The film entitled "Death of the President" of the "Mayday  Air Crash Investigation" documentary series, aired on National Geographic Channel on Jan 27th 2013, devoted to the 10 April 2010 Smolensk plane crash has raised much controversy. The movie is nothing more than a reconstruction of events into the crash based on a political screening adaptation of both Polish (Miller's Commission) and Russian (MAK) governmental reports.

 

The selection of characters and interviewees alone for the film points to the fact the producers simply do not care for the actual truth. The film is biased by presenting only the governmental versions of events. The Polish and Russian governmental reports are unavoidably political, consequently biased in nature and possess an inherent conflict of interest (suffice to say, parties responsible for preparing and organising the flight, were the actual authors of the final Polish governmental report).

 

The “Death of the President” creators decided to interview and talk with:  Aleksander Stepczenko (former director of the airport in Smoleńsk), Siergiej Jakimov (Russian journalist), former minister of interior Jerzy Miller (responsible in part for organising the flight), members of his commission: Maciej Lasek and Wiesław Jedynak and a publicist, Konstanty Gebert, working with Gazeta Wyborcza daily (ironically, whose father was a Soviet agent).

 

The “Death of the President” creators decided NOT to interview and talk with:  independent experts connected with the Parliamentary Group set to investigate and to establish the causes of the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash chaired by Antoni Macierewicz, nor any other scientists that would contest the official version of the crash, nor any Polish investigative journalists, nor any family members of the victims are interviewed in the film.

 

Any hypotheses different from conclusions of the MAK and Miller's commission are summarized in “Death of the President” in two words as conspiracy theories. The movie is absolutely one sided and is nothing more than a political screening adaptation of both Polish and Russian governmental reports, whose many findings have been proven to be false and unfounded, subsequently giving a misleading picture and set of circumstances into the death of 96 Polish EU citizens. The only actual conspiracy theory in this case is the birch tree theory of both Polish (Miller's Commission) and Russian (MAK) governmental reports.

 

Polish pilots insulted

The film insults primarily the Polish pilots, whose ineptitude was to be the main cause of the crash. According to the film's creators, the crew used a radar altimeter instead of barometric altimeter and therefore the crew did not know how high they actually were. This accusation was based on the findings of the Miller's commission that pointed to voice recordings of stenographic records of conversations held in the cockpit. The conclusion was that the crew provided data inconsistent with the actual altitude and General Andrzej Błasik, who corrected those values, was not heard by them as they had headphones on.

 

However, analysis performed by experts from Kraków of the cabin voice recordings proved that the voice previously attributed to the general actually belonged to the second pilot, Major Robert Grzywna, invalidating the theory that crew was forced to land. Military Prosecutor's Office confirmed that General Andrzej Blasik had no effect on the operation of the flight crew, explicitly denying all Russian and Polish governmental report speculations.

From the opinion issued by the dr Jan Sehn Institute of Forensic Research in Kraków it follows that the commands with the real altitude are uttered not by general Błasik, but by the second pilot, Robert Grzywna. Only one conclusion may be drawn from this fact: the crew, until the end of the tragic flight, read the altitude using the correct barometric altimeter (not the radar altimeter).

 

Today we know that the plane made one approach; the crew descended the plane to a 100m and decided to circle around the airport (to stop descent) with the use of the autopilot at a proper altitude. The crew began this manoeuvre. This process is reflected in the flight trajectory recorded in TAWS and FMS data, as also in the cabin voice recordings, where the command to circle the airport around was given to stop descent and the landing approach in the manner generally accepted, appropriately according to regulations.

 

