https://www.tvn24.pl/czarno-na-bialym,42,m/sila-faktow-material-piotra-swie= rczka-o-katastrofie-smolenskiej,829206.html ENGLISH SUBTITLES "We are on our way to get the truth." "The truth about the [2010] Smolensk catastrophe." "The time for this will come." For a long time the issue of this flight is buckling under a heavy political weight. "We have won!" The weight of claims and theories that may have a great impact. "The commission has no doubts about the explosion." "Here, there were explosive charges, the largest ones, the epicenters." "Explosion in the central wing, above the ground." "There were numerous traces of explosives." "I think the answer is clear now: it was not an accident. It was an assassination." This sounds much more striking than the evidence gathered so far by the Polish Prosecutor's Office. In the materials from the investigation of Prosecutor's Office, there is a Comprehensive Opinion of the expert team which, based on material evidence, excludes an assassination. "Prosecutor's office requested that the team of experts who issued the Comprehensive Opinion provides an augmented opinion." "The reason for the request of revision is mainly to allow inclusion of additional evidence." The Opinion, created originally for the Military Prosecutors Office, was completed last year, that is at the time when the head of the prosecution was justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro. THE POWER OF FACTS The Comprehensive Opinion boils down to this animation, created on the basis of it. "Sixty, fifty, forty, thirty, twenty!..." [Navigator] "Fuck it!" This tragedy was analyzed by a group of more than twenty experts, including military officers and former pilots of the TU-154 airplane, aeronautical engineers, specialists in flight technique and aerodynamics. They have no doubt that the low-flying airplane lost a part of its wing after collision with a large birch tree. There was no explosion, there was no bomb. THE WINGS The experts on over seven hundred pages described how the airplane was destroyed, including its wing. At 856 meters from the runway threshold, 63 meters left of the extended runway line the airplane, according to the flight recorders and black boxes, was a bit over 6 meters above the ground. It hit the birch tree on the property of Nicolai Bodin, emergency doctor of the first response service. Bodin was then on his plot. The force of the air blown by the overflying Tupolev overturned him onto his back. "I saw it all very well, it was flying from there, was cutting these bushes, and flew in this direction" [Bodin] "And it had two wings then?" [Journalist] "With one wing it hit this tree and fell it. Then it went up a bit and fell down there, beyond the road. And the wing fell beyond the road." [Bodin] The first to meet the tree trunk were the so-called leading-edge slats. These elements of the wing meet the incoming air mass. The slats during a landing are pushed forward of the wing and directed down by 22 degrees. The configuration of the slats influences the way they are first bent then and ripped off the wing structure. The tree hit where the second section of slats ends and the third section begins. For clarity, we remove from our animation the major and minor tree branches. This particular fragment of the slat disintegrates into three parts. The most damaged fragment was identified thanks to the rubber gasket separating slats. This piece was ripped off from another characteristic part of the slat with external guide rail. And this particular one is a part with a broken screw mechanism of the slat. All these elements where found in this particular place - in the wooded ditch located behind the birch tree, along the side of the road bordering Nicolai Bodin's plot. This is the most crumpled part, identified thanks to the already mentioned gasket separating the slat sections. This is the fragment with a screw of the mechanism for slat retraction. And this is a fragment with the external guide rail, characteristically bent on the upper part by the encounter with the tree, here described on photos by the Polish police. Let us remind you, according to the investigators this elements was found near the birch, on the outskirts of Mr. Bodin's land. "This part, this end, was torn away because of explosion." But Wieslaw Binienda, expert of Antoni Macierewicz's subcommittee [of air accidents investigation committee], putting forward the thesis of explosion, says something entirely different. "Small explosions in order to destroy this slat." He speaks on a very friendly TV. "It was found 250 meters from the tree. It never touched that birch." Let's come back to our visualization of experts' Comprehensive Opinion. Remember, our graphics is an attempt to faithfully recreate the way the experts thought. After we describe each element that was damaged and torn off, for clarity we remove it from the animation. Behind the slots, there is the so-called nose of the