Sabotage!: An In-Depth Investigation of the 1943 Liberator Crash That Killed Polish General Sikorsky

An exhaustive piece of investigative journalism that puts the record straight once and for all.

On the night of 4 July 1943, transport aircraft Liberator AL523 took off from Gibraltar’s North Front tarmac and within moments crashed into the sea with only one survivor, the pilot. The commander-in-chief of the Polish army and prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile, General Władysław Sikorski, was dead.

Rumours as to the cause of the crash abounded. Was it pilot error? Was it, as officially classified, merely an accident, or was it, as the authors conclude in this riveting and meticulous study, an act of sabotage?

In this extensive piece of research, Chris Wroblewski and Garth Barnard examine numerous primary sources, including the complete court of inquiry transcripts, produce detailed analysis of aircraft components and systems and unearth many little-known eyewitness accounts to give this investigation a compelling conclusion. Within the book the authors also dispel several conspiracy theories that have emerged since this catastrophe; particularly that this event was a disastrous assassination attempt with blame on the British, Soviets and Nazis.

This is an exhaustive piece of investigative journalism that puts the record straight once and for all.

Since his early teens Chris Wroblewski has been fascinated with aircraft and Second World War aviation history. Over a 36-year career as a licensed Canadian aircraft maintenance engineer, he has amassed experience on a range of aircraft and worked for commercial and private aviation companies. From 1992 to 1994 he served as director of maintenance for the Great War Flying Museum in Brampton Ontario. Currently he is studying part-time for a military history degree at University of Calgary and was published in the 2009 winter edition of on spec magazine. Chris lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Garth Barnard’s interest in aviation stems from a lifelong passion and unshakable resolve to investigate the deaths of thousands of young airmen during the Second World War. He began his research in 2000 and by 2003 created aviationresearch.co.uk to document the operational training units of Bomber Command across south Northamptonshire, north-east Oxfordshire, and north-west Buckinghamshire. From 2012 to 2014 Garth was investigator and presenter for six episodes of WW2 Air Crash Detectives which aired on Yesterday Channel. Garth has an engineering degree and lives in Brackley, England.