The Smolensk Tragedy

Four years ago today, the greatest tragedy to befall Poland since World War II took place on the periphery of the Smolensk North Airport in Russia. On April 10, 2010, the presidential Tupolev Tu-154m aircraft (the Polish Air Force One) crashed into the ground, killing all 96 passengers and crew, including President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, his wife Maria, the chief of the Polish General staff and other senior officers, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, and dozens of cultural and civic leaders. The irony of this disaster was that the passengers of the plane were en route to the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Katyń massacre, a series of executions of Polish prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet NKVD in the spring of 1940. The name “Smolensk” would come to describe a double tragedy that consumed the lives of many of Poland’s greatest citizens. Official reports on the cause of the crash produced by Russian and Polish investigators place primary blame on the pilots of the aircraft, citing insufficient training, dense fog and pressure to land the plane as contributing factors. The terrain around the airport also created a serious issue, as the approach included a valley that was below the elevation of the landing strip, making visual contact with the terrain a misleading gauge for proper elevation, given the adverse weather conditions. Criticism has also been leveled as the flight controllers at the Smolensk North Airport, who apparently failed to follow standard operating procedures for warning the approaching plane about their elevation and may have misinformed them about their location relative to the runway. The immediate aftermath of the crash resulted in a wave of emotion that cascaded through the Polish populace, including a mixture of grief, despair, desperation and solidarity. As time drew on though, many questions began to emerge, including: Why were so many important people on one plane? Who were the flight controllers at Smolensk and why weren’t they interviewed as part of the investigation? Why was the wreckage of the plane and the flight recorders and black boxes still in Russia? (where they remain to this day) The tragedy at Smolensk is rife with issues worthy of deeper exploration, but for the sake of a comprehendible piece for someone who may be largely unfamiliar with this event, I wanted to bring the reader’s attention to analyses of this event that I have come across in my research. The first item is a technical analysis of the impact of the Tupolev’s left wing on a birch tree, which according to official reports, caused the wing to sever and led the plane to elevate, rotate upside down and ultimately crash into the ground to devastating effect. The video below is a presentation by Professor Wiesław Binienda, a Pole who is a faculty member of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Akron, Ohio. According to Binienda’s findings, based on the composition of the birch tree, the Tupolev wing and numerous other physical factors, it is not possible for the wing to have been shorn off by impact with the birch tree. Since the impact with the birch tree has been officially designated as the immediate cause of the crash, Professor Binienda’s findings raise serious questions about the investigations conducted by the Polish and Russian governments. I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Binienda in Palo Alto last year and was impressed by his strength of character and dedication to principle. (Note: The portion of the presentation relevant to the Smolensk crash begins at the 8:00 mark, though the preceding material provides extra context)