profile, with thickness of 1.5 mm, and in the wing itself the hidden first spar, that is a vertical aluminum alloy wall with thickness from 2.5 to 3.5 mm. Numbers of vertical wing ribs are painted on the surface of the spar. This allows an easy identification of this bent and torn aluminum element, behind which rib number 28 was located. The rib is also fragmenting into small pieces. Cables passing through openings in the rib surface are bent backwards. The wing was cut in the immediate vicinity of rib 29. The first spar in this area was bent backwards while being broken by the tree, that is opposite to the direction of flight of the airplane. These fragments have so far not been described in any report by accident investigation committees, neither Russian nor Polish. They were first described by the expert team of the Polish Prosecutor's Office. Right next to the tree a fragment of the spar was found. It is easy to identify since it has the mentioned number 28 painted on it, meaning the number of the rib riveted to it. Here is the front view, from the direction of the tree. And here from behind, from inside the wingtip. The wing element is clearly buckled toward the inside, which shows that an external force was acting on the spar. According to Prosecutor's experts it means that the tree collided with the wing. These fragments have also not been described before in any reports, neither Russian nor Polish. The fragments of the wing ribs were found in a number of places, including on the branches of the birch tree. They have a characteristic shape, due to their circular openings. On the cut-off wingtip you can see the crash-damaged, crushed nose of the profile. It is this characteristically rippled, accordion-shaped aluminum alloy sheet of 1.5 mm thickness. A front wall of the first spar can also be seen, with number 29 and a backward breakage, as if toward the inside of the wing structure. According to the experts this was caused by the tree hitting the structure. All the hydraulic and fuel pipes going through the openings are bent backwards, in accordance with the direction in which the wing was cut. In the moment of collision the machine is flying at 271 km/h, that is 75 m/s. The impact is large enough that the birch gradually breaks, not only 6.5 meters above the ground, where the wing has hit, but also at the trunk's base. This, according to the experts, means that the birch tilts to the left and the wing is cut along a direction inclined 7 degrees to the direction of flight. The birch has a diameter of 47 cm. The band of ripping and crumpling of the wing is over 0.5 meters wide. Wing elements fastening the ribs to the top and bottom skin are called stringers. The tree bends and rips the consecutive stringers of the wing. The investigators found a large number of fragments of the upper and lower skin stringers. In the report of the experts, six stringers were described. They were deformed into a half-circle arc of the tree trunk, sideways, and not in the upward/downward direction. This excludes the possibility of an explosion inside the wing. All these bent stringers were found near the birch tree. During the collision, according to experts, they were wrapped halfway around the tree trunk, a conclusion confirmed with an analysis by the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Polish Police. The tree crushes and rips the aluminum sheets of the wing skin, here 2.5 mm thick. Some skin pieces are bent inwards inside the wing and some, pushed by the tree, are bent outside. We can see this in the photos of the broken off wing-tip. Metal sheets bent both upward and downward, in alternating, opposite directions, can be seen, as well as the cables bent backwards in the direction of the cut. Here, again, are the upwards and downwards-bent pieces of skin layer of the wing-tip. The tree gradually cuts the wing and at the end tears off fragments of the third wing-spar. To remind you, this is a vertical sheet of aluminum alloy, 3.5 mm thick. At the same time it forms a sidewall of a fuel tank. At the end of the flight, the tank contained a leftover of the jet fuel and its fumes. This fragment was found right next to the birch, among some unrelated empty bottle crates. Sealing paste in two colors: black and light purple, can be seen on this piece of wreckage. The paste has rubbery consistency of a sealant for fuel tanks, used by the manufacturer of the plane and maintenance companies. On the element we also see electric cables powering a fuel pump. The insulation on the cables is intact. Not a single element, including the sealing paste, has any signs of fire, burning, smoldering or melting. Neither this, nor the previously analyzed fragments, have any bending or buckling, which would be very characteristic if the fuel fumes had actually exploded. "Excuse me, I will not talk to you gentlemen." In December we put specific questions to the deputy of Smolensk subcommittee [of government's aviation