Polish Aircraft - The Polish incident has exposed cracks in the Nato alliance which the Biden administration has struggled to keep in lockstep in the face of the Russian invasion. Vice President Kamala Harris is due to hold talks with the Polish government in Warsaw on Thursday where she will attempt to repair some of the diplomatic damage. The US said on Tuesday that it was deploying two of its Patriot antimissile batteries to Poland to help protect Nato
troops and territory. The deployment is intended to provide a layer of protection against the Ukraine conflict spilling over the country's western border. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, there was little reason to believe that the Eastern European nation could hold out for more than a few weeks.
Polish Aircraft
It was the proverbial "David" facing the might of "Goliath" and while it didn't have a biblical ending, the Poles put up much more of a fight than Germany likely expected. This was especially true in the air where Poland's antiquated aircraft held their own against the German Luftwaffe's modern fighters.
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On 31 December 2022, the first video of a Polish-donated 9K33 Osa (SA-8 Gecko) surface-to-air missile system in Ukraine was posted. It is unclear how many systems were transferred to Ukraine, but Poland has 64 TELARs of the Osa-AK, Osa-AKM and Osa-AKM-P1 Żądło variants.
pic.twitter.com/Qs4W3RaU1G Competition gliding's popularity in Poland was growing. A reliable workhorse towplane was in demand, moreover, there was a lack of a modern, light multi-purpose aircraft. Short take-off and landing would be desirable, combined with good performance and low operating costs.
The requirement led to the creation of the PZL-104 Wilga (thrush) at the WSK Okęcie facility. Designed by a team led by Ryszard Orłowski, it was made entirely of metal. The aircraft received a flat WN-6RB engine designed by Witold Narkiewicz.
The prototype made its maiden flight on April 24 1962. The engine tended to overheat requiring fuselage redesign. The Germans didn't just have "better" aircraft, they had the numbers, and when the invasion began the Luftwaffe was equipped with around 850 Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aircraft.
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By contrast, Poland had less than 325 of its PZL P.11 fighter aircraft. It was hardly what anyone would call a fair fight. While the M-15 was a successful design, the An-2 remained an extremely good agricultural platform.
When the Mielec facility that manufactured both decided to open itself towards the West, they met with an opportunity to provide the ASh-62 engines from the An-2 to the US company Rockwell, to power the Thrush Commander.
The Polish designers noticed that the Commander platform had further growth potential, and created a prototype of their own making using only some elements of the American predecessor. Known as the M-18 Dromader, the M-18 was an export hit.
An impressive 760 examples have been sold all around the world. In a case of 'ploughshares to swords' at least one airframe was used as a combat aircraft in the civil war in Yugoslavia. The PZL P.24 became one of the most successful Polish aviation export products.
It was sold to Bulgaria and Greece (each version reflecting the needs of the customer) and was sold alongside a production license to Romania and Turkey. Bulgarian fighters during the war were assigned to a fighter combat school (a factory designed by Polish engineers was planned to produce a new model under license but the war intervened).
Romanian P-24 aircraft fought against the Soviet Union. Turkish ones were never used in combat and were retired in 1945. Thank you. Our aviation shop is here and our Twitter account here @Hush_Kit. Sign up for our newsletter here.
The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes will feature the finest cuts from this site along with exclusive new articles, explosive photography and gorgeous bespoke illustrations. Pre-order The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes here. Surprisingly, thanks to the bravery of the pilots who flew the PZL P.11, the aircraft held its own.
It handled well, held comparable armament of its adversaries and proved to be an agile gunnery platform. Each of its two 7.92-millimeter machine guns was able to do considerable damage to the German fighter aircraft and bombers that faced the PZL P.11.
The Polish fighter could also take off from short landing strips, which made it ideal for operating from improvised fields. The biggest downside was that despite its all-metal airframe there was no armor to protect the pilot.
The designer Puławski was killed while test-flying an amphibian aircraft of his own design, and the design team was taken over by Wsiewołod Jakimiuk (who later gave the world the DHC Chipmunk). The P-7 was developed into the P-11, which was already obsolete, had to defend Polish skies against the Nazi onslaught.
But there is another plane stemming from the same DNA which was never used by the Polish air force. In 1934 a PZL works engineer, Jerzy Dąbrowski, started work on a fast monoplane bomber which he confidently expected to exceed the air force specification which demanded two engines, a 1200 km range, an offensive load of twenty 100 kg bombs, the ability to carry
300 kg bombs, and top speed over 217 mph (350 kph). His metal, low-wing aircraft had a very thin wing which had to be made thicker to accommodate bombs. When tested in the Warsaw Aerodynamics Institute wind tunnel, his airfoil seemed to produce less drag than comparable designs, actually less than the textbooks of the day said it should have: it was in fact, the first laminar flow airfoil developed in Poland, and one
of the first in the world. Most of Poland's P.11s were destroyed on the ground, but some thirty-six were provided to the Romanian Air Force and used in training. Those aircraft were reportedly scrambled to meet American attacks on the Ploesti refinery in 1944 but did no damage to the American bombers.
