bridge managed to lower themselves to the starboard side of the bridge to check the marine GPS, which will display the ship's position even in blackout conditions), and the Estonia was able to radio its position to Silja Europa and Mariella. After that, Estonia sent its last radio message saying: "Todella paha, todella pahalta näyttää nyt tässä kyllä" (in English: "Really bad, it's looking really bad right now."). The ship disappeared from the radar screens of other ships at around 01:50, and sank at 59°23′N 21°41′E in international waters, about 22 nmi (41 km) on bearing 157° from Utö island, Finland, to a depth of 74 to 85 m (245 to 280 ft) of water. According to survivor accounts, the ship sank stern first after taking a list of 90 degrees.

Rescue effort

Search and rescue followed arrangements set up under the 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (the SAR Convention), and the nearest Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre, MRCC Turku, coordinated the effort in accordance with Finland's plans. The Baltic is one of the world's busiest shipping areas, with 2,000 vessels at sea at any time, and these plans assumed the ship's own boats and nearby ferries would provide immediate help and that helicopters could be airborne after an hour. This scheme had worked for the relatively small number of accidents involving sinkings, particularly as most ships have few people on board.

Super Puma OH-HVG of the Finnish Border Guard is flying.

Mariella, the first of five ferries to reach the scene of the accident, arrived at 02:12. MRCC Turku failed to acknowledge the Mayday immediately, and Mariella's report was relayed by Helsinki Radio as the less urgent pan-pan message. A full-scale emergency was only declared at 02:30. Mariella winched open liferafts into the sea onto which 13 people on Estonia's rafts successfully transferred, and reported the location of other rafts to Swedish and Finnish rescue helicopters, the first of which arrived at 03:05. The former took survivors to shore, while the latter—Finnish border guard helicopters Super Puma OH-HVG and Agusta Bell 412 OH-HVD—chose the riskier option of landing on the ferries. The pilot of OH-HVG stated that landing on the ferries was the most difficult part of the whole rescue operation; despite that, this single helicopter rescued 44 people, more than all the ferries. MS Isabella saved 16 survivors with its rescue slide.

Victims

Of the 989 on board, 138 were rescued, one of whom died later in hospital. Ships rescued 34 and helicopters 104; the ferries played a much smaller part than the planners had intended because it was too dangerous to launch their man-overboard (MOB) boats or lifeboats. The accident claimed 852 lives. Most died by drowning and hypothermia, as the water temperature was 10–11 °C (50–52 °F).

One of the victims of the sinking was the Estonian singer Urmas Alender. In total, 94 bodies were recovered: 93 within 33 days of the accident, and the last victim was found 18 months later. By the time the rescue helicopters arrived, around a third of those who escaped from the Estonia had died of hypothermia, while fewer than half of those who had managed to leave the ship were eventually rescued. The survivors of the shipwreck were mostly young males. Of all those who survived, 111 were men and only 26 were women. Seven people over 55 years of age survived, and there were no survivors under age 12. About 650 people were still inside the ship when it sank. The commission estimated that up to 310 passengers reached the outer decks, 160 of whom boarded the life rafts or lifeboats.

Official investigation and report

The wreck was examined and videotaped by remotely operated underwater vehicles and by divers from a Norwegian company, Rockwater A/S, contracted for the investigation work. The official report indicated that the locks on the bow door had failed from the strain of the waves, and the door had separated from the rest of the vessel, pulling the ramp behind it ajar. The bow visor and ramp had been torn off at points that would not trigger an "open" or "unlatched" warning on the bridge, as is the case in normal operation or failure of the latches. The bridge was also situated too far back on the ferry for the visor to be seen from there. While there was video monitoring of the inner ramp, the monitor on the bridge was not visible from the conning station. The bow visor was under-designed, as the ship's manufacturing and approval processes did not consider the visor and its attachments as critical items regarding ship safety.  The first metallic bang was believed to have been the sound of the visor's lower locking mechanism failing, and that the subsequent noises would have been from the visor 'flapping' against the hull as the other locks failed, before tearing free and exposing the bow ramp.  The subsequent failure of the bow ramp allowed water into the vehicle deck, which was identified as the main cause of the capsizing and sinking:  RORO ferries with their wide vehicle decks are particularly vulnerable to capsizing if the vehicle deck is even slightly flooded because of free surface effect: the fluid's swirling motion across such a large area hampers the boat's ability to right itself after rolling with a wave. The same effect had caused the capsizing of MS Herald of Free Enterprise seven years earlier.

