LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 LOT Polish Airlines Flight LO 165 crashed 2 April 1969 at 16:08 local time (UTC+1) while en route from Warsaw to Krakow Balice airport during a snowstorm. It crashed on the northern slope of Polica near Zawoja in southern Poland, hitting the mountain at an altitude of . The plane was an Antonov An-24 aircraft, with registration SP-LTF. All 53 people (47 passengers and 6 crew) on board were killed. There were three Americans and one London resident among the passengers, all others being Polish citizens. The official accident report, published in 1970, blamed the
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