SBS - WWII Air Crash Detectives (2014) Part 1 Sikorski's Last Flight

In the USA alone over 15,000 Airmen lost their lives in training accidents as the WWII Allies scaled-up their Air forces. The relatives of these young men often have no idea what actually happened and typically the official reasons were put down simply to “pilot error”. From 1939 to 1945 thousands of young airmen met terrible ends not at the hands the enemy's machine guns or because of the murderous flak of anti-aircraft fire, but in catastrophic accidents and training crashes. The staggering losses were not just limited to Britain; all over the world training flights, routine sorties and cargo transport journeys all sometimes ended in disaster. Perhaps it's not so surprising that, amid the weight of the human costs of the air war against Germany, these 'hidden' losses have been forgotten; but all the men in the aircraft that never returned signed up for the same war and they were all someone's father, brother or son. The same letters went home to every family. Luckily, there are those who are determined that those brave men should not be a footnote in military history. They've spent years investigating, uncovering, searching, probing and digging the crash sites – and there are hundreds of them. They are the World War II Air Crash Investigators and now, for the first time, they have agreed to let us join them. In this fascinating new series, WWII Air crash Detective, Garth Barnard, re-opens the investigations of some of the most infamous International WWII Air Disasters using modern techniques and fresh eyes to find out what really happened…. and understand if it could happen again now.

Part 1 Sikorski's Last Flight

4 July 1943 – 1107pm A plane takes off carrying General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Prime Minister of Poland's London-based government in exile and Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces, returning from visiting Polish troops in the Middle East. On take-off, the aircraft suddenly loses height and crashes into the harbour. The 62-year-old Polish general is killed, along with 15 others. The sole survivor is the Czech-born pilot, Eduard Prchal, who is rescued by an RAF launch. The bodies of five passengers and crew, including Sikorski's daughter, are never found. Many questions remain unanswered, raising suspicions that this crash may not have been an accident, and rather an assassination. This programme pieces together the events of that night, the cause of the crash and examines the murky world of WWII international espionage and the case for an assassination.

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