Poland: Fatal Attempt To Turn Back

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LOT Polish airlines Flight 5055 carried a capacity load of 172 passengers and eleven crew members as it lifted off from Warsaw's Okecie Airport last Saturday en route to New York City. About half an hour into the flight, two of the Soviet-built Ilyushin 62M jetliner's four engines apparently burst into flame. In a frantic effort to reach safety, the pilot turned about, dumped most of the plane's fuel and headed back to Okecie. Before he could make it, the other two engines caught fire.

"I saw the plane diving, nose-down," said Anna Zagorska, an eyewitness who lives nearby. "There was an explosion that shattered the glass in our house." Four miles short of the airport runway, the flaming aircraft sliced through 500 yards of treetops in the Kabaty Woods, near the town of Piaseczno, and crashed to the ground. All 183 aboard, including 17 Americans, were killed.

The aircraft splintered into thousands of pieces over a wide area, most of them afire. Fire fighters and area residents dug ditches to contain the blazes, then began a fruitless search for survivors. "Doctors came, had a look and there was no one to save," said Zagorska. "Hands and legs were hanging from the trees." It was the worst disaster ever for the Polish national airline.