accident committee], Kazimierz Nowaczyk. "If the wing broke off due to explosion, why is the wing-tip intact?" "I don't know." "In the wing there is a fuel tank. If you claim that the wing was cut off by an explosion and extreme pressure, why is the wing-tip whole, intact?" "Well, the pressure must have ripped it off" "Why then has the wingtip not disintegrated? There were fuel fumes in there." "... One more thing ..." Clearly confused, he changes the topic. Two months later, the subcommittee has found an answer. "Our Polish pyrotechnician managed to achieve by way of experiment the same effects. He can cut the wing with fuel inside, with fuel fumes, and there is no explosion of the fuel in the wing-tip." So according to the members of the subcommittee there was an explosion. "Here were these explosives devices, the largest ones, these epicenters." The explosion in the wings was also confirmed by the UK-based expert of the subcommittee, who was shown paper models of the wreckage fragments by the members of the subcommittee. The opinion of the experts excludes an explosion. Experts of Prosecutor's Office draw attention to the mechanical damage, to pieces of the tree found lodged in the torn metal pieces of the wreckage. They claim the wing frame structures were destroyed by the birch or succumbed to high stresses, ripping along the seams. Such stress was even able to shoot off the heads of rivets. At the end, the trunk of the birch breaks the mechanical parts of the wing: the steering elements, such as the linkage rod of the aileron, which is needed to deflect the left aileron on the wing-tip. The deflection caused by breaking the linkage, even if temporary, could have contributed to a faster left roll of the plane. The linkage rod was found very near the birch tree. It shows bending characteristic of having been wrapped around the tree trunk. Importantly, the tension at the moment of the breakage was registered in flight recorders. The black boxes noted a deflection of left aileron surface in the moment of collision. At the same time, extra acceleration was recorded. The two events overlapped in time, according to the experts. Air streams behind the wings of the airplane, together with the fact that the crown of the birch now stands on a diminished footing undercut by the wing, cause the tree trunk to break. The birch falls to the right, perpendicular to the axis of the plane. Elements of the wing alloy remain lodged in the tree: parts of ribs and stringers. What's interesting, the broken birch trunk was re-assembled in a laboratory, in the presence of the experts of Polish Police. Long splinters and wooden elements of the breakage zone fit together, overlapping like puzzle pieces. It was not a straight cut, which proves that it was not the wing that cut a sector of the tree. Rather, the birch cut the wing in two pieces and broke in the aftermath. In more than 10 minutes, we have analyzed the process of cutting the wing, which in reality did not last even a second. It lasted five hundredths of a second. We have presented only a handful of the more than 20 pieces of evidence described in the Comprehensive Opinion of the Prosecutor's Office experts. Evidence that according to experts proves there was no assassination and no explosions. Evidence of numerous collisions with trees at extremely low altitude. The experts also checked how the airplane got to fly so low, despite many radio transmissions, many warnings and dangers known to the crew. THE STRENGTH OF THE SOUND The main conclusions as to the progress of the flight come from the unequivocal data recorded by the on-board equipment, for instance on the cockpit voice recorder. "Sixty, fifty, forty, thirty, twenty!!" [Navigator] Rapidly decreasing altitude above the ground read by the crew member, recorded in black boxes, was compared with the contents of the Polish quick access recorder of flight parameters. "I will demonstrate to you now were this data recorder is really placed." This recorder registers flight parameters in digital, password-protected form. It was decoded in Poland. Neither the Central Police Labs, nor the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow, nor Prosecutor's Office experts put the authenticity of any recordings in doubt. "Well, one can see the ground, you can see a bit, maybe there won't be a tragedy." "Arek, the visibility is now 200 [meters]." This is the sound from the last 38 minutes of the flight. A special recording obtained by the experts of prosecution. The sound was recorded again in Moscow and processed digitally in 2014 and early 2015. The most clearly readable copy so far was obtained. More phrases spoken by the cockpit crew were transcribed. Here is a simple example of improved quality: Original recording sampled at 11 kHz: "The worst is that here, there is a hole, here there are clouds and the fog appeared." Report of prosecution experts sampled at 96 kHz: "The worst is that here, there is