The report was critical of the crew's actions, particularly for failing to reduce speed before investigating the noises emanating from the bow, and for being unaware that the list was being caused by water entering the vehicle deck.  There were also general criticisms of the delays in sounding the alarm, the passivity of the crew, and the lack of guidance from the bridge.

Recommendations for modifications to be applied to similar ships included the separation of the condition sensors from the latch and hinge mechanisms.

Changes stemming from the disaster

In 1999, special training requirements in crowd and crisis management and human behavior were extended to crew on all passenger ships, and amendments were made to watch-keeping standards. Estonia's distress beacons or EPIRBs required manual activation, which did not happen. Had they been activated automatically, it would have been immediately obvious that the ship was in distress, and the location would have been clear. All EPIRBs were subsequently required to deploy automatically, and the accident was "instrumental in the move to legislate Voyage Data Recorders". New International Maritime Organization (IMO) Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) liferaft regulations for rescue from listing ships in rough water were introduced.

New designs, the "citadel concept" once again influenced by Estonia, aim to ensure damaged ships have sufficient buoyancy to remain afloat, though cost will determine if any are built. SOLAS 90, which came into effect in 2010, specifies existing passenger ships' stability requirements, and those in North West Europe must also be able to survive 50 cm (20 in) of water on the car deck.

2020 investigation

On 28 September 2020, a Swedish documentary was released, which used underwater equipment to film the wreck. This investigation found a 4-meter hole in the ship's hull. This prompted the Estonian prime minister and foreign minister to meet with their Swedish and Finnish equivalents and announce that a "new technical investigation" would take place.

The head of the Estonian investigation, Margus Kurm, stated publicly that he believes this new information points to a collision with a submarine and that the hole could not have happened post-sinking. In October 2020, the Estonian government published a report stating that the hole was too small to have sunk the ship as quickly as it did. The Swedish documentary makers were prosecuted for violating the sanctity of the wreck, but were acquitted on 8 February 2021, as the diving happened on a German ship in international waters. Germany had not signed the treaty that declares sanctity over the site. However, as a result of a retrial in September 2022, the filmmakers were finally found guilty and fined.

By June 2021, laws allowing the examination of the wreck for the investigation of the disaster were passed in the Swedish and Estonian Parliaments. Shortly after, the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority announced its plan to conduct dives at the grave site starting in July 2021. In July 2023, the car ramp was retrieved.

2023 intermediate report

Between 2021 and 2022, Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish authorities carried out comprehensive wreck surveys using cameras, 3D photogrammetry, 3D laser scanners, and shallow- and mid-penetration sub-bottom profilers, among other equipment. This was to identify the cause of penetrating deformation(s) to the hull of MS Estonia and assess whether the safety investigation of the sinking should be reopened.

In January 2023, the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (SHK) released the Intermediate Report of the Preliminary Assessment of MS Estonia following the joint investigation. According to the report, there was "no indication of a collision with a vessel or a floating object", nor was there "indication of an explosion in the bow area". Also, an oil leak was found on the hull's aft section, and the Finnish Border Guard is monitoring the leakage.

It was also concluded that the ship was "not seaworthy" and its certificate of seaworthiness, issued 28 January 1993, was incorrect, because

The report also concluded that if the inspection was performed and the exemption noted, "the vessel would not have been trading the Tallinn–Stockholm route", and "the accident would probably not have occurred".

The bow ramp and some metal parts that were cut from the hull by divers in the 1990s were salvaged in July 2023.

Effects of the disaster

The disaster had a major impact on ferry safety, leading to changes in safety regulations as well as in life-raft design, much as the RMS Titanic disaster did in 1912.

