The Smolensk Report was presented on 11 April 2022 by the head of the Subcommittee for Reinvestigation of the Aircraft Accident, Antoni Macierewicz. Shortly after the conference, the report was published on the Subcommittee’s website.
THE WHOLE REPORT IS AVAILABLE HERE
The subcommittee adopted the report on 10 August last year. As Macierewicz said, first the relatives of the victims of the Smolensk disaster read it.
The first part refers to a number of topics such as information about the crew, the passengers, the technical characteristics of the aircraft, the progress of preparations for the visit of President Lech Kaczyński on 10 April 2010, the flight history, the crash and witness reports. The second part describes the subcommittee’s analyses, tests and simulations.
“This decision was enforced by the special services of the Russian Federation, which controlled the whole overhaul process from the beginning. A significant role was played by the fact that the Polish intelligence services and the Ministry of National Defence gave a positive opinion about the company, despite official warnings from a part of the government apparatus. This decision was influenced by the military men and the Ministry of Defense officials who had been connected with the communist special services in the past and trained in the USSR,” we can read in the report.
According to the authors, the “Russian services took total control not only over the overhaul of Tu-154M No 101 and 102 but also over the preparations for the President’s visit In Katyn.”
Moreover, the Subcommittee points out that “the supervision of the Russian services over the overhaul gave them the opportunity to take uncontrolled actions that could pose a threat to the safety of passengers using the overhauled aircraft in the future.”
As pointed out, the reason for this state of affairs had been the political direction of the administration of the time. It was focused on rapprochement with Russia and conflict with the President of Poland and his pro-independence political line.
“So the real cause of the Smolensk crash was two explosions in the final phase of the flight. The first one took place over 100 metres before the place where the birch grew on the plot of N. Bodin during the departure for the second incident. (…) False bringing down of the plane by Russian flight controllers who in the last phase systematically gave false data concerning the distance from the runway and the course surely made the pilots’ work difficult. However, the pilots did not make any mistake and in the right time, they made a decision to go-around. (…) The second explosion occurred several meters above the ground about 6 seconds after the explosion in the wing, near the two furrows marking the first contact with the ground of large parts of the aircraft,” the authors wrote in the report.
“It should be stated that the incident in Georgia had a positive influence on decisions made by the captain of the Tu-154M crew in the flight on 10.04.2010. Those events should be perceived as the experience of a difficult situation gained by the captain during his service and as one of the elements of shaping his experience as a pilot and a captain of the crew,” the Subcommittee points out.
Thousands of pages of evidence were also prepared in connection with the report. They usually contain technical questions, but also legal and film documentaries.