Landing in fog

THE Polish authorities have now given their version of the events of April 10th 2010, one of the blackest days in Poland's history. A plane carrying dozens of top officials including the president, Lech Kaczyski, crashed near Smolensk airport, en route to a commemorative ceremony at Katy, site of another massacre 70 years earlier. The morbid coincidence sparked much suspicion, with this English-subtitled Dutch film "Letter from Poland" a prime example. Was the plane brought down by artificial fog? Or a misplaced radio beacon? Or deliberately misleading instructions from the air traffic controllers? Were survivors butchered on the ground, as a jerky video seems to suggest?

The slovenly and slowreaction bythe Russian authorities gave the conspiracy theorists a field day. Many believe that the Polish government is in cahoots with the Russian authorities to cover up what was in fact mass murder of the rival camp in Polish politics. It is worth bearing in mind that this alarming viewpoint is a minority one in Poland. Its main proponents are in some parts of the media and in the Law and Justice party, led by Jarosaw Kaczyski, the twin brother of the late president.

It is much easier to pick holes in a version of events than to construct a more plausible alternative. Nobody has satisfactorily explained why the government of Donald Tusk should want to murder a political opponent who was heading for a humiliating defeat in the presidential elections due that autumn. Nor why such a plot should involve the murder of so many valuable apolitical! Polish officials. Nor indeed why the government (whose worst fault so far has been a blind eye to sleaze and a touch of complacency) should suddenly be gripped by homicidal mania. Nor is it clear why the government would take the colossal risk of staging such a complicated plot, or trust the Russian authorities to be complicit in it. Nor is it clear why the Kremlin would want to take part in such an insanely risky venture. And so on. Most disasters come as the result of overlapping causes, none of them fatal in themselves. The extraordinary claim that this crash was different requires extraordinary evidence, which has never been produced.

The publication of the full Polish report makes interesting and uncomfortable reading for almost all concerned. The key paragraph reads

The tragic ending of the flight was ultimately caused by: failure to report the approach and reaching of minimum altitude, the crews lack of reaction to a deviation from required flight parameters and...and ignoring alarms...

The question is why this happened.Plenty of points leap out. The paperwork in advance of the trip was sloppy and late: that meant that Russia was not specifically asked to supply a specialist "leader-navigator" to help land the plane at this tricky airport. The state of lighting and radio beacons at Smolensk (contrary to Russian protestations) left a lot to be desired, as did the charts that Russia supplied and the directions from air traffic control. This extract gives a flavour of the foul-mouth chaos that those familiar with Russian military aviation may find less shocking than outsiders will.

, [vulg.]... , [vulg.]! [vulg.] , [wulg.], , [vulg.]. , [vulg.]. ... ?! [vulg.] , [vulg.], ?

[They are [vulg.] absolutely useless, [vulg.]! Just give me someone [vulg.] who knows how to measure pressure, [vulg.], temperature, [vulg.], and thats it. And [vulg.] knows why to keep them here?! What the [vulg.] for, such a lot of ! people?]

But there is much to criticise on the Polish side too. The captain of the plane set his altimeter to the wrong altitude, meaning that he did not receive the warnings he would otherwise had. One reason for this may be that training of the military pilots and crew was flawed and they frequently worked longer hours than regulations stipulated. The risks of landing at a normally closed military airport were not properly assessed. The committee believes that the commander-in-chief of the Polish Air Force was present in the cockpit in the final moments of the flight, which cannot have added to the crew's powers of concentration. As the report notes:

Presence of third parties at this stage of flight and conversation with them could have distracted the crew and drawn their attention away from core duties.

The fateful words that followed "I musimy to lotnisko wybra, w kocu na co"[And we must choose the airfield, after all we must]suggests that the crew may well have been under pressure from the head of state to go ahead with a landing they sensed was unsafe. It is also noteworthy thatpresidential party was late. The takeoff was planned planned for 0500. But the presidential entourage got on board only at 0508, meaning that the aircraft took off at 05:27. if nothing else, that may have added an unfortunate note of urgency to later decision-making.

In short, the report shows that faults on both sidesand bad luckare the overwhelmingly likely causes of the crash. The conspiracy theorists now have to believe that all the investigative committee's 34 members wilfully turned a blind eye to traces of foul play and colluded in the most disgraceful cover-up since the Katymassacre itself. Bring on the death rays, mind-control machines and tinfoil hats.