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>Soon after, the aircraft began hitting trees. One, a large birch with a trunk 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 in) wide, ripped off about 6.5 metres (21 ft) of the left wing, including the left aileron. The resulting asymmetrical lift caused an uncommanded roll to the left. Within 5 seconds, the aircraft was inverted, hitting the ground with the left wing, followed very shortly after by the nose. The nose impact resulted in forces exceeding 100g, which killed everyone on board instantly.[3] Even without the birch tree and subsequent roll, the excessive angle of attack would have led to an aerodynamic stall approximately two seconds after impact with that tree, which would also have led to a fatal accident.[3]
>After the nose hit, the aircraft was violently torn apart by impact forces.[3] The wreckage came to rest upside-down about 200 metres (660 ft) before the runway threshold and slightly left of its centreline. The largest pieces left were the wing roots (the strongest part of an airplane), the wingtips and the tail section. The tail section came to rest backwards, relative to the direction of flight. A small post-impact fire ensued, but was quickly brought under control by the emergency services and extinguished 18 minutes later.[3]
Mmm--hmmm
> Among the dead were Polish President Lech Kaczy?ski and his wife, much of the president’s staff, 18 parliamentarians, 10 generals and admirals representing Poland’s top military leadership, and many other political notables. The disaster decapitated Warsaw.
>To make matters even more painful, President Kaczy?ski and his entourage died en route to a commemoration at Katy?, the forest in western Russia where, in the spring of 1940, Stalin’s secret police murdered 22,000 Polish military officers captured by the Soviets when they carved up Poland with Adolf Hitler the previous September.