a hole, here there are clouds and the fog appeared." These were the same phrases, the first fragment recorded with 11 kHz sampling was de-noised and used by the Miller Committee and the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow, the second recording with the sampling frequency 96 kHz was taken and digitally cleaned by the group of experts of the Prosecution. That's the 7th minute of the recording. Tupolev aircraft is flying over Belarus and starts to descend. Soon the cockpit conversation turns to weather. "Well, one can see the ground, you can see a bit, maybe there won't be a tragedy." Those are the well-know words of the Navigator, but the following comes after them. "So.. we'll punch thorough it slowly." Several minutes later, again the Belorussian flight controller from Minsk speaks. [Controller reports meteorological conditions under minimums] In the background we faintly hear the reaction of the crew. "Fuck.." [Navigator] "Whaat??" [2nd pilot] "Damned, fantastic" [Flight engineer] "Fuck, our meteo service is really.." [2nd pilot] "Our meteo is really freaking good." [Pilot in command] Here, we must go back to the time of take-off from the military airport at Warsaw Okecie. The experts draw attention to the fact that the aircrew left without a proper meteorological forecast. They were given outdated info, they were not handed a forecast that indicated worse meteorological conditions. According to the regulations the airplane should not have taken off at all. This is the footage from 10 April 2010, from the airport monitoring. One can see the last passengers and the late presidential vehicle column. Against the usual custom, a report about the readiness for flight, instead of the Pilot in Command of the flight, is actually given by the Commander-in-chief of the Air Force, general Andrzej Blasik. The pilot stays behind him. The experts in their report noticed this fact but refrained from commenting. However, in several places they noted that the take-off was late by 27 minutes. Let's go back to the flight itself. "When is this celebration going to start?" [Navigator] "I don't know, but if we don't land down those fish will not get out." [Pilot in command] The conversation about the quickly passing time and the weather conditions ends with the pilots' conclusion: "Well, we will see, will make an approach and we will see." [Pilot in command] "We'll make an approach and see." [2nd pilot] Finally, in the headphones the crew hears from 'Corsage' (nickname of air traffic control point in Smolensk). "How much remaining fuel do you have?" The flight commander responds, and the Smolensk controller keeps asking. "And what is your alternative airfield?" [Controller] "Vitebsk and Minsk" [Pilot in command] This is yet another moment that the experts of the prosecution emphasize. On that day, Saturday April 10, the Vitebsk airport was in fact closed. Despite that, the navigator entered Vitebsk into the flight plan. According to the maps, that Belorussian airfield was the closest one to Smolensk, Russia. And here the experts characterized the members of the crew. Let's start with the just mentioned Navigator. 1st Lt. Artur Zietek, no knowledge of Russian language, permitted to fly without a certification as navigator on the TU-154 aircraft, total time only 50 hours on the type. Maj. Robert Grzywna, 2nd pilot. No Russian language knowledge. Flew 500 hours in the airplane type but only 3 flights as the co-pilot trainee. Sgt. Andrzej Michalak, licensed flight engineer, 188 hours in Tupolev. Capt. Arkadiusz Protasiuk, Pilot in Command, logged almost 3000 hours in Tupolev, including 500 as commander, but has not conducted any non-precision approaches (e.g., the NDB approaches offered in Smolensk) on the aircraft type flown. His personal minimum meteorological conditions for landing, written in his flight book, were 120 meters cloud base, and 1800 meters runway visibility range. But the experts found those endorsements invalid, falsified. In reality he should have had 600 by 6000 meters endorsement, and could land on an airfield like Smolensk only in good weather. The conclusion of the experts is that another crew was initially assigned to fly with the President, but that some pilots said they were indisposed. The crew was assembled as if by accident, on the day before the flight. Suddenly in the headphones the crew hears Polish words. "Guys, this is Rafal here. Please switch to 123.45" [Crew member of Jak-40] 16 minutes before the disaster, the Polish crew of the Jak-40 aircraft transporting journalists had already landed in Smolensk and now begins the conversation. Importantly, Jak-40's commander is heard only by the second pilot of the Tupolev. "Artur! I'm here." [2nd pilot] "Cordial welcome! You know what?... Generally it is fucked up here. {in Polish: 'generalnie tutaj jest pizda.'