News /
Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [859]
His excellency Jarosław Kaczyński, a brilliant logician, outstanding dialectician, strategist, philosopher and a founder of the axiom, "White is White" ("No screams convince us that white is white, and black is black") recently decided to join the engineering world of experts in the field of air traffic accidents, air disasters and sinister in-flight attacks.
He claims that the planes that struck the towers of the World Trade Center, flew through the buildings intact, without loosing their wings.
- Did you see the planes passing through that building, through the corner of that building? Yet their wings did not fall off.
- So if the walls of the building did not damage the plane structure, how is it possible for the birch tree to destroy the wing of the landing Tupolev?
Recently we had an example that the plane in Siberia mow the forest, and nobody nothing happened . And yet here we have these chips , fractions , fragments, and all died . This situation is characteristic of the explosion - explained Jaroslaw Kaczynski during a meeting with residents Sieradza .
According to the President of Law and Justice , this example shows that the Smolensk catastrophe could be really fell swoop . Another argument were the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 . - Did you see how these planes went through the building , at the corner of the building ? - Said the president of the Law and Justice recalling the terrorist attack . - But then the wings do not fall off - he stressed.However, American authorities, explaining the attacks of September 11, 2001, never, ever reported that the aircrafts "went through the building." Both of them were completely torn to pieces, and their remains - striking the structural elements towers with great force - affected the stability of the buildings. To be precise - the walls of the WTC buildings were mostly made of glass and aluminum. The ultimate reason for the collapse of the towers was spilled aviation fuel (tanks of the planes were almost full), followed by fires at extremely high temperatures.
Thd following is a visualization, by scientists of Perdue University, of the hijacked aircraft NOT "going intact through the building".
So much for the Kaczyński's rubbish news number 1.
Here comes rubbish #2:
- Recently we had an example, that a plane in Siberia clipped the forest, and nobody was hurt. And yet here we have these chips, fragments, debris, and all people perished. This situation is characteristic of the explosion.
[Just for the record - despite what the newly found expert-engineer Kaczyński implies - this is not a recent example, but quite old, which happened on September 7, 2010 - just mere four months later than the Smolensk crash. ]
This was actually a controlled landing, performed under very difficult circumstances. With all electrical power gone, which resulted in the loss of the navigational systems, loss of the electric fuel pumps and only 3,300 kg usable fuel left - but with the engines still running, the pilots managed to land on an abandoned concrete strip, at Izhma airport (now used only for helicopters), 1325 metre long - too short for the aircraft of this size. They landed at the speed 350-380 km/h - due to their inability to use hydraulically powered flaps but operated by non-usable electric switches - they overrun the strip by 160 metres and stopped in the bushes.
Nobody of the 72 passengers and 9 crew members was hurt. One of the pilots, interviewed at Moscow, said: "When we overrun the strip,
there were bushes not trees, and at that point we knew for sure that we were going to be safe."
The two videos below are the English language reports of the incident, including visualization of the landing and several interviews.
youtube.com/watch?v=B2soba8xJFk
youtube.com/watch?v=hzWCmyGqulQ&feature=fvwp&NR=1
However, several Polish skirmishers, the followers of Macierewicz's crazy theories, questioned the size of the bushes in the comments in one of these videos. But you can see it very clearly in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=wyaM8oXuOJg&feature=endscreen&NR=1
After reaching the end of the runway, the airplane entered pine tree shrubbery of various size, but not bigger than the size of typical christmas tree, cropped few treetops and branches, veered a bit and braked - stopped by a bunch of pine shrubs alongside the attack surface of the wings. The trunks of the biggest trees on this video are not thicker than a man's arm. None of the rear flight control surfaces were damaged, as they were positioned way above the bush tops.
So much for Kaczyński's manipulation of facts: a bush is not a forest, a christmas tree is not a sizeable birch, taxing in bush is not the same as being still airborne at low hight and high speed.
When the same is trying to be done here, a proper investigation, it gets shut down as being complete madness.
I was about to pass on this and not to be involved in this discussion. But since I already am involved in this thread here are my observations.
Let me point to some facts: MAK's and Miller's report, as well as the Military Prosecutor's Office, present at least some data while Macierewicz's Parliamentary Committee (MPC) delivers nothing of value - besides speculations and accusations.
Let me quote from the MPC "Summary of findings" (my translation):
(A) Findings of prof. Kazimierz Nowaczyk (physics, lecturer at the University of Maryland), who studied the records that were installed on Tu-154M; that is U.S. FMS devices (board computer) and TAWS (system warning of approaching to the ground):
...
- The direct cause of the crash were the above-mentioned two strong shocks, whose source was not the mechanism of the plane. The fact of existence of the shocks and their magnitude was determined by the team of prof. Nowaczyk on the basis of data from the flight data recorder.
...
(C) Findings of dr. eng. Gregory Szuladzinski from Analytical Service Ply Ltd., Australia, a specialist in the fields of structural dynamics and processes of breakup, deformation and vibration in civil engineering, transportation and military technology.