The authors of the film also stated that Tu-154M crew made a mistake, by trying to go around (stop descent and circle the airport around) using an autopilot, even though the Smolensk airport did not have an ILS landing system. This is of course not true. The ability to go-around on autopilot at an airport without ILS was confirmed in an experiment conducted in 2011 using a twin tupolev (No. 102). The pilots knew how to do it. Maciej Lasek himself (member of the Polish governmental Miller Commission) – one of the main characters in “Death of the President” – in his response to one of the questions asked at the expert conference in Kazimierz Dolny nad Wisłą (28 May 2012) stated that pilot captain Arkadiusz Protasiuk performed a go-around using the autopilot without the ILS system. The report entitled “28 months after Smoleńsk” prepared by the Parliamentary Group set to investigate and to establish the causes of the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash led by Antoni Macierewicz states: “[...] contrary to the suggestions of Polish governmental Miller Commission members, the so-called go-around on autopilot was not a trick unknown to the military pilots of the Tu-154M. The parliamentary team disposes of a course book for Polish pilots trained in USRR in the 1980s that included a description of a »go-around on autopilot« without ILS. From the findings of the parliamentary team it follows that major Arkadiusz Protasiuk had extraordinary knowledge about the aviation fittings in Tu-154, derived e.g. from the original Russian manuals of the plane [...]”.

 

The crew did not make any mistakes and they behaved professionally until the final moments. Captain Protasiuk showed his master-level skills, avoiding hitting the slope of the valley before the airport, to which they were directed by the control tower in Smolensk. Captain Protasiuk and major Grzywna belonged to the best of the best. Suffice it to say that the leader had over 3.5 thousand hours of flight (!) and the second pilot - almost 2 thousand behind them. They were well-integrated and they understood each other perfectly – they flew together a few dozen times, including a really difficult flight from Haiti over the Atlantic with a damaged autopilot module, when they piloted the plane manually for 14 hours, including three refuelling stops. The pilots knew the Russian language perfectly, as until recently, learning Russian was obligatory in the Polish military air force. Captain Protasiuk flew 30 times to Russia and the Ukraine.

 

Armoured birch tree

The film maintains the version that the Tu-154M plane descended too low, hit a birch tree and in consequence lost a part of a wing. However, according to a note on page 16 of the report prepared by Miller's commission states that “the altitude of the plane in the last stage of descent was estimated based on the calculations performed by the commission”. Professor Kazimierz Nowaczyk, (an independent expert connected with the Parliamentary Group set to investigate and to establish the causes of the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash chaired by Antoni Macierewicz) approached the matter much more extensively: he analysed the data included in the navigation systems (TAWS and FMS) as well as the data from the barometric altimeter WBE-SWS recorded in the flight-parameters box. They contradict the version presented by the Polish governmental Miller's commission – the plane never descended to less than 18 m above ground.

 

If the plane never descended to less than 18 m above the ground – as indicated by the records from the on board equipment– it cannot have hit the birch tree.

 

The vertical flight trajectory – prepared by Professor Nowaczyk based on the barometric altitude analysis of Tu-154 – clearly shows that the plane flew over the birch indicated by the Polish and Russian authorities, being at 20 m over the ground at the time. It ascended for two more seconds after that. It is only 144 m behind the birch, at about 35 m, the plane made a sudden turn left, inconsistent with its aerodynamics.

 

“Death of the President” does not mention anything about the results of the computer simulation performed by Professor Wiesław Binienda (also an expert with the parliamentary commission set to investigate and to establish the causes of the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash) using LsDyna3D software. It proved that even if Tu-154 had hit the birch, it would not have lost a part of its wing as a result.

 

To convince sceptics, prof. Binienda conducted the experiment a few times, increasing some parameters over the actual values. For example: according to Miller's report, the birch's diameter was 30-40 cm. Professor Binienda applied tests to trees from 40 to 44 cm in diameter. He also introduced a higher wood density, various hit and tilting points, etc. It turned out that in each of the cases Tu-154M cut the birch – regardless of the height, plane orientation and distance between place of impact and end of wing location.

 

Smolensk fiction

“Death of the President” contains a lot more disinformation.

 

The flight of Tu-154M to Smolensk was not a civilian flight, as stated in the film, but a military flight – that was the reason why International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) refused to accept the Polish and Russian reports on the crash.

 

The aircraft was a Tupolev Tu-154M belonging to the 36th Special Aviation Regiment of the Polish Air Force, tail number 101. This means that the plane was of a military status, as indicated by its name Tu154M. On April 10th 2010 the Tu-154M plane on its flight from Warsaw to Smolensk, according to Polish regulation had a flight status HEAD (information for air traffic control services that on board are one of the most important people in the country), according to the Russian legislation the flight had a irregular international flight status of category "A" (VIP). The crew of the Tu-154M plane consists of soldiers of the 36th Special Aviation Regiment of the Polish Air Force, and one officer of the Government Protection Bureau, as additional member of the cabin crew.