} You can see about 400 meters, approximately, and in our estimate the cloud base is below 50 meters, much below." [Cmdr. of Jak-40] "And have you landed already?" [2nd pilot] "We managed to just land at the very last moment. Well, frankly speaking, of course you can try. There are two APMs [lights], they paired them up, so you can try. But if you can't do it, after the second time, then I propose that you fly to Moscow or somewhere." [Cmdr. of Jak-40] The experts claim that the suggestion of Jak-40's commander to undertake landing attempt in such weather conditions, in the fog, ("The plain is visible only as an outline.") indicates a lack of responsibility and professional flight experience. Especially that moments before, the commander of Jak-40 had witnessed a dangerous, aborted landing approach of Russian Il-76 aircraft. "He should have prevented the landing." [voice of Wisniewski] These are the photos of Slawomir Wisniewski, TV operator, who was in Smolensk and wanted to record all the landings. The photos were presented by the committee of aviation accident investigations of Jerzy Miller. "You could see for not even a second, it was just a few frames, the Il-76, which was approaching to land. I just saw an outline, I said 1,2,3 - you could count to 3 and the plane disappears. The fog was so dense. You could recognize the plane if you have a good eye. But if such a large plane was visible only for a second, there was just a hole in the fog, well then, I say, how can they possibly land under such conditions?" Let us remind you. The Pilot in Command could not hear the conversation with Jak-40. He could not hear the suggestion "of course you can try". However, he was also not told that clouds were hanging much below 50 meters above ground. The Pilot in Command at this time talks on a separate channel to the control tower. "PLF 1201, there is fog on 'Corsage' [Smolensk airport]. The visibility is 400 meters." [Smolensk Controller] The commander says that he understood, but asks about meteo conditions once again, so the Smolensk controller repeats. First in Russian, and then the runway visibility range in English. "There is fog on 'Corsage', visibility 400 meters. Four zero zero meters." [Smolensk airport Dispatcher] Let us stop for a second at the flight control point. The experts quoted several Russian regulations. According to them in the deteriorating weather the flight controller from Moscow or Smolensk should have redirected the Polish airplane to an alternate airfield, and that the Smolensk airport should have been closed. The commander of the airplane informs the director of the diplomatic protocol about the situation. "Mr. Director, fog has appeared and at this moment, under these conditions, we won't be able to land. We will try an approach, we'll do one attempt but most probably nothing will come out of it. So please think about the decision what we will do then." [Pilot in Command] "We will try until we succeed." [Director of Dipl. Protocol] "Well... there won't be enough fuel to try and try till we succeed." [Pilot] "Then we have a problem here!" [Director of Dipl. Protocol] After a couple of minutes the Director enters the cockpit once again. "So far we have no decision by the President on what to do next." [Director] The crew is left in suspense. They have to decide on their own. In addition, only the commander flying the plane really knows how to pilot the Tupolev airplane. And only he knows Russian. As he flies, he must simultaneously conduct radio communication. " 'Poka' - that means 'now'?" [Navigator] "So far." [Pilot in command] What's worse, the doors of the cockpit are never closed until the end of the flight. Every now and then someone stop by to visit the cockpit. "Commander, Captain... Can I ask, a retired warrant officer from Rzynia asks for permission. Can I listen?" The Russian flight controller instead of closing the airfield agrees to a trial approach request, and 6 minutes before the crash reminds the Polish crew: "Polish 101. From 100 meters be ready to depart for the second circuit." 4 minutes before the crash, Jak-40 sends from the ground the last warning: "Arek, now one can see 200 [meters]." 200 meters of visibility. It's way below the minimum conditions for landing, of the airfield, of the airplane, of the pilot. Yet they still fly on. THE FINAL APPROACH Less than 10 kilometers from the threshold of the runway, the airplane enters the final leg of approach pattern. Almost immediately they fly into a dense milk - the fog. They are reading the checklist at that time. "Wing mechanization, interceptors, reflectors hidden and lit." [Navigator] They check the settings of machine before the landing, and begin the approach procedure too late. Firstly, they fly left of the final approach line. Secondly they are too high: at more than 8 km from runway, they are 500 meters above the ground, and as much 100 m above the optimum glide path. In the meantime the Russian controller mistakenly pronounces: "You are on course, glide-path." [Controller] In close succession, these