Air crash in Gibraltar - General Sikorski's last flight

 On July 4, 1943, a plane crash took place in Gibraltar. 16 people died in the crash, including General Władysław Sikorski - the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. The air accident is still highly controversial to this day. It is not known what the real causes of the tragedy were. How did the Gibraltar disaster happen? What are the theories about the plane crash? Could it be an assassination attempt? Or maybe the tragedy was the result of the pilot's inexperience? Check out the highlights of the Gibraltar plane crash and see the conclusions reached by the investigation into the crash.

In May 1943, General Władysław Sikorski traveled to the Middle East to inspect the Polish army. He was to spend several weeks there inspecting it. On 24-25, he went to Cairo on a transport plane, which was piloted by Eduard Prchal - a Czech pilot. This plane was officially not assigned to Sikorski, but it was systematically making communication flights. General Sikorski found out that Prchal is Czech. So he decided to use this fact politically to improve the image of our country - at that time Poland did not have very good relations with Czechoslovakia. General Sikorski asked Marshal Arthur Tedder, who commanded the Middle East Air Force, that the Czech pilot should take command of the machine during Sikorski's return. However, it was necessary to change the crew - Eduard Prchal flew to Cairo with the AL616 plane. The AL523 Liberator plane is scheduled for the return of General Sikorski. The day before the catastrophe, the general flew it to Gibraltar.

The Liberator plane was officially a transport machine. So his task was to transport goods, not passengers. At the rear of the fuselage, there were only 6 seats, which were two longitudinal benches facing each other with their backs. In the middle, there was a bomb chamber and a part intended for transport. When more than 6 people traveled with the machine, people had to lie down on luggage in the bomb bay. On July 4, 1943, 17 people were to leave Gibraltar with General Sikorski. Some people believe, however, that up to 24 people could have been aboard the plane. However, we will probably never know how many people actually returned on this plane. There is insufficient evidence.

The plane took off from the airport in Gibraltar immediately after receiving permission from the control tower. After only 16 seconds, about 600 meters east of the end of the runway, the machine fell into the sea. The body of General Władysław Sikorski was fished out of the Alboran Sea on the same day. What was the cause of the disaster? It is not known. There is no recorded record of the plane's route. Did the Liberator collide with the water surface right away? Or maybe he was soft on it? Those who insist on the second thesis say that the plane remained afloat for a while before it sank - it was reportedly about 6 minutes. Only later did the machine go to the bottom.

The British military court commission investigating the circumstances of the disaster in Gibraltar concluded that the cause of the tragedy was the blockage of the elevator. How could such a failure occur? This could not be determined exactly. Mieczysław Jan Różycki (former military pilot and crash researcher) believes that the plane broke off the runway, but had a problem with ascending. After a dozen or so seconds, he fell into the sea, hitting the water at a speed of about 265 km / h. When the plane crashed into the water, the rescue operation began. 16 bodies were found, including those of General Władysław Sikorski. However, the body of, among others, Gen. Sikorski's aide-de-camp and the daughter of a Polish general - allegedly on that day onboard the plane. Has anyone managed to survive the catastrophe? Yes, the only survivor was the Czech pilot Eduard Prchal.

The Gibraltar plane crash did not take as many casualties as the Kabaty Forest crash or the shooting down of a Boeing 747. But there was much more controversy over the tragedy. When Sikorski visited Gibraltar for the first time, a minister in Sikorski's government staying in London (Karol Popiel) received a strange phone call. Popiel's interlocutor said that General Władysław Sikorski will die in a plane crash over Gibraltar. Of course, this was considered a distasteful joke. However, the black scenario of the interlocutor really happened. At that time, various theories began to be drawn about the attempts to assassinate the Polish general. By a strange coincidence, two planes which Sikorski had previously flown had accidents. One of them, General Sikorski, even had to make an emergency landing in Montreal. Case?

