This Institute with about 4000 employees is on federal level engaged in the testing and treating of all sorts of materials including e.g. firecrackers. It has several departments specialised in metallography and metallurgy and is also the highest German authority for the approval of explosive substances.

“It has to be determined whether the deformations of the specimen have been caused by detonative influences.”

At the meeting Stefan Aust also handed over Samples No. 1 and 2, respectively what was left of Sample No. 1, because the specimens cut off from this sample by the MPA Brandenburg at the beginning were kept by them and only subsequently, after the negative results of BAM became known, submitted to the BAM however not examined and consequently not included in the BAM investigation results.*

Therefore it was not surprising when BAM after having performed numerous explosion and mechanical tests to the shipbuilding steel supplied by the Meyer Werft announced 2½ months later: “All the examined structural characteristics do point to deformation caused by mechanical load, however that does not exclude that there could have been detonations in other parts of the starboard front bulkhead of the Estonia.”

The report comprises 113 pages and was available in the Internet in 2001 in German.
Needless to say that the MPA Brandenburg and Prof. Neubert/DN Institute protested against this comparison of apples with pears because the specimen, in which both Institutes had determined without any doubt the characteristics of detonations, had not been included in the BAM examination, although they were offered and finally even accepted by them.

Although advised accordingly this obvious ignorance was ignored by Spiegel and Spiegel TV who went public in January 2001 and almost managed to destroy the explosion theory. The BAM project manager Dr. Klinger went so far to state before running cameras: “It can be excluded that there has been an explosion in the area of the starboard front bulkhead of the Estonia”, although the BAM Report strictly confines this statement to the samples examined and does not exclude possible detonations at other locations of the front bulkhead.

One of the many questions raised after the Spiegel publications was: “Why does the BAM behave the way they do and why were they from the beginning already so adverse to the findings of the other Institutes?”

Brian Braidwood explains his “general impression” about the BAM work as follows:

»When any client asks a technical organisation to examine metal samples for signs of an explosion, they can expect that the staff involved will carry out their examination and base their conclusions on past experience.
The overall impression from the work carried out by BAM is that they lacked the experience necessary to make any valid conclusions. They then set out on a learning exercise to establish the effects of explosions on the many large samples of modern ship-building steel supplied to them. This meant conducting a long  and complex series of mechanical and explosive tests which were recorded on video and used as a basis for the Spiegel TV coverage. BAM also examined and reported on some, but not all, of the samples taken from the Estonia.«

and he continues:

»BAM access to other reports
Before BAM wrote their report they had access to all the reports from  Brandenburg, including the Neubert Report, which is the report from Clausthal-Zellerfeld, and also a brief report from the South West Research Institute. From this report, they should not have been surprised at the lack of any significant twinning or hardening effects in the "Holland Profile" sample from the Estonia. In contrast, they would have been able to see that Brandenburg saw very significant twinning and hardening effects near the point of the triangular Estonia sample, which would have been nearest the centre of the hole. These effects diminished towards the opposite side of the triangle which was cut by a torch.
BAM failure to test all samples
When BAM received Sample 1, without the specimens inadvertently retained by Brandenburg, they had the part which was least likely to be affected by an explosion since it was the part furthest from the centre of the hole in the bulkhead. They then concluded that their tests of this incomplete sample showed no signs of an explosion. They then completely ignored any tests of the specimens from Sample 1, later supplied to them by Brandenburg. This extraordinary lapse occurred despite the fact that BAM had access to all the Brandenburg test results. They would therefore have known that these specimens showed far greater signs of the effects of an explosion.
BAM Report shortcomings and false conclusions
From the above paragraphs, it can be seen that the BAM Report has a number of shortcomings. For example, BAM attempts to discount the possibility of an explosion because the effects they saw in the Estonia samples they examined, could have been caused by something else. They say these could have been a result of the original cleaning treatment or some mechanical damage, "and therefore could not have been caused by an explosion."
Despite access to all other relevant test reports and against the instructions of their client, BAM seem to have completely ignored the samples that were likely to show the greatest effects of twinning and hardening.«

The complete Report of Brian Braidwood is attached as Enclosure 5.
Also the MPA Brandenburg as well as Professor Neubert/DN Institute felt confronted and took position.
The opinion of the MPA is expressed in a 6-page memo “Considerations concerning the MPA Examination reports in comparison to the BAM-Opinion, BAM V 3/187”, dated 08.02.01 from which the following is quoted:

»Reason:
Results and conclusions of the BAM Report do differ significantly from those of the MPA.
Thereafter the MPA, having in detail compared the BAM findings with their own findings and those of the other institutes, finally arrives at the conclusion that:

• The examination results of all 3 institutes arrive convincingly at the conclusion that a detonative effect on the examined sample is most probable and cannot be clearly denied. Therefore the MPA sees no reason to change its so far found and interpreted results.

The complete memo is attached (only in German) as Enclosure 6.
Also Professor Neubert of the DN Institute submitted his opinion as to the BAM Report in a 3-page letter dated 12.02.01 which is attached (in German) as Enclosure 7.
In addition to criticising insufficient measurement devices and wrong interpretation of results, Prof. Neubert in particular criticises the poor treatment of the entrusted sample material and finally concludes:

»As a result of this inappropriate sample treatment it is no more possible to directly prove high speed deformations.«

The aforementioned comments are self-explanatory and need no further explanations: The BAM results are based on the wrong samples because BAM ignored those examined by the MPA and the DN Institute in which both institutes definitely proved detonation.