words are heard from the ground controllers: "Runway free of obstacles" "On course and glide-path, distance 6 miles." [Controller] Let's emphasize: the Russians were guiding the Tupolev aircraft using a non-precision approach equipment, such as this, where the plane was depicted on radar screens. One was measuring the altitude, as a green vertical echo. Another radar's display measured the lateral position from the approach path, showing it as green horizontal echo. But according to the Polish experts, on the screens of Russian controllers it all looked ambiguous. Because of the uncut trees in the approach zone, the radars probably did not see the aircraft when it was at small altitude. "Are you afraid of something that you don't want to talk with journalists?" This is an attempt to talk with Pawel Plusnin, the Russian flight controller who on April 10 together with controller Maj. Ryzenko was contacting the Tupolev 101. "Please address all the questions at the investigating committee." [Plusnin] "Are you feeling responsible for what happened?" [Journalist] "I'm terribly sorry that it happened. I did everything possible to prevent it from happening." [Plusnin] Let us add that the work of the flight controller on April 10 2010 should have been recorded on video. Unfortunately, the video tape supposedly jammed. In addition, some of the runway lighting was out of order, or covered by the uncut trees and bushes. A couple of hours after the crash the Russian were exchanging the burned light bulbs in reflectors. The Polish aircrew should have been notified that they are flying to a closed airfield opened only for the Katyn anniversary celebrations. 5 kilometers from the threshold of the runway the Tupolev is as many as 132 meters off to the left from the extended runway line and it's only starting to approach it. Exactly then, for the first time, the "Terrain ahead" alarm goes off. The airplane is 300 meters above the airfield level still above the optimum glide path. But it flies in automatic throttle and direction mode. "In case of unsuccessful approach we will go around using automatics." [Pilot in Command] "On autopilot." [Flight eng.] The pilot has set the airspeed at 280 km/h, so when he starts descending, the machine in order to adjust the speed automatically decreases engine thrust, from more than 50% to only 32% of full power. This is forbidden. It is against the operating manual of the plane. Too low a speed of the turbines and thus a lack of power will be the key to why an attempt to go around failed. But none of the crew, not even the Flight Engineer, actually pays any attention to low engine RPMs. The final altitude countdown begins. "400 meters." [Navigator] "Somebody at fault here." [women's voice] "You say 'goodbye'" "No... somebody will be punished for that." "Ideas!" In their headphones the pilots can still hear the warnings "terrain ahead", and "pull up". But the Russian flight controller still gives misleading information. "4 [km], on course, glide-path." [Controller] The airplane descends too fast, up to even 9 meters per second. Every second the plane is two, three floors closer to the ground. In the cockpit a non-crew member is present. According to some experts this could have been the Chief Commander of the Air Force. Only he among all the passengers could possibly be reading the altitude from instruments properly, with his conduct encouraging pilots to land. "You will fit in." "230 meters." "250." According to experts, if they had actually wanted to go around and not land, then that was the place where they should level off. But they still were going down. The engines running at only 30% capacity, soon they will cross the line of 75 meters above the airfield. According to the experts that was the last moment to safely stop the descent. Instead of flying away, they keep descending. The navigator is using an incorrect altimeter - the radio altimeter - which means that instead of reading the height above the airfield, he is reading the height above the terrain. "200." [Navigator] And the altitude of the terrain is dropping. The airplane flies into a deep valley. Altitudes that are being read reflect both the plane's path and the shape of the valley. "150" [Navigator] "100 meters" [non-crew member] "100" [Navigator] "Slow the descent" [2nd pilot] "90, 80" [Navigator] "Go around..?" [2nd pilot] ..70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20!!!" [Navigator] The pilots could have timely performed a missed approach procedure and gone around for a second approach, just like it's shown in this video from the experiment of the Miller's Aviation Accident Committee; manually steering and increasing the output of the engines. Alternatively, as the experts of prosecution checked, they could have done it in an automatic mode, under certain conditions. Had the pilots set the equipment up properly, then it was enough to push this "Missed Approach" button on the yoke to ascend