When Władysław Sikorski died, the position of our country was weakened. Stalin's policy immediately began to isolate Poland. The Germans also tried to take advantage of the situation - they drove a wedge into Polish-Allied relations almost immediately. Was the plane crash in Gibraltar a planned operation to get rid of General Sikorski, who was inconvenient for the allies? Historians are still not unanimous on this point.

The plane that fell into the sea belonged to the British. So they conducted a short investigation to find out the cause of the crash. A military court commission was appointed to investigate the case. Apparently, due to the importance of the accident, it was not decided to entrust this task to the office for investigating air accidents. It is surprising, especially since it was the office that had by far the best competence to investigate this type of accident.

The military court heard selectively from witnesses, so it did not manage to collect all the testimonies - perhaps the most important ones. Ultimately, the commission concluded that the cause of the crash was a jammed altitude control system in the aircraft. The collected evidence was later classified. Is it possible that we do not know about many of them to this day? Perhaps. This is indicated, among others, by Archival photographs found in 2016 from an investigation that was believed to be lost.

There have been many attempts to explain what led to this terrible tragedy. Due to the lack of sufficient and unequivocal evidence, establishing the truth turned out to be a huge problem. Here are some of the most popular theories about the cause of the plane crash in Gibraltar.

1. The rudder was blocked by a bag of mail - experienced aviator Jan Bartelski, who, among others, he fought with Germany in 1939, he analyzed in detail the catastrophe in Gibraltar. He stated that the air tragedy may have been caused by bags of mail that probably got stuck between the elevator and the horizontal stabilizer. Perhaps it was the heavy bags, which weighed even 7 kg, that were the cause of the plane crash. Did they actually block the rudder of the machine?
2. The assassination of gen. Sikorski - historian David Irving in his publication Accident. The Death of General Sikorski noted that the participation of third parties cannot be excluded. He suggested that the tragedy could have occurred through sabotage. The journalist Dariusz Baliszewki said that the plane crash in Gibraltar was the strangest in the history of aviation - even stranger than the shooting down of a Boeing 747. How is it possible that the plane took off and landed just a few hundred meters from the shore? Perhaps it was an attack, supervised from the beginning by the British secret services? Were they then under pressure from the ambassador of the Soviet Union? Ivan Majski, who was the ambassador, probably did not know at all about General Sikorski's stay in Gibraltar.
3. Aircraft overload - Jerzy Zięborak, who is the author of the book "Study of the Liberator AL 523 Gibraltar crash 1943" believes that the tragedy was caused by overloading the aircraft. At the time of the transition to undercut, the load and passengers probably shifted rearward, so the center of gravity of the machine also shifted rearward. An additional reason could also be incorrect activation of the autopilot in the plane. In his deliberations, Zięborak used the data contained in the report of the British Investigation Commission, as well as information from accident witnesses and the aircraft's documentation.
4. Pilot error - pilot Mieczysław Jan Różycki pointed out Eduard Prchal's little experience in flying an airplane, as well as a complete lack of experience in commanding a heavy transport machine. The co-pilot (Stanley Herring) who assisted Eduard also had no such experience. The plane commanded by Prchal on the day of the crash was really difficult to fly. The AL523 was also a machine belonging to the first AL production series, so the plane was not well polished. Prchal and Herring practically did not know this particular model at all.

Was the plane crash in Gibraltar the result of the pilot's inexperience? Or maybe the tragedy was caused by the overloading of the machine? Was the failure of the AL523 Liberator airplane model contribute to the crash? Or maybe it was an attack on General Sikorski? The final result of the investigation into the cause of the crash, obtained by a military court commission, remains a great unknown in the history of aviation to this day.

Bibliography:

• Marta Anna Bielecka: Transport disasters, Dragon Publishing House, Bielsko-Biała 2014
• Patrick Smith: The pilot won't tell you, Muza Publishing House, Warsaw 2019
• Justin Whiteley: The Death of General Sikorski, Bellona Publishing House, Warsaw 2000