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories exist about the cause of the sinking. German journalist Jutta Rabe and the British magazine New Statesman claim that laboratory tests on debris recovered illegally from Estonia's bow yielded trace evidence of a deliberate explosion, which they allege was concealed by the Swedish, British, and Russian governments to cover up an intelligence operation smuggling military hardware via the civilian ferry. Members of the Joint Accident Investigation Commission denied these claims, saying that the damage seen on the debris occurred during the visor's detachment from the vessel. The JAIC cited results from Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, which found that Jutta Rabe's samples did not prove an explosion occurred.

Transportation of military equipment

In the autumn of 2004, a former Swedish customs officer claimed on Sveriges Television that Estonia had been used to transport former Soviet military equipment in September 1994. The Swedish and Estonian governments subsequently launched separate investigations, which both confirmed that non-explosive military equipment was aboard the ship on 14 and 20 September 1994. According to the Swedish Ministry of Defense, no such equipment was on board on the day of the disaster, and previous investigations by the Swedish Customs Service found no reports of any anomalous activity around the day of the disaster.

In the early 2000s, a 10-page document, apparently authored by the Swedish Maritime Administration, surfaced. It alleged the ship had been carrying military nuclear material and that an explosion or collision had been the cause of the sinking. In 2025, this document was dismissed as a forgery by the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority.

Protection of the wreck

In the aftermath of the disaster, many relatives of the deceased demanded that their loved ones be raised from international waters and given a land burial. Demands were also made that the entire ship be raised so that the cause of the disaster could be discovered by detailed inspection.  Citing the practical difficulties and the moral implications of raising decaying bodies from the sea floor (the majority of the bodies were never recovered), and fearing the financial burden of lifting the entire hull to the surface and the salvage operation, the Swedish government suggested burying the whole ship in situ with a shell of concrete.

As a preliminary step, thousands of tons of pebbles were dropped on the site.  The Estonia Agreement 1995, a treaty among Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Russia, and the United Kingdom, declared sanctity over the site, prohibiting their citizens from even approaching the wreck. The treaty is, however, only binding for citizens of the countries that are signatories. At least twice, the Swedish Navy has discovered diving operations at the wreck. The wreck's location is monitored on radar by the Finnish Navy.

Media

The sinking of the Estonia has been the subject of several documentaries in addition to the feature film Baltic Storm, including:

History Channel: Sinking of the Estonia

Zero Hour: The Sinking of the Estonia (2006)

Built from Disaster: Ships (2009)

Discovery Plus: Estonia (2020)

It was also mentioned in the Swedish film Force Majeure.

Estonia, a Finnish eight-part television series about the MS Estonia's accident, was produced by Fisher King company for the Nordic streaming service C More and released in 2023. According to the creators behind the series, the effort was said to be the most expensive drama series ever produced in Finland.

In addition, the disaster has inspired several musical works:

Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae, a choral work by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi

Incantatio maris aestuosi, a choral work by Veljo Tormis

"Estonia", a song by Marillion

"Ever so blue", a song by Heini Vaikmaa and performed by Rodrigo Fomins

"Vedenalainen maailma", a song by Laura Sippola

"Estonia hukk", a lament by Virve Köster

Lamento, for organ ("Lament over the Estonia Catastrophe") by Erland von Koch

"Estonia", a song by Stormwing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_MS_Estonia

2003 Angola Boeing 727 Disappearance

 

On 25 May 2003, a Boeing 727-223 airliner, registered as N844AA, was stolen at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, on the west-central coast of Southern Africa, prompting a worldwide search by law enforcement intelligence agencies in the United States. No trace of the aircraft has ever been found.

Background

The incident aircraft was a Boeing 727-223 airliner, serial number 20985, manufactured in 1975 and operated by American Airlines for 25 years until 2000. Its last owner was reportedly a US company called Aerospace Sales & Leasing. The aircraft had been grounded at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in March 2002 and sat idle for fourteen months, accruing more than US$50,000 in unpaid airport fees. It was one of two aircraft there in the process of being converted for use by Nigerian IRS Airlines. There are reports that the airplane's registration may have been changed to 5N-RIR, possibly as a fake registration.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) described the aircraft as "unpainted silver in color with a stripe of blue, white, and red. The [aircraft] was formerly in the air fleet of a major airline, but all of the passenger seats have been removed. It is outfitted to carry diesel fuel."

