RIP: Lech Kaczynski (President of Poland)

[cbelt3]

CNN discusses memorial activities
"Warsaw, Poland (CNN) -- The body of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash in Russia over the weekend, returned to tributes in his homeland Sunday afternoon"

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Wow. We take a lot for granted in the US. Air Force One, the secret service, keeping our President safe. And this gentleman, President of a 2nd/1st world industrial nation, member of the EU, was flying to Russia in a beat up old Tupolev that was held together with duct tape. (think DC-9)

[freeradical]

It's incredible they were all allowed to fly on the same plane.

[OWC Jamie]

I somehow don't think we're getting the whole story. This is a very interesting article on it;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...094338.ece

[Paul F.]

Very sad..

But the wreckage is still smoldering... it will be months before we REALLY know what happened.

[AlphaDog]

OWC Jamie wrote:
I somehow don't think we're getting the whole story. This is a very interesting article on it;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...094338.ece

I'd read that somewhere else and thought it very strange.

[Will Collier]

Vaclav Havel said yesterday that the crash will color Polish history from now on. He's right. It's hard to imagine an event that pushes more buttons for Poles; an anti-Soviet president going to Katyn for a memorial, killed in Russia on a Russian airliner... and the Russians put Putin in charge of the investigation.

Even if it was entirely an accident, given Poland's history of being invaded from Russia time and time again, it's just a mountain of coincidence.

[AllGold]

It was a Russian plane, but as I understand it, only Russian-built. It was owned, maintained and piloted by the Poles.

[Don Kiyoti]

The Times article states that the TU-154 is "notoriously unsafe" but that is contradicted by the record:
On a note about the type of aircraft used, Paul Duffy, an expert on Russian aviation, stated in 2004 that in 28 crashes of the Tu-154 up to then, few were due to technical failure, and the hull-loss rate was normal for the number in service, the number of years it has been operated, and for the technology of the aircraft.[44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish...-154_crash

It seems like a case of "get-there-itis" either on the part of the pilot of the aircraft or the President himself.

[Mac1337]

That's what you get when you fly on a socialized airliner. And don't hold your breath for any discoveries. It took Russians only 50 years to fess up to Katyn massacre.

[cbelt3]

I'm reminded of the crash that killed Zia ul Haq, then president (Ok, military dictator) of Pakistan in August of 1988. (While I was in-country, BTW)

The C-130 'accidentally' crashed, killing the President, half of the General Staff of the Army, the US Ambassador, and the US military attache. Front page photos in the Karachi English language paper "Dawn" that I saw the next morning clearly showed what looked like (to this weapons systems engineer) a guidance fin section from a Stinger missile in the wreckage of one of the engines.

After the three or so days of fighting, the Pakistan People's Party, under Benazhir Bhutto, took power. The fact that the aircraft was shot down was carefully covered up, and never heard from again.