quickly. We don't know whether the pilot pressed the button, but we do know that the devices were not set to enable such a mode of ascent. Namely, had the devices been set up in this automatic go-around mode, the activation of the procedure would have been recorded in black boxes. "Not ready to take off". The navigator reads heights: 40, 30 and shouts 20 meters [60 feet] above the ground. "40, 30, 20!!!" Let us recall, the airplane is flying in dense fog. The crew doesn't even know where they are. The airplane is almost 20 meters above the ground, and 6 meters or 20 ft below the level of the runway. Not a single element of the descending airplane is above the runway which, in addition, is located 60 meters to the right. Soon the right wing will hit the first obstacle. "20!!!" [Navigator] Only then the Pilot in Command actually pulls the steering yoke, and after a second advances the throttles to full setting. At the same time, he temporarily pushes the yoke away by 12 degrees, which the experts interpret as the intent to jump over the low altitude obstacles and then land. The Commander pulls the yoke full aft after they hit the first obstacle. All the flight recorders and the black boxes indicate a very low altitude. The airplane cuts off the top of one birch and continues to cut smaller trees one by one. It is slowly ascending, but the ground level is now also rising. For 3 second it flies only about 6 meter above ground. Shortly before the encounter with the large birch, the airplane cuts a group of small trees, and already there according to experts, loses small pieces of aluminum skin. The plane is about to to hit the large birch. The engines' turbines ingest pieces of the cut branches. Flight recorders show increased vibrations of the right, then the left engine. Precisely then the subcommittee of Antoni Macierewicz sees the explosion. "The tragedy took place because of two explosions." "Two explosions." "There was an explosion." "We know about three [explosions]." "We are talking about an explosion of explosive devices, not fuel." "You need to realize this is an act of war!" "It wasn't an accident, it was an assassination." According to the experts opinion, which we tried to faithfully describe in our graphics, the majority of the wing elements were bent toward the inside part of the wing. Stringers and hydraulic lines were being wrapped around the trunk of the big birch tree. Rubber elements, insulation of cables and the sealant paste inside the wing bear no sign of any explosion. We have already discussed it all. The torn-off tip of the wing behaves exactly as in this U.S. movie from the crash test of a Lockheed Constellation. The wingtip starts to rotate, rises and follows the plane. Prosecution experts also noticed this movie. The trees behind of the Bodin's plot, behind his birch tree, are cut at an inclination of 16 degrees. The engines already have 50 percent of full power, the airplane ascends. The laws of aerodynamics result in the right, undamaged, wing lifting the plane stronger than the left, truncated wing. The airplane starts banking. Such a behavior of the TU-154 airplane was confirmed in aerodynamical tests conducted by the Military Technical Academy. At practically a 90 degrees left bank, the airplane flies into the woods before the Kutuzov Road. Radio altimeter starts to give unreliable indications: first 18 meters, and 0.5 second later, 37 meters. It is probably showing the distance to the nearest trees, located right of the flight path. The airplane cuts these power lines, the time of the power outage is consistent with the time of catastrophe. On this particular spruce and this particular birch, it loses the next elements of its wings. It loses the slats and the flaps, as well as a small part of the rear stabilizer. The impacts are so strong that they detach major tree branches, carrying them subsequently dozen of meters further, to the vicinity of a car dealership. Next to its fence, a flap was found, normally attached to the wing of Tupolev at the place that was cut by the large birch. The left engine reaches its highest vibrations. The experts claim that it has sucked in branches and even small parts of the duraluminum, and from this point the engine is surrounded by flames. The experts of the prosecution, using numerous photographs, show the torn-off turbine blades, and pieces of aircraft skin indented by the rotor blades and ejected far behind its tail. Here you can see a photo of the inside of combustion chamber. You can see the cut fragments of duraluminum, as well as crushed pieces of tree branches. Just before crossing the Kutuzov Road next to the car dealership, the airplane hits two poplar trees. It cuts one with its damaged left wing and the horizontal stabilizer. The boughs of the second tree are cut but the horizontal stabilizer and detach a large part from it. The airplane is banked to the left at 116 degrees. It is about 22 meters above ground. It will