Incident

On 25 May 2003, shortly before sunset (likely to be 17:00 WAT), it is believed that two men, Ben C. Padilla and John M. Mutantu, boarded the aircraft. Padilla was a pilot and flight engineer from the United States, while Mutantu was a Congolese-French citizen hired mechanic from the Republic of the Congo. A crew of three is required to fly a Boeing 727, and neither of the two was certified to fly it. U.S. authorities believe Padilla was at the controls. An airport employee reported seeing only one person on board the aircraft at the time; other airport officials stated two men boarded the aircraft before the incident.

The aircraft began taxiing without communicating with the control tower. It maneuvered erratically and entered a runway without clearance. Air traffic controllers tried to make contact, but there was no response. With no lights, the aircraft took off, heading southwest over the Atlantic Ocean before disappearing. Before the incident, the aircraft was filled with 53,000 liters (14,000 US gal) of fuel, giving it a range of about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 mi; 1,300 nmi). Neither the aircraft nor the two men have been seen since, and no debris from the aircraft has been found.

Hypotheses

Padilla's sister, Benita Padilla-Kirkland, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 2004 that her family suspected that he had been flying the aircraft and feared that he subsequently crashed somewhere in Africa or was being held against his will, a hypothesis shared by Aerospace Sales & Leasing president Maury Joseph, who had examined the plane two weeks before its disappearance. However, U.S. authorities suspected that Joseph's history of accounting fraud played a part, believing that the plane's theft was either caused by a business feud or resulted from a scam.

In July 2003, a possible sighting of the missing aircraft was reported in Conakry, Guinea, but was conclusively dismissed by the U.S. State Department.

An extensive article published in Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine in September 2010 was unable to draw any conclusions on the fate of the aircraft, despite research and interviews with persons knowledgeable of details surrounding the disappearance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Angola_Boeing_727_disappearance

Karen Silkwood

 

Karen Gay Silkwood (February 19, 1946 – November 13, 1974) was an American laboratory technician and labor union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility.

She worked at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site in Crescent, Oklahoma, producing plutonium pellets. She was the first woman elected to the union's negotiating team at Kerr-McGee. After testifying to the Atomic Energy Commission about her safety concerns, she was found to have plutonium contamination in her body and her home. While driving to meet a New York Times journalist and a union official from her national office, she died in a car crash, the details of which were never fully explained.

Her family sued Kerr-McGee for the plutonium contamination that Silkwood suffered from. The company settled out of court for US$1.38 million, while not admitting liability. Her story was chronicled in Mike Nichols's 1983 Academy Award-nominated movie Silkwood, in which she was portrayed by Meryl Streep.

Education and personal life

Karen Gay Silkwood was born in 1946 in Longview, Texas, and raised in Nederland, Texas. She lived with her mother, Merle, father Bill, and sisters Rosemary and Linda. In high school, Karen was a straight-A student and a member of the National Honor Society. Chemistry was her best subject. In the fall of 1964, she enrolled at Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, on a scholarship from the Business and Professional Women's Club.

In 1965, Silkwood dropped out of college and eloped with William Meadows, an oil pipeline worker, with whom she had three children. After the couple filed for bankruptcy due to Meadows' excessive spending habits, and after he refused to end an extramarital affair, Silkwood left him in 1972 and relocated to Oklahoma City, where she worked briefly as a hospital clerk.

Union activities

In August 1972, Silkwood was hired as a metallography laboratory technician with the Kerr-McGee Corporation at their Cimarron River plutonium production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma. She soon joined the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) local. In November 1972, she participated in a strike to protest poor working conditions. Kerr-McGee succeeded in breaking the strike by hiring people from the surrounding area to cross the picket line. The company's managers also began "working behind the scenes to entice workers to sign a petition calling for a decertification election to eliminate the union."

In August 1974, Silkwood was elected to the OCAW local's three-person bargaining committee, the first woman to hold such a position at Kerr-McGee. It was a critical time for the local as the decertification drive had collected enough signatures to force an election on October 16.

