flamming_python wrote:
What can you tell us out of interest about Poland's helicopter and light aircraft industry? I know Poland had 2 industrial plants related to that
Do they have any of their own domestic designs, or did they?
Not sure what time period you addressing, because it would be a different animal.
Poland produced tons of planes and helos.
Localized MiG-15 production began at Mielec plant as early as 1951, it was called Lim-1. Production was really massive, and steady technical progress was constant. 15bis was put online as early as 1954, called Lim-2. In 1956, there was a MiG-17F already on production, called Lim-5. This piece was modernized, too, leading to Lim-6/6bis variants.
Rzeszow produced the engines for Lim-5/6 line.
Functionally for more than a decade, Poland produced its own fighter jet planes in hundreds.
In 1956/1957, an MoA was undersigned to transfer the MiG-21 documentation and start its production, however as the political changes appeared in Poland, soviet rulers were afraid of security issues, so they closed the deal. Khrushchev himself repeated to the Polish delegation pushing for decision change, that even if they will all sing a choir about keeping the secrets, he would no believe them
As Polish Air Forces transferred to jet fighters in the 50s, there was a need to have a light jest trainer. In 1957, a TS-11 "Spark" trainer was constructed, and this part is actually quite interesting, as the proto used to be powered by a cloned R&R Viper 8 engine. Original Viper was bought in Yugoslavia and copied as HO-10. It used to be an interim solution, as Polish designed&made SO-1 was not ready yet. TS-11 started to be serially delivered to the AF in 1963, and a modernization program was running as well. The plane was evaluated as a standard trainer of WarPac airforces but lost that competition to Czechoslovakian L-29. The sole user outside Poland was India. Production stopped in 1987, with +/- 400 produced.
In 1976, the decision was made to create a next-gen trainer/light attack plane, with a twin-engine layout. It was designated I-22 Iryda, and the program was pushed forward for the whole of the 80s, with different configurations and engines used. The last prototype that was considered as serial standard flew in 1991. PAF ordered trial series of 12 pcs, and that was the beginning of the end. The number of planes was steadily decreased, while the demands increased rapidly. AF demanded changes to the frame, engines, and avionic suite, ending up with three different engines considered, replacing the existing fourth one - Polish K-15, a Viper, and Franch SNECMA Larzac. That led to a crazy situation when finally deliveries started in 1994, AF operated whole 8 pcs of the planes, but .... of 3 different series, with different engines. In 1996, one of the planes crashed, killing the crew, and that was the last nail to the coffin. No one really cared about the fact, that it was one of the first delivered pieces, with the oldest SO-3 engines, and the cause of the crash is disputable. The project was put on hold and finally closed in 1996 ending up with 11 frames only.
That was the last song of Polish-made jet planes.
As for helo production, Poland was chosen as the main subcontractor for Mi-2 for the whole WarPac, especially SU.
The situation was kinda similar to the previous localization of An-2 biplane, which was produced in 47 000 (yes, forty-seven thousand) pieces at Mielec.
Mi-2 was a workhorse produced since 1965, and what is particularly interesting here, Soviets provided not serial production documentation as a part of a license, but a prototype one. That forced our engineering staff to master it in a living body, with help and assistance from the Mil design team. A total of 5500 pieces were produced.
That gave them a solid background and cooperation experience, so in 1976 it was decided that a new helo replacing Mi-2 and Mi-4 will be produced in Poland as well.
This is how W-3 Sokol - Hawk - was born. The first serial helo lifted in the air in 1982.
W-3 used to be quite successful, delivered in numbers to Polish AF, Navy, medical services, SAR teams, and exported.
It was put in operation in Czech (they switched with us giving 10 MiG-29 for 11 W-3A), Myanma, Philipines, Algeria, Germany, South Korea, Chile, Uganda, Spain, Russia, USA, Israel, UAE, Vietnam, Gabon, Portugal ... As some of them operated a sole piece or a special version, it still answers the question of the potential of this frame, if played correctly. Which was not the case, unfortunately.
There was an SW-4 light helo as a direct replacement of Mi-2 as well, but as it was not as widely used as the W-3, with 24 pcs in exploitation with PAF, but the interesting part is, that one is supposed to be made in China some 15 years ago.
We had a quite vibrant agro plane production, too.
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