ejected upwards, not causing any significant damage; the second piece shot into the engine number 1, damaging it seriously; finally, the third piece of the disc shot into the hull, severed the rudder and elevator control rods and destroyed the number 3 engine, causing loss of control over the plane; it also severed power cables for both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. This caused the last moments of Mikołaj Kopernik not to be recorded. The cut control rods also explained the sudden dive. When they were cut, the horizontal stabilizer, under its own weight, dropped down, causing the nose also to go down. This could be counteracted by the vertical trim; in Il-62s, the switch setting the vertical trim to manual operation was secured by a thin, sharp wire. On Captain Lipowczan's right hand, small wounds were found, and they were confirmed to be made while Lipowczan was still alive; supposedly, he ripped the security off and tried to control the vertical trim, but it was too late. In an interview for Polish TV series The Black Series, Captain Tomasz Smolicz, an experienced airline pilot who flew thousands of hours on transatlantic routes on Ilyushins Il-62 and Il-62M in the 1970s and 1980s (he flew Mikołaj Kopernik from Warsaw to New York on 13 March 1980), stated that the planes returning to Warsaw from the United States usually landed on runway course 150 (150 degrees, south-south-east), and if they landed at or before noon on a sunny day (such as on 14 March 1980), the sun was shining almost directly in their eyes, which were weary after several hours of night flight and constant monitoring of cockpit instruments; this sometimes caused disorientation and confusion if an indicator light actually was lit or not; so, on that day, the landing gear indicator could have actually been lit, but the crew members might have managed to see it incorrectly. During the recovery, the landing gear was found to be properly extended and locked. Causes of disaster According to the Polish government's Special Disaster Commission, the crash was caused by defects in materials, faults in the manufacturing process of the Kuznetsov NK-8 jet engine's shaft, and weaknesses in the design of its turbine. During the manufacturing of the low-pressure shaft, at a location where its section diameter increases, a sharp, 90-degree step was made, resulting in a sudden diameter