This article is a load of hogwash. "The heart of the pro-Western Polish leadership"? This is silly on so many levels.

I hope this kind of conspiracy theory raving will not make it onto the HN frontpage too often.

As to the crash, it was a CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). There are cockpit recordings right until the moment the plane hit the tree and then the ground. No explosions.

> I hope this kind of conspiracy theory raving will not make it onto the HN frontpage too often.

Yep, it's very off topic. Conspiracy theory debates are about the last thing you want on a site like this.

Yes, definitely looks like a conspiracy theory (sarcasm): http://goo.gl/YREux (by www.simulate-events.com)

Audio recording of their final minutes is available on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPjzMwAFrmc ) and is in line with the official version (for instance, pilots start swearing and screaming a couple of seconds before the end, right after the controller says something about height and a second approach)

Sabotage seems incredibly unlikely as the pilot made repeated passes in heavy fog - attempting to land.

They made only one attempt and were on about 30 meters when the series of failures (engines, electrical power, deck computer, steering, etc.) were recorded by black box devices. The airplane broke into thousands of pieces over the swamp near the Smolensk airport.

Wasn't this rumor debunked quite early in the investigation?

How does one go from speculations about explosions on the aircraft to claims of assassination? How about applying an Occam's razor every once in a while?

Occam's razor? What about any common sense? Note that within minutes from the catastrophe there was already the government camp claiming that this was clearly an accident with no fault on either side and the president camp speculating that this was an assassination. The fact that investigation after that was kind of a bad joke didn't help to silence the second camp.

Because "accident" is how you call such disasters? Also, people in the industry knew the less-than-sterling reputation of governmental transport service.

EDIT: I should clarify that "accident" is a specific class of event in aircraft accident investigation, together with "incident". It's literally "aviation terminology" stuff.

A plane crash caused by pilot error is the definition of an accident. Not intentional, unexpected, and uncontrolled. The scale or tragedy of the accident doesn't remove the fact that it's an accident.

accident:

[1] An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.

[2] A crash involving road or other vehicles, typically one that causes serious damage or injury.

Airplanes don't blow up randomly.

A proof of an explosion (which this is not) would be proof of an assasination.

And descending below minimum permitted and decision altitudes was also caused by explosives? Flagged

Aircraft pilots, even highly trained ones, overreact in non standard situations. The simulation argues that the plane could not have been significantly damaged by the tree. The simulation doesn't say anything about pilot's reaction to the collision event. An attempt by the pilot to compensate for impact is more likely to have caused damaged than the impact itself.

The simulation also didn't agree with facts, without proposing anything regarding why it the plane might end up where it was found.

Pity the facts, right?

And which specific facts the simulation didn't agree with?

The overreaction of pilots couldn't make 100 tons of steel to break into pieces 30 meters over the ground.

Except it's not 100 tons of steel. It's a very delicate structure of tons of parts, and the part that got damaged wasn't the most resilient (nor did it account for 100 tons of steel). Breaking into pieces happened when the whole plane hit the ground in the worst possible (for airliner) way - upside down. At over 180 km/h.

Additional info: http://home.comcast.net/~fotoszop/ks/Presentation-WB.pdf http://freepl.info/3081-prof-kaziemierz-nowaczyk-smolensk-ai...

The official explanation of catastrophe was hitting the birch during landing attempt... while the airplane was at about 30 meters of altitude (yes, it was a birch not sequoia).

At that speed, it could easily cut through the rather delicate construct that is an airliner's wing, especially close to tip as it did.

Not a lot of 30m birch trees around.

There was only one landing attempt.

There would be traces of explosives.

"But the tree impact that supposedly precipitated the crash wouldn't have caused enough wing damage to down the plane, said Binienda ... It's absolutely impossible that the wing sheared and then it crashed the way [government investigators] described" - that's all they have, an opinion of a conspiracy nut. I don't buy this for a second, and here's why:

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19550616-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freckleton_Air_Disaster

EDIT:

Oh, and the explosion would be heard by both people on the ground (some random guy was right next to the crash scene, he even put a video on youtube), and on the black box recording (transcript available).

Poland has still no access to the airplane remains: http://www.wbj.pl/article-59216-russia-to-return-smolensk-cr...

The wreck was left on open air for several months: http://en.rian.ru/world/20110112/162110789.html

..than washed by Russians: http://freepl.info/2380-tu-154-wreckage-washed-itself

I'm not saying that it wasn't a conspiracy and assassination.

I'm saying there's no good evidence of it. So far there are natural explanations of what happened, plus the douchebaggery of the Russian politicians.

The problem is that official explanations hidden facts (http://www.doomedsoldiers.com/MAK-crash-report-analysis.html) and forged the evidence (source: http://freepl.info/2512-millers-comission-has-forged-its-own...). The official report was based on... voting of commission members on the conclusions (what a "scientific" approach).

Alternative research done by the independent experts from US and Australia (like http://goo.gl/YREux by www.simulate-events.com) is being ignored and / or silenced.

Agreed. Most the crashes are consequences of pilot reaction to an unusual event. In short, pilot error. Occam's razor people. Learn it, use it.