 

It is also not true that until impact with the ground, there were no failures with the plane. First of all, the records of navigation TAWS and FMS systems, quoted in the Russian MAK's report, clearly indicate that the key plane equipment – FMS as well as the flight recorder –stopped working when the plane was still in the air. It was “Gazeta Polska” weekly that informed about it first, disclosing that the FMS on-board computer stopped working a dozen or so meters above the ground, about 60 m before impact with the ground. Secondly, prof. Nowaczyk analysed the crash journal of the Tu-154M at the disposal of the American TAWS producer and showed that in the last seconds of the flight, TAWS recorded as many as 13 equipment failures. The first one was recorded at 08:40:59 – at the same time the TAWS #38 signal (hidden by the MAK commission and Miller's commission) that is the last alarm signal broadcast by TAWS. According to Kazimierz Nowaczyk and the records in the journal, the system was not able to read the location of the flaps on the plane's wings. Another two failures were recorded at 08:41:02 when the FMS memory was frozen, that is at the time the on-board computer stopped working and the flight recorders (black boxes) turn off. The aircraft lost power and the on-board computer ceased functioning and its data were frozen.

 

The “Death of the President” does not mention TNT, whose presence was proven by the devices of Polish experts in Smolensk. On the 5th of December, Military investigators admitted to Members of Parliament during a sitting of the Justice Committee that detectors traced TNT in the wreckage of the plane. Personal belongings of victim confirm presence of TNT says family member after independent U.S analysis.

The movie also does not mention that the aircraft was rocked by two impacts, which were recorded by the flight recorder (flight data) and the black boxes. It was at this point that the Tupolev changed course. Dr. Grzegorz Szuladziński has pointed to an explosive nature of these shake-ups/impacts.

 

The film also stipulates a few times that all black boxes were found at the crash site. In actual fact the K3-63 recorder was not found in Smoleńsk. This recorder notes important parameters, such as sudden overloads, including so-called hard landings. The K3-63 recorder was armoured and was several dozen centimetres long; it should have survived the crash. The Polish prosecution knows nothing about its fate.

 

National Russian Geographic

The list of omitted information is much longer than the actual list of distortions portrayed in the film. “Death of the President” does not mention the role of Special Forces in the preparation of the visit and in the subsequent crash investigation, nor does it talk about the chicanery of the Russians and their unwillingness to provide key evidence; there is no mention about the exhumation scandals and the destruction of the wreck by the Russians. It worth remembering that; the black boxes and wreckage are in Russia; coffins of the victims have been sealed in Russia and never allowed to be opened, once in Poland.

 

This sad image of the entire film is complemented by two elements, taken as if straight from the speeches of Kremlin's ideologists – calling the anniversary of the Katyń massacre “controversial” and concluding the documentary with the sentence: “In the end, two states that have been feuding for ages managed to achieve cooperation and to work together towards a common goal”. Having seen “Death of the President” a thought comes to mind that this achieved “common goal” was not to explaing the real reasons behind the crash, but something completely different.

 

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Translated and edited from source: Gazeta Polska weekly, p. 8, 30 January 2013

Authors: Leszek Misiak and Grzegorz Wierzchołowski

Original text: http://www.gazetapolska.pl/27751-smolensk-24-swiadkow-potwierdza-wybuch; http://niezalezna.pl/37661-24-swiadkow-potwierdza-wybuch

All credit to the authors: Leszek Misiak and Grzegorz Wierzchołowski

 

 

Please take the time to sign and share this petition asking National Geographic to stop broadcasting the documentary "Death of the President" http://www.change.org/petitions/national-geographic-stop-broadcasting-the-documentary-death-of-the-president#share

 

We strongly recommend the following related reading:

- National Geographic airs Smolensk crash documentary amid protests and controversy http://smolenskcrash.eu/news-64-national-geographic-airs-smolensk-crash-documentary-amid-protests-and-controversy.html

- Misconceptions - Let's get things straight! http://smolenskcrash.eu/news-57-misconceptions-let39s-get-things-straight.html