- The most likely cause of the crash were two explosions following in rapid succession one after the other. An explosion occurred near the site where the TAWS system noted "landing event" and at the height of 36 meters above the runway (called TAWS 38) which exactly corresponds to two shocks recorded by the flight data recorder.
...This was followed by a bunch of dr. Szuladziński's speculations, having nothing to do with any data whatsoever. Speculations, speculations with very strong conclusions. Neither Nowaczyk nor Szuladzinski had any special access to any other data that could qualify them to drawing any such conclusions. And they did not deliver any report or any calculations to the Military Prosecutor's Office, even though they were actually asked for such.
Now here is the interesting background, taken from the interview with dr. Nowaczyk for Niezależna.pl:
Why didn't MAK and Miller reports say anything about shocks? Where did you notice them?Dr Kazimierz Nowaczyk, physicist, University of Maryland, a member of Macierewicz's parliamentary committee:Because it can only be seen after a very careful analysis. These are fractions of a second, but a time period of the plots is so large - reaching tens of seconds - that the record of these shocks is not very visible, they are merged. Fortunately, the visualization technique of the MAK report is such that one can get high magnification of the plots and read them exactly.
...
I tried to enlarge the graphs - it turned out that the visualization technique of the charts in the MAK report is very friendly. They were prepared by the Russian program "WinArm32". It keeps good aspect ratio and good resolution. during magnifications. I then saw a record of two clear, strong shocks following each other while the plane was still in the air.So, Dr. Nowaczyk uses the data from such highly criticized MAK report. And he even praises their data presentation. But the problem is with his last sentence. That's a bullshit, anyone can see it in their own eyes - you and me. The difference is that I actually looked at the data, while the "Smolensk folk" did not - they just prefer following the fables of grandpa Macierewicz; data to be damned!
So what particular data Nowaczyk and Szuladzinski refer to? To the readings of one analog channel, registering the vertical acceleration data taken from one single sensor, attached to who-knows-where location. And yet, on the basis of this dr. Szuladzinski speculates that "one explosion took place, more or less, in mid-section of the left wing; while the second "inside the fuselage". Now, this is a real magic of fabrication: One sensor, one location, one direction (vertical only) and yet Szuladzinski knows where those two invented explosions took place.
Notwithstanding their claimed expertise, I must object here, since I had been dealing with shocks and vibrations for many years. Any kind of vibration diagnostics of the system as complex as that airplane, would require not one but many accelerometers and data would have to be taken in all three directions. So no, Szuladzinski's conclusion should be put among the fables.
But let us take a close look at the data, available to Nowaczyk, specifically Fig. 45 of the MAK report. It covers the time slot between 10:40:10 and 10:41:04. That's the Smoleńsk time, two hours ahead of Warsaw. [There were two sources of timing on board, showing some 3.5 seconds shift against each other.] This aside, the chart covers the period of 54 seconds.
At the very top of the chart there is the vertical acceleration plot, in red. This is in fact the overload force acting on people inside the plane, but expressed in units of earth acceleration, g. Most of the time, the plot remains at the stable 1g acceleration level, occasionally decelerating to 0.9 g then going back to 1g. The 1 g force, is what you and I feel at home, and what the pilots felt most of the time in their airplane.
Six seconds before the perceived crash, the plot slightly raises to 1.1g, then to 1.2g (at -3.5 s) then to 1.35g (at -0.5s). These raise is quite gentle and cannot be associated - by any stretch of imagination - with shocks. But it could be associated with the overload caused by the pilots's attempt to suddenly accelerate upwards in order to get the plane away from the ground.
The only time when the plot demonstrates any abnormal behaviour is just after the perceived crash; for about 2 seconds, the plot gets berserk - dipping down to 0.75g, raising back to 1.35g, falling down to 0.25g, raising back to 1.40g and then finally sliding down to zero - indicating the end of the recording.
This may mean anything: the response of the sensor to the impact of plane against ground, the electrical short in the recorder, literally anything. And if anyone attempts to associate it with two strong shocks (Nowaczyk) or with two explosions (Szuladzinski) he must be nuts or just shows complete ignorance of the nature of shocks and the system response to such. Not much of professionalism here, gentlemen. Once again - a vibration sensor, a.k.a. an accelerometer does not measure the cause of vibrations or shocks, it measures the system response.
If you bang an elastic structure with a big hammer, you generate an impact force of the very short duration and a great magnitude. No matter, whether you model it as gate-shape, triangular, or any other sharp curve representing the impact there will be a response of the structure in some combination of damped sinusoidal waves. This is what might have been recorded in the last two seconds, not the two shocks.
I would not mind if the finding of Macierewicz's report were presented as possible hypotheses, representing some less or more probable scenarios. But I have problems with quasi-science, presenting hypotheses as facts, and the resulting hysteria and witch-hunt.
