Pull up! Pull up! How pilots on doomed plane carrying Polish president 'ignored' 13 warnings before fatal crash



The pilot of a doomed aircraft carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski apparently ignored more than a dozen warnings before the crash which claimed 97 lives.



Transcripts from cockpit recordings released today by the government show on-board systems instructed crew to regain altitude in the last minute before the crash.



'Pull up, pull up... Terrain ahead,' the on-board warning system told the pilots 13 times shortly before the crash.

There were also clear warnings from ground control about the appalling conditions, including the stark phrase: 'There are no conditions for landing.'

Crash scene: The mangled wreckage of the Polish president's plane which crashed on April 10 killing all on board

The transcripts recorded how one of the pilots cursed after the plane hit a tree.

It is only when it is too late to abort disaster that the pilot says 'let's go', signaling an attempt to pull the plane up.



The last sound was a prolonged curse by an unidentified person in the cockpit.

President Kaczynski died alongside dozens of leading officials when his plane came down on April 10.



The aircraft came down in dense fog close to Smolensk military airport.

The transcript is notable by failing to explicitly answer the key question that has dogged the probe into the crash - whether President Kaczynski pressured the pilots to land so he would not miss a high profile ceremony commemorating the victims of a wartime Stalinist massacre in which 22,000 of his countrymen perished.



Yet nine and a half minutes before the crash, it reveals Kaczynski's head of protocol Mariusz Kazana was in the cockpit saying: 'The president has not decided yet what we will do.'

No specific instructions to the pilots are head from air force chief General Andrzej Blasik who, unusually, was in the cockpit in the final moments of the flight.



One phrase will trouble investigators who still have to conclude the cause of the crash which devastated Poland.

Victims: Both President Kaczynski and his wife Maria died in the crash

It it not clear who uttered the words which can be translated as 'He will go berserk if...' or 'He will be furious if....', nor why they were said.



President Kaczynski had a track record of putting pressure on his pilots to land in difficult conditions.



The dead president's twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski today demanded the return from Russia of the original black box recorders.



Kaczynski - a candidate in the Polish presidential election caused by his brother's death - also called for Warsaw to take over the crash investigation from Russia, a move which Prime Minister Donald Tusk has refused.