"The enemy has launched an attack heading exactly at the humanitarian corridor," the Ukrainian defense ministry said on Facebook on Tuesday, adding that the Russian army "did not let children, women and elderly people leave the city".
The International Committee of the Red Cross said many Mariupol residents face an "apocalyptic" situation, with no water, power or heating. The command of the air force suspected that the name of the jet referred to the wartime pseudonym of General Stefan 'Grot' Rowecki.
He was the chief commanding officer of AK (Armia Krajowa – Home Army) which was a resistance movement in Poland during the War, subordinate to the legal Polish government in exile. It had a much smaller Communist counterpart, AL (Armia Ludowa – People's Army).
The AK officially disbanded on January 19, 1945 to avoid armed conflict with the Soviets and civil war. Rowecki had been murdered by the Nazis at the personal order of Heinrich Himmler, but was considered an enemy of the Soviets and thus taboo.
The second problem stemmed from the 'unlucky' project designation - the inauspicious 'TS-13' was re-designated 'TS-16'. The RWD-6 was basically a prototype, and only eight were built. Some of them led extremely eventful lives: two were sold to Spain, where they were used as liaison aircraft in the civil war.
One crashed into the Baltic Sea while carrying a famous general to see his wife returning from the US on a Polish ocean liner. One was bought by a French aviation institute and was irreparably damaged when ignorant mechanics used acid to clean the engine (many parts were made of the lightweight Elektron which dissolves in acid).
Nowkuński, the engine design genius, died in a climbing accident in the Tatra mountains. Not a single RWD-9 survived the war. Washington appeared surprised by the announcement by Polish foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, who said on Tuesday that his government was "ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein airbase and place them at the disposal of
the government of the United States of America.” Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reportedly declined to arrange calls with Joe Biden in recent weeks as the US seeks to increase oil supply after formally banning Russian oil imports on Tuesday, pushing oil prices to $130 a barrel, the highest level in 14 years.
We are battered about the head with generous ladleful's of the aeronautical achievements of Britain and the United States. Those after marginally more specialized histories can readily leave the high street and find plenty of shady backstreet dealers to satisfy the more demanding palates of those wishing to gorge on French, Soviet or even Swedish subjects.
But some absolutely fascinating tales from other nations, even in today's bountifully expansive world of aviation writing, are rarely seen outside of their national languages. The independent nation of Poland is younger than the airplane itself, and spent its formative years in bloody wars with Ukraine, the Soviet Union before invasion by Germany and then domination by the Soviet Union.
The unique story of its aviation industry, and its beautiful and monstrous flying machines, is ripe for the telling. So what happened? The airplane, powered by license-built Bristol Pegasus engines, was smaller than comparable Western bombers, but carried a similar bomb load.
It was also seriously fast (223 knots or 256 mph). Over 50 units were ordered by foreign customers, but none were built before the war (they would be even faster with more powerful Gnome-Rhône powerplants). Two airframes received Bristol Perseus sleeve valve engines for experimental purposes.
The Poles were working on an improved version of the RWD-6, designated 'RWD-9'. The work on the design of the aircraft started 15 months before the Challenge, and seven months after work had started the first prototype flew.
At the same time a new Polish radial engine was being designed by Stanislaw Nowkuński. The new airplane was revolutionary, as it managed the seemingly contradictory combination: a top speed to stall speed ratio over 5, requiring a very high cruising speed with a very low stall speed.
This necessitated a hugely sophisticated wing, with leading edge slats, flaps, flaperons and spoilers, which was able to generate a very high coefficient of lift of 3.5. The light alloy engine developed almost 300 horsepower despite weighing 148 kilos.
British foreign secretary Liz Truss will meet her US counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington on Wednesday to discuss what more can be done to help Ukraine and reduce energy dependency on Russia. Truss called the invasion of Ukraine "a wake-up call for free democracies".
Stanisław Prauss reached England and in 1940 was employed by Westland Aircraft, where he worked on the Lysander, the Whirlwind and the Welkin. In 1946 he found employment at de Havilland, where he continued to work when the company became Hawker Siddeley;
notable aircraft he contributed to included the Comet, Trident and the A300. Stanisław Riess also reached England, and was employed by the AAEE at Boscombe Down. He was assigned the task of finding the reasons for the tendency of the Handley Page Halifax to enter a flat spin: during one of the flights he was unable to recover from the spin and was killed in the crash.
