The commemoration of one of the most brutal massacres of the twentieth century has turned into a historical tragedy. Let’s talk about theTu-154 Siły Powietrzne crash on 10 April 2010dubbed by the media as the crash of the Polish presidential plane: the Tupolev Tu-154M of the Warsaw Air Force crashed twenty kilometers from the Russian city of Smolensk with people on board the then President of Poland Lech Kaczynski accompanied by his wife Maria, ex-president Ryszard Kaczorowski and other prominent faces of Polish politics and society. An unprecedented drama: budget of 96 dead – 89 passengers and 7 crew members – e no survivors.
The Tu-154 Siły Powietrzne crash on 10 April 2010
10 April 2010. At 9.27 am the Tupolev Tu-154M of Siły Powietrzne takes off from Warsaw for the Smolensk-Severnyj air base, in Russia. On board the plane were Polish President Kaczynski, politicians and officials. Among others, ex-president Ryszard Kaczorowski, the head of the Polish armed forces with some senior officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, the Polish deputy foreign minister, government officials and eighteen members of the Polish parliament.
A rich delegation for a very important trip from both a political and historical point of view: on this 10th April the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacreone of the most tragic pages in the history of the Soviet Union: the summary execution of 22 thousand Polish officers, politicians, intellectuals, professors and industrialists in the forest near the village of Gnëzdovo, about 20 km west of the city of Smolensk .
The plane, which also carries the descendants of the victims of the massacre, is flown by four of Poland’s best pilots. Shortly after 10.00 am, the descent towards the Smolensk military airport begins. Flanked by first officer Robert Grzywna, navigator Artur Ziętek and flight engineer Andrzej Michalak, commander Arkadiusz Protasiuk is the only one who speaks Russian and for this reason it is he who manages communications with the control tower.
The conditions are very bad: there is a lot of fog and visibility is reduced. Furthermore, the air base is not equipped for an instrument landing. For the controller there are no conditions for landing, but the commander decides to evaluate what to do once he reaches 100 meters of altitude. The fog becomes thicker and thicker and the situation begins to worsen, also due to the sound of an alarm inside the cabin. The pilots find it increasingly difficult to lift the plane, until it hits a series of trees, crashing to the ground about twenty kilometers from Smolensk.
The investigations
A few minutes after the crash of the plane with President Kaczynski on board, military personnel arrive, followed by relief workers. The scene is one of total devastation: among the charred wreckage, fragments of the 96 people on board the plane appear. No survivors, no whole bodies. The Russian MAK investigators accept the collaboration of their Polish colleagues and immediately take action investigations: the first objective is to deny the conspiracy theories emerged immediately after the crash. For many Poles, in fact, it is not an accident but a murder orchestrated by Kaczynski’s political opponents.
The investigators – a team made up of 34 people – they immediately rule out the possibility of an attack: at the accident site the evidence points in a direction that does not match that of the conspiracy theorists, there are no traces of explosives. The investigators immediately agreed: it was a tragic accident and not a political murder. Attention immediately shifts to black boxes of the aircraft, which are three: the Russian-made Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the Polish-made Quick Access Recorder (QAR).
While waiting for positive communications from the search team, the investigators focus their attention on the control tower. Something doesn’t add up regarding the data: the pilots descend to a height of 100 meters, but hit a plane at 10 meters. Did the plane with the president on board have a problem or was it a sensational error by the pilots? Help comes from the two black boxes found, both Russian-made. The answer is clear: analyses they do not indicate the presence of a mechanical failure.
So no damage. But is it really the pilots’ fault? Something unusual emerges from the analysis of the cabin recorder: as anticipated, the commander is in charge of communications with the control tower and not the navigator. The investigators’ suspicion is that the commander had an excessive workload. But not only that. In fact, the investigators discovered that the pilots were not alone in the cabin, but were accompanied by others senior officers. Could this have mattered?
An important step forward is linked to the discovery of the third black box. The Polish investigators compare the data with those of the other two black boxes and exclude tampering by their Russian colleagues. However, the presence of an alarm in the cabin emerges indicating that the plane is dangerously low, even if the pilots do not seem to react. And then doubts arise about the correctness of the data linked toaltitude.
The turning point
The investigators discover that the reading of thealtimeter makes a sudden jump: before the crash someone had reset the altimeter, thus changing the altitude reference. In other words, the plane carrying President Kaczynski seemed higher than the actual distance from the earth. The investigators listen to some pilots from the same regiment and discover that they sometimes manipulate the altimeter due to an annoying problem: being connected to a ground proximity alarm, the system is pre-programmed with the specifications of the main airports. But many airports, including Molensk, are not included in the system’s database. But thanks to the constant alarms, some pilots have developed the dangerous habit of ignoring the system’s warnings.
But that’s not all. The altimeter was moved to the wrong position. Most large aircraft are equipped with two types of altimeter: with the barometric one reset, the aircraft could only use the second one, the radio altimeter had provided misleading information by reporting a position of the aircraft 170 meters higher than the real position . And another determining factor also emerges: thanks to some past episodes, with colleagues punished for not having followed the instructions of their superiors, the commander would have done everything to respect the indication to land in Smolensk, to the point of attempting a risky maneuver. A climate of tension exasperated by the communication difficulties with the control tower and the terrible layout of the Russian airport.
Kaczynski’s death does not slow down the activities of the Polish government, also because no member of the executive was on board the plane. Different story for the armed forces due to the death of the leaders. The same goes for the Chiefs of Staff: their tasks are automatically assumed by their respective deputies. Poland proclaims a week of national mourning, while Russia proclaims April 12 as national mourning.
On April 13, President Kaczynski’s body was exhibited in a funeral home set up in the presidential palace. His funeral and that of his wife five days later in Krakow, in the Basilica of Santa Marta.