LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 "Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we're dying!"). All 172 passengers and 11 crew died as the aircraft broke apart and crashed. After the crash of the Il-62 operating as LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007, the airline had started replacing its Ilyushin Il-62s with the more modernized Ilyushin Il-62M version. These had newer engines (Soloviev D-30 instead of Kuznetsov NK-8), but both of these turbofan engines shared the same critical point — low pressure turbine and engine shaft design and construction. According to the Polish investigatory commission, the cause of the crash was the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty
Polish Operation of the NKVD of the Polish diversionist and espionage groups and POW units"," was approved on August 9, 1937 by the Party's Central Committee Politburo, and was signed by Nikolai Yezhov on August 11, 1937. It was distributed to the local subdivisions of the NKVD simultaneously with Yezhov's thirty-page "secret letter," explaining what the "Polish operation" was all about. The letter from Yezhov was titled, ""On fascist-resurrectionist, spying, diversional, defeationist, and terrorist activity of Polish intelligence in the USSR"". Stalin demanded the NKVD to "keep on digging out and cleaning out this Polish filth." The "Order" adopted the simplified so-called "album procedure" (as