Samolot (full name: Wielkopolska Wytwórnia Samolotów ''Samolot'' '' S.A.'') was the

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

aerospace manufacturer An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry. ...

, located in

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...

and active between 1924 and 1930. It manufactured among others

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...

under the Bartel name. The name ''Samolot'' itself simply means ''airplane'' in Polish.

History

The WWS Samolot was created on 11 August 1923 in Poznań, and the factory was opened on 24 April 1924.Glass, A. (1977), pp.21-22. It was located on Ławica airfield in Poznań. The factory first produced licence copies of the French trainer planes Hanriot H.28 (144 built in 1925-1926) and

Hanriot HD.19 The Hanriot HD.19 was a military trainer aircraft produced in France in the 1920s. Design and development Part of the family of designs that began with the HD.14, the HD.19 was a two-bay biplane with unstaggered wings of equal span. The pilot ...

(80 built in 1925-1928, as H-19Morgała, Andrzej (2003