Air crash in Giebnia

The air crash in Giebnia – the air crash of a military Il-28 aircraft of the 7th Reconnaissance-Bomber Aviation Brigade, which occurred on 11 December 1969 during a training flight on the route Powidz–Toruń training ground–Golub-Dobrzyń–Powidz.

Before the crash

It was 11 December 1969. The crew of the Il-28 bomber aircraft, consisting of: Lt. Jan Grymuza (pilot with 600 flight hours on Po-2, TS-8 Bies, UTIMiG-15, Lim-1, Lim-2, Il-28 aircraft), Lt. Bonifacy Hędzelewski (2nd class navigator) and Cpl. Ryszard Jędras (gunner-radio operator), took off from Powidz on a flight with the code name 766 towards Toruń and Golub-Dobrzyń, performing a navigation flight. Contrary to much of the information appearing in the media, the crew was not performing a practice bombing on that day. After reaching the last point on the route, the pilot changed course and directed the aircraft back to its home airfield in Powidz.

The crash

The machine increased its flight level to 11,000 m. In the area of the town of Janikowo the aircraft began a descent at high speed. During it the pilot extended the flaps, which led to one of them being torn off, and most probably cabin depressurisation occurred. The crew were unable to control the machine, as they probably lost consciousness, and the flight altitude was in any case too low to leave the aircraft and bail out with a parachute. The aircraft crashed in fields in the area of the village of Giebnia between two towns: Pakość and Janikowo. There is a hypothesis that the crew did not lose consciousness and deliberately tried to make an emergency landing in an uninhabited area, but this version has not been confirmed. The accident commission concluded that the probable cause of the crash was the crew's failure to observe the rules for operating the equipment while performing a manoeuvre on the approach to landing, by extending the flaps at high flight speed. However, no version was fully proven and the crash was officially deemed unexplained. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission in its reports did not decide that the pilot was to blame for the accident, as was maintained for years.