Both reports asserted that Smolensk, a military airfield lacking modern civil navigation aids, was shrouded in dense fog that fateful morning and, on the approach, the pilot (who was overtaxed by managing the landing and radio contact with the Smolensk tower simultaneously) misjudged the glide slope and flew the Tu-154 into a forest a half-mile short of the runway.
Russian and Polish official inquiries into the disaster, both published in 2011, were not in complete agreement, yet they broadly concurred that pilot error was to blame. However, investigators determined that the crash occurred due to a chain of human errors and could be explained without nefarious mystery. It seemed beyond suspicious that Poland’s government died in a disaster on Russian soil-particularly when the Kremlin is led by a man who came of age in the KGB, the very same people who executed and covered up the Katyń massacre. Poles know their neighbor well, and Kaczyński had no illusions about Vladimir Putin’s thuggish regime. Covered up by the Kremlin until after the Cold War (with help from the incurious West), Katyń lingers as an unhealed wound in the Polish psyche the sudden death of so much of the country’s leadership on the way to that site of national martyrdom was too much for some Poles to bear.įrom the outset, right-wing allies of the fallen president smelled a rat-a Russian rat, that is. To make matters even more painful, President Kaczyński and his entourage died en route to a commemoration at Katyń, the forest in western Russia where, in the spring of 1940, Stalin’s secret police murdered 22,000 Polish military officers captured by the Soviets when they carved up Poland with Adolf Hitler the previous September. Among the dead were President Lech Kaczyński and his wife, much of the president’s staff, 18 parliamentarians, 10 generals and admirals representing Poland’s top military leadership, and many other political notables.
#Air crash investigation radio silence plus#
Although other crashes have claimed more victims-the death toll at Smolensk came to 96, all those aboard the doomed ship plus seven crew-those lost were the elite of Poland’s government. The crash of a Polish Air Force Tu-154 airliner near the Russian city of Smolensk on Apstands as the most momentous air disaster in modern times. It doesn't have the emotional, heart-heavy feel that earlier episodes once had, but there is plenty to look forward to, with episodes of season 16 set to feature 4 recent crashes within the last decade, and still fresh in many of our memories.Soldiers carry the coffin of late Polish President Lech Kazcynski at a memorial service on Apin Krakow, Poland. Yet this is still quality documentary-TV, with ACI still performing well after more than 10 years. This episode presents nothing new contrasting to other episodes, and does not even interview any family of those involved. It's simply a constant repeat of the reenactment-interviews-investigation script, which creates episodes very similar to one another. It's easy to tire of the formula constantly used in these episodes, which has not changed for many seasons. The show still does very well with its CGI, reenactments and explanation of the crash. This episode is no different, investigating the death of a famous golfer, Payne Stewart, in a Learjet crash. Air Crash Investigations continue to create quality investigations into crashes, year after year, season after season.
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