2010 Polish presidential aircraft crash

Katyn-2 is a shorthand term for a 2010 plane crash near the site of a notorious mass murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviets in the Katyn Forest at the beginning of the World War II . Officially, the crash has been declared to be a result of an accident. As of the summer of 2010, however, the precise cause of the accident on April 10th in Smolensk of the Tu-154M, which had Polish politicians including President Lech Kaczynski aboard, has not been determined although various conjectures have been raised.

The moment of the crash is disputed;

several estimates had been suggested. First, the Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufiev reported the crash to happen at 2010 April 10 at 8:56am of the local time . This information was reproduced in many mass media (and later used as base the funeral ceremony). However next day (April 11), another estimate of the time of the crash was suggested, the presecutor officer of the Investigation committee told that this happened at 10:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. ET). . After a month, the official version of the moment of crash had been changed to 8:41am. Accordingly, the three aborted attempts to land (that were supposed to take place between 8:41am and 8:56am) were not confirmed but denied.

The altitude of the destruction of the airplane also disputed. The dispatcher had confirmed that the airplane follows the glissade . This indicates that the destruction of the airplane could happen at the altitude of a hundred meters. This would explain also the death of all the passengers and the crew members and the disruption of the body of the airplane for many parts. On the other hand, the Russian official investigation group claims that the airplane disrupted at the altitude of few meters, choking the trees.

There is call (query) for the international investigation of the case .

The wrong counting of the number of the landing attempts , the 15 minute errors in counting time (required for the "additional" three abortive attempts to land), as well as the hiding of the records of the ground monitoring of the flight and other peculiarities in the official version initiated doubts in the honesty of the official Russian investigation group. Some of relevant cites are listed by the Polish site Smolensk-2010.