soon start descending. Here the reliable recordings of the Polish flight recorder end. Let's come back to Slawomir Wisniewski, the employee of TVP, who from his hotel window recorded the landing of Il-76. "The plane was visible only in outline." After he switched off his camera, he saw the Polish Tupolev. "I heard this very strange, unnatural sound of the engines." "The increase of power?" [Journalist] "The engines were whining and were forced, as if it was more of a take-off than landing. Then I see the plane having its left wing directed down about at 60-70 degrees. Some ask me how I knew it was a left wing, not the right one. Logic indicates that if it were the right wing, I would see the undercarriage." A couple of years ago Wisniewski was in the parliamentary hearing conducted by Antoni Macierewicz. "Some say that this snapping sound in the background was somebody shooting at me, some explosions or something happened, something similar. Nothing of the sort!" It was him, as the first Pole that was present at the place of the disaster. He recorded the still burning fuel and the wreckage of the airplane. We can only show this footage. "Definitely there was no explosion. I never heard any explosion. Had I heard an explosion I would have been much more frightened and not run toward it." [Wisniewski] "Except an explosion after the crash?" [Journalist] "Except the explosion, which was the effect of the crash." [Wisniewski] Where is this damage from? The experts put ascribe it to numerous ground obstacles and a half-rolled, wheels-up position of the airplane. It is worthwhile seeing and comparing these satellite photos of the surroundings of Smolensk airport before and after the crash - what part of the forest disappeared on April 10, 2010, cut down by the Polish airplane. The final destruction begins from the airplane striking and gouging the ground with its left damaged wing at an angle of about 140 degrees. The experts say that this absorbed a part of the energy of impact. The left wing cuts a ditch with a width of 2 meters and depth 1.5 meters. The wing is then torn off from the fuselage structure, opening the central wing part and the central fuel tank. Immediately after this, also the vertical stabilizer and the inverted cockpit crash to the ground. These are the photographs of deep trenches and of the elements of the left wing found at the bottom, as identified by the nameplates. At this point electrical power is disrupted and, as the GPS data shows us, recorded by the airplanes flight recorder, here the recording of the on-board FMS computer also stops. The fragments of the central wing structure, ripped off from the airframe, are lying dozen of meters away, in the same direction as the motion of the airplane. These parts are charred by fire from the burning, sprayed fuel after the crash. Around we can see the charred grass. In reality it all lasts a couple of seconds. "40, 30, 20!!" [Navigator] If one plots the visualization of the sound amplitude jointly with some of the ground obstacles, the most intense bursts of noise are heard where the airplane hits an obstacle. No explosion is heard, only a couple of seconds of screams toward the very end, a part we decided not to published here. The strongest part of the airplane, the weight of the undercarriage, and 9 tons of fuel presses, shears and crumples to pieces the ceiling, the top of the fuselage. Its duraluminum skin is only 2 mm thick. Interestingly, investigators have found a left door of TU-154 in the soft soil of the wreckage field. According to Antoni Macierewicz's people, this is because of an explosion. The door was supposedly shot away by a blast, which a year ago his subcommittee illustrated in their movie. "The door must have had an additional source of energy to increase the momentum." But the subcommittee does not show a broader view, where the neighboring door frame and part of left fuselage of the airplane, from which the explosion allegedly shot the door off, lies nearby, also pushed into the ground. In case of explosion in the air, those two parts would not be found next to each other. They would be in different places. According to the experts of the Prosecutor's Office, in this place, after the touchdown, breakage of the airframe structure and detachment of the door took place. More than 20 experts are signed under the text of the Comprehensive Opinion. Here, in the photos from 2010, during a meeting in Smolensk, is the head of the expert team, Col. Antoni Milkiewicz, who over 30 years ago investigated a catastrophe of Il-62 airplane in Warsaw. He was not afraid during the communist times to blame Russian technicians for the disaster. Now Milkiewicz and his men say the Smolensk crash was an ordinary aeronautical catastrophe. They take full responsibility for the expert opinion, which they signed. They know that possible mistakes could potentially lead to charges carrying prison terms. author: Piotr ƚwierczek TVN24