AIR CRASH OF THE PLANE IL-62 PLL LOT ,,NICOLAUS COPERNICUS” - SELECTED ISSUES FROM CASE STUDY

Santrauka

On March 14, 1980, on the territory of the 6th Fortress of Warsaw, in the area of the Warsaw-Okęcie International Airport, a long-range jet crashed IL-62 designated as SP-LAA , “Nicolaus Copernicus”.
The incident resulted in the deaths of all those on board, including singer Anna Jantar, who was at the height of her fame at the time, American ethnomusicologist Dr. Alan P. Meriam, a delegation of Polish students, and an amateur boxing team along medical staff and trainers. Due to censorship and the secret services, the real causes of the disaster were kept secret for many years.
To date, no one in Poland or abroad has undertaken to edit a scholarly work related to the event, so there is no officially authorized material that could be successfully used as a compendium of knowledge and a reliable source of information.
The article presents the most relevant information from an independent scientific monograph of more than 300 pages, where the legal, historical, forensic as well as those related to the safety of air travel are discussed in detail. Conducting reliable research has made it possible to correct facts that have been fixed in public opinion, but are not reflected in the file material, and relevant threads and hitherto concealed issues of a strategic nature have been raised in an effort to clarify the real cause-and-effect sequence as a result of which the crash occurred.
The author has analyzed the collected material in particular historical, legal and forensic aspects. Issues and aspects surrounding the event that have not been discussed so far have also been elaborated. The not inconsiderable role of propaganda, censorship, disinformation carried out by the organs functioning in the previous regime has also been taken into account. In addition to the case files in the archives' resources, I have analyzed more than a thousand copies of the Polish press, about two hundred foreign newspapers /American press/ I have also made use of literature imported from abroad, among others from Russia, Germany and the USA, published during the existence of the USSR, so as to confront the file information with official documents issued by the aircraft manufacturer, which the Soviet side refused to make available to Polish scientists in 1980. The author reveals information hidden from the public and tries to explain the actual algorithm of the crash taking into account the interdisciplinary dimension of the methods he adopted.