The data collected during the fatal flight helped cure the problem. Before we dig into the history of some brilliant and often overlooked airplanes, let us first look at the reasons that the Polish aviation industry was the way it was.
Firstly, it is worth noting that Poland was the only country in Europe to match German developments in glider design in the pre-war period. Whereas Germany was forced to choose that path due to the Versailles Treaty restrictions, Poland was simply poor, having just been resurrected in 1918 after 123 years of slavery under Prussian, Austro-Hungarian and Russian occupation.
Since February 2022, Poland has been delivering anti-aircraft systems of various capabilities and ranges to Ukraine. These systems include Piorun MANPADS, ZSU-23 Anti-Aircraft guns, 9K33M3 Osa-AKM, and S-60 Anti-Aircraft guns have also recently been announced. The weapon systems are plentiful but what is their effectiveness in action?
Let's take a closer look. The dispute came as Mikhail Mizintsev, the head of Russia's National Defense Control Centre, said Russian forces would "observe a regime of silence" from 7am GMT to ensure safe passage for civilians wishing to leave Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol.
It was unclear if the proposed routes would pass through Russia or Belarus, conditions previously opposed by the Ukrainian government. The new plane was to replace the PZL-23 Karaś (crucian carp) light reconnaissance bomber in Polish Air Force service.
It was first flown in early 1939, soon after being presented at the Paris Air Show. It had a unique ventral gunner gondola, which in its last iteration lowered itself under the gunner's body weight in flight, with a rubber rope system damping the downward motion.
The air force ordered 300 PZL-46 aircraft, powered by license-built Bristol Pegasus engines, and an export version for Bulgaria was also planned. The single-seat fighter was initially powered by a Bristol Mercury V.S2 9-cyl. air-cooled radial piston engine, 420 kilowatts (560 horsepower) or 1x 481 kW (645 horsepower) Polish Skoda Works Mercury VI.S2.
Subsequent variants also featured a more powerful engine, but even in its original configuration it could reach speeds of 240 miles per hour and had an absolute ceiling greater than 36,000 feet. The sole prototype suffered a hydraulically operated landing gear malfunction in August 1939, making an evacuation from Warsaw impossible.
It is believed to have been repaired and to have served as a liaison aircraft with the Luftwaffe. As for the pilot, Aleksander Onoszko, he flew 43 combat sorties in World War II with the Polish 304 Bomber Squadron on Wellingtons, later flying transatlantic missions on BOAC B-24 Liberators.
Todd Wolfe? I think you mean Tom. And the Mighty Integral was a spaceship in the novel "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Wolfe used it as a symbol of Soviet close-mouthedness about the identity of their rocket program's Chief Designer.
Losing on their home turf, the German contingent looked on bitterly as the Polish crew were decorated at the Berlin-Staaken airfield ceremony. Unfortunately, several weeks later the victorious crew perished in heavy weather over Czechoslovakia. Since Poland won the Challenge, it had to host the next contest in 1934, and this time the new Germany (under Hitler) intended to win back the Challenge.
With state aid, Messerschmitt's Robert Lusser set about designing an aircraft which would have a chance of winning against anything the Poles could bring (no other country actually counted as viable competitors any more). This was to be the Messerschmitt Bf-108 Taifun, which in its first iteration with its huge flaps and tiny ailerons close to the wingtips, was extremely unforgiving to fly.
The idea of donating old warplanes to Ukraine was raised on 27 February by the EU foreign and security policy chief, Josep Borrell, who declared: "We are going to provide even fighter jets." That announcement annoyed Polish officials, who said Warsaw was not properly consulted about a move that could expose the country to risk.
Work on the PZL-46 light bomber began in 1936, with Stanisław Prauss as the lead designer. Tadeusz Sołtyk, who would later work on the notorious TS-8 Bies and TS-11 Iskra, was his deputy. Henryk Milicer, who would go on to design the British Percival Provost trainer, was also a member of the team.
Secondly, it has to be remembered that this newly independent nation only had 19 years in which to develop its indigenous technology before World War II started. Thirdly, the birth of the new Poland fueled an incredible amount of patriotic confidence within the Polish people, and aviation became one of the fields where they felt they could excel.
The PZL P.11 was essentially a throw-back to another era. It was a high-wing monoplane with an open-air cockpit and fixed undercarriage landing area. It may have featured an aerodynamically refined shape with a metal-skin, and was certainly modern compared to fabric-over-wood biplanes of World War I, but it was no match for the German fighter aircraft with their enclosed cockpits and retractable undercarriages.
The Pentagon has dismissed Poland's plan to hand the US its MiG-29 fighter jets to boost Ukraine's fight against Russia, as Moscow officials said they were ready to provide humanitarian corridors on Wednesday morning for people fleeing Kyiv and four other cities.
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