A very interesting story from The Telegraph:
The bodies of three Polish army officers buried in Britain are to be exhumed as part of an investigation into the mysterious death of Poland's wartime leader.
The officers died alongside General Wladyslaw Sikorski, then Poland's prime minister and military commander, when his RAF Liberator plunged into the sea shortly after taking off from Gibraltar in July 1943.
The Ministry of Defence have approved the removal of the bodies from the Polish military cemetery in Newark, Nottinghamshire, early next month. They will then transport the remains to Poland with full military honours for a post mortem.
Although a wartime British inquiry deemed the crash an accident, Sikorski's death has long been the subject of enduring and colourful conspiracy theories, which claim that the general died at the hands of Stalin's assassins, or even British agents working under the orders of Churchill.
B24 Liberator II/LB-30 AL523 took off from RAF North Front at 23:10 04/07/1943. The only photo of the plane I can find is of it upside down in the water with its undercarriage down! Oddly the second pilot is relatively unknown and Prchal had never flown with him before.
Five bodies were never found and the bodies were never positively identified in the Liberator II’s crash. There are two earlier incidents in preceding months where it looks like General Sikorski’s planes had been sabotaged. The night before the crash a soviet plane had been parked next to the unguarded plane so one of the conspiracy theories is that the Russians planned to kidnap him. Another interesting fact is that the documents relating to the crash are still classified. Sikorski was exhumed in 2008 from Wawel Cathedral in Krakow but the investigators deemed his death as being consistent with a plane crash. It is worthy also to note that Sikorski himself was buried at Newark on 16 July 1943 until 1993 when his body was taken back to Poland.
Passengers:
1.General Władysław SikorskiPrime Minister and
Commander-in-Chief of Poland
1.General Władysław SikorskiPrime Minister and
Commander-in-Chief of Poland
2.Zofia Leśniowska Chief of the Polish Women's Auxiliary
3.Major General Tadeusz Klimecki Chief of the Polish General Staff
4.Colonel Andrzej MareckiChief of Operations Staff
5.Lieutenant Jozef PonikiewskiNaval A.D.C.
6.Adam Kulakowski Personal secretary to Sikorski
7.Colonel Victor Cazalet M.P., British Liason Officer
8.Brigadier J.P. Whitely M.P.
9.Mr. W.H. Lock(Never found, presumed dead)
10.Mr. Pinder Head of British Intelligence Service in the Middle East
(his position was never revealed to General Sikorski)
11.Bombardier Gralewski (Joined the party at Gibraltar)
Crew:
1.1Lt Edward Maks Prchal Captain/1st Pilot
2.Squadron Leader W.S. Herring 2nd Pilot (never found)
3.Warrant Officer L. Zalsberg Navigator
4.Sergeant F. KellyFlight Engineer
5.Flight Sergeant C.B. Gerrie Radio Operator/Air Gunner
6.Flight Sergeant D. Hunder Radio Operator/Air Gunner
(never found)
Was Mr Pinder: PINDER, Harry, Warrant Telegraphist, HMS Nile, 4 July 1943, aircraft accident, killed
Also see http://umbr4.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/corp/assets/foi/sikorski/sikorski4.pdf
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