Silkwood's specific union duties included investigating health and safety issues. She discovered at the Cimarron plant what she considered to be numerous violations of health regulations, such as exposure of workers to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment, and improper storage of samples. She believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities was increasing the risk of employee contamination. She also found evidence of missing or misplaced plutonium.

On September 26, 1974, Silkwood and the two other committee members attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Tony Mazzocchi, OCAW's legislative director. The committee members voiced their complaints about the dangerous workplace conditions and sought advice on how to win the upcoming decertification election. In their discussions, Mazzocchi learned that the committee members (and presumably the rest of the Cimarron plant) were not adequately informed about the hazardous material they were working with. He later wrote, "When I explained the connection between plutonium exposure and cancer, it took Karen by surprise." And so, they made plans that day to have two atomic scientists from the University of Minnesota come speak to the Cimarron workers. Mazzocchi recalled how Silkwood took him aside at one point and said, "You know, there are some other problems that I'd like to talk to you about.":

I said, "What are they?" She said, "I work in a quality-control lab, and I noticed the lab technician would use a felt pen on the X-ray to cover over that little thin line that showed a crack in the control rod welds." And she told me there was some fooling with the computer data, too. I said, "Look, Karen, if you could prove that, I think we could use it to beat the company and improve the conditions in that facility."

At the conclusion of the meeting, Mazzocchi and his staffer, Steve Wodka, counseled that the best hope for survival of the Cimarron workers and their local was to raise awareness about Kerr-McGee's practices with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the national press.

To that end, the OCAW initiated an aggressive whistleblowing campaign. They claimed that "the Kerr-McGee plant had manufactured faulty fuel rods, falsified product inspection records, and risked employee safety". The union threatened litigation. On September 27, Silkwood testified to the AEC about having been contaminated with plutonium, and she alleged that safety standards had been relaxed because of a need to increase production. She appeared at the AEC hearings along with the two other committee members who likewise testified that Kerr-McGee was endangering its workers. The whistleblowing effort and the visibility it brought—combined with the educational sessions on plutonium toxicity that Silkwood arranged with the atomic scientists (attended by one hundred of her co-workers)—helped fight off decertification. The Cimarron local voted 80–61 in October to keep the OCAW as their bargaining agent.

On November 5, 1974, Silkwood performed a routine self-check that showed almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. Although there was plutonium on the inner portions of the gloves, which she had been using, the gloves did not have any leaks or perforations according to tests performed subsequently by Kerr-McGee personnel. This suggests the contamination had come not from inside the glovebox, but from some other source.

The next morning, as she left for a union meeting, Silkwood again tested positive for plutonium, although she had performed only paperwork tasks that morning. She was given a more intensive decontamination. On November 7, as she entered the plant, she was found to be severely contaminated, even expelling contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces, especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator. When the house was later stripped and decontaminated, some of her property had to be destroyed. Silkwood, her boyfriend Drew Stephens, and her roommate Sherri Ellis were sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of the contamination in their bodies.

There were questions about how Silkwood became contaminated during this three-day period from November 5-7. She said the contamination in the bathroom may have occurred when she spilled her urine sample on the morning of November 7. This was consistent with the fact that the samples she collected at home had extremely high levels of plutonium, while the samples collected in "fresh" jars at the plant and at Los Alamos showed much lower levels. 

She concluded that someone working for Kerr-McGee had deliberately contaminated her. Kerr-McGee's management alleged that Silkwood had contaminated herself to harm the company's reputation. According to Richard Rashke's book The Killing of Karen Silkwood, the particular type of plutonium found in Silkwood's home came from a Cimarron production area, pellet lot 29, where she did not work. Starting in August, the pellet lot 29 samples were kept in a Kerr-McGee vault to which she did not have access.

Death

By November, Silkwood believed she had assembled sufficient documentation, including company papers, to corroborate her claims against Kerr-McGee. She decided to go public with this evidence and contacted David Burnham, a New York Times journalist whom Tony Mazzocchi referred her to. Burnham had previously broken the Frank Serpico police corruption case and was now researching atomic energy issues.

On November 13, 1974, Silkwood attended a 5:30 p.m. union meeting, along with ten other members of the OCAW local, at the Hub Cafe in Crescent. She made a brief presentation and sipped iced tea. Another attendee at the meeting, Wanda Jean Jung, stated in an affidavit in January 1975 that Silkwood had a folder, a spiral notebook, and a packet of documents with her at the cafe. During a break in the meeting, Jung said she spoke with Silkwood, who was crying quietly and admitted how frightened she was "that she had been so badly contaminated, she would eventually get cancer and die from the plutonium in her lungs." But then, Jung stated in her affidavit, Karen pointed to her documents and said, "There was one thing she was glad about ... that she had all the proof concerning falsification of records. As she said this, she clenched her hand more firmly on the folder and notebook she was holding. She told me she was on her way to meet Steve Wodka and a New York Times reporter ... to give them this material."

At 7:10 p.m., Silkwood left the meeting, got into her 1973 white Honda Civic, and drove alone toward Oklahoma City, about 30 miles (48 km) away, to meet with Burnham and Wodka. Less than 30 minutes later, Silkwood's body was discovered in her smashed-up car, 7.3 miles from the cafe. The car had run off the left side of State Highway 74, traveled some distance along the grass shoulder, and then struck the wing wall of a concrete culvert 0.11 miles (180 m) south of the intersection with West Industrial Road (35.85°N 97.58°W). The impact from hitting the wall caused her to be impaled by her steering wheel and pinned to the roof of the Honda Civic. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Silkwood's car contained none of the documents she had been holding in the meeting at the Hub Cafe. The Oklahoma state trooper at the crash site remembers that he found one or two tablets of the sedative methaqualone (Quaalude) in the car, and what he believed were two marijuana joints. The coroner found 0.35 milligrams of methaqualone in her blood—"a therapeutic dose is .25 mg, a toxic dose, .50 mg." The Oklahoma Highway Patrol report concluded that she fell asleep at the wheel and died as a result of an accident.

The OCAW hired a crash investigator, A. O. Pipkin Jr., to examine the car and the scene of the crash. Based on his examination, Silkwood had not fallen asleep while driving: "The steering wheel was bent back on the sides, proving she'd been wide awake and hanging on tight as she tried to maintain control." In support of his notion that she was awake, he added two other observations. The first was the anomalous fact that her car had veered from the right lane to the left shoulder:

"In most one-vehicle accidents where the driver has gone to sleep, or because of impaired abilities," Pipkin noted, "the vehicle has always gone off to the right because of the contour of the road, namely the crown." The second thing Pipkin reported was that the Honda tracks in the grass showed the car did not drift, but was actually out of control before it left the highway. "The only way that this car could have been put in that attitude," he wrote, "was either an impact by an unknown vehicle or a combination of an impact by an unknown vehicle and driver over-reaction and subsequent loss of control."

But most significantly, Pipkin found damage to the rear of the vehicle, which, according to her friends, had not been present before. As the crash was entirely a head-on, front-end collision, it didn't explain the fresh dents on the left rear fender and the bumper above it. A microscopic analysis of the rear of the car revealed paint chips that could have come only from impact by another vehicle.

In light of Pipkin's findings, some friends and journalists theorized that Silkwood's car was rammed from behind with the intent to cause a fatal crash. OCAW officials Mazzocchi and Wodka did not believe it was premeditated murder because that stretch of highway is flat, and the odds of her hitting an obstruction like a concrete culvert were so remote. Instead, they suspected it was an attempt, which went tragically awry, to scare and intimidate her into stopping her whistleblowing and returning the documents. Another hypothesis is that she was being chased to force her to halt. She drove evasively, including speeding along the left grass shoulder, and while looking behind her or to her right at the chase car, she didn't realize until too late that she was racing toward the culvert.

Due to contamination concerns, the Atomic Energy Commission and the State Medical Examiner requested analysis of Silkwood's organs by the Los Alamos Tissue Analysis Program.  On November 18, she was buried in Kilgore, Texas.

Silkwood's plutonium contamination and the mysterious circumstances of her death became a national news story. It aroused public suspicion and resulted in a federal investigation of Cimarron plant security. National Public Radio reported that the investigation determined 20 to 30 kilograms (44–66 lb.) of plutonium had been misplaced at the plant. The unaccounted-for nuclear material generated speculation as to its whereabouts. Richard Rashke suggested that the missing plutonium may have been stolen by "a plutonium smuggling ring," given that the quantity was enough to make three or four nuclear bombs. He added that security at the Cimarron plant was so lax that workers could easily smuggle out finished plutonium pellets.

Kerr-McGee closed its nuclear fuel plants in 1975. The Department of Energy (DOE) reported the Cimarron plant as fully decontaminated and decommissioned by 1994.

Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee

In November 1976, Karen's father, Bill Silkwood, and his attorney, Daniel Sheehan, filed a complaint against Kerr-McGee for gross negligence in handling the plutonium that contaminated her. Bill Silkwood asked for $160,000 "for Karen's loss of property, personal injury, and mental anguish, and as a punishment to Kerr-McGee and the others named in the complaint."

The months leading up to the trial were likewise filled with controversy. According to Rashke, officials investigating Kerr-McGee's operations and the circumstances of the car crash were themselves at risk: "People had been tailed and forced off lonely roads by speeding cars. Two shadowy characters about to be subpoenaed suddenly packed up their attaché cases and fled to West Germany. One apparently healthy police officer about to be deposed died of a heart attack. There was no autopsy. Someone tried to murder a Kerr-McGee manager who knew too much. Someone tried to assassinate Bill Taylor, the chief investigator for the legal team representing the Silkwood family. And then there were all those strange clicks on everyone's telephone."

The trial occurred in the spring of 1979. Gerry Spence was the chief attorney for the Silkwood estate, assisted by Daniel Sheehan, Arthur Angel, and James Ikard. William Paul was chief attorney for Kerr-McGee. The plaintiff presented evidence that the autopsy showed Silkwood was contaminated with plutonium at the time of her death. To prove the contamination was sustained at the plant, evidence was given by a series of witnesses who were former employees of the facility.

The defense relied on expert witness Dr. George Voelz, a high-ranking scientist at Los Alamos. Voelz said he believed the contamination in Silkwood's body was within legal standards. The defense later proposed that Silkwood was a troublemaker who might have poisoned herself. After the summation arguments, Judge Frank Theis told the jury, "[I]f you find that the damage to the person or property of Karen Silkwood resulted from the operation of this plant ... defendant Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation is liable...."

The jury rendered its verdict of US$505,000 in damages and US$10,000,000 in punitive damages. On appeal in federal court, the judgment was reduced to US$5,000 (the estimated value of Silkwood's losses in property at her rental house), and the award for punitive damages was reversed. In Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 US 238 (1984), the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the original jury verdict. The court ruled that "the NRC's exclusive authority to set safety standards did not foreclose the use of state tort remedies." Although indicating it would appeal for other reasons, Kerr-McGee agreed in 1986 to settle out of court for US$1.38 million ($3.96 million today), while admitting no liability.

In media

The 1979 movie The China Syndrome includes a scene that echoes the Silkwood story: a courier, with evidence of falsified radiographs from a nuclear power plant, is rammed from behind and forced off the road while driving to a nuclear safety and plant licensing hearing. Unlike Silkwood, the courier does not die in the crash, but the radiographs are stolen from his car.

Silkwood was portrayed on stage by actress Jehane Dyllan in the one-person play Silkwood, which Dyllan scripted along with Susan Holleran and Bobbi Ausubel. Ausubel also directed the piece. It ran April 7-12, 1981, at Theater Works, UMass-Park Square in Boston.

The 1983 movie Silkwood is an account of Silkwood's life and the events resulting from her activism, based on an original screenplay by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. Meryl Streep played the title role and was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA. Cher played Karen's friend and roommate, Sherri Ellis, and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Mike Nichols was nominated for Best Director. Ephron and Arlen were nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

PBS Frontline produced the program Nuclear Reaction, which contained aspects of the Silkwood story. The program's website includes supplementary text about her that was first printed on November 23, 1995, in Los Alamos Science. The program covered the risks of nuclear energy and raised questions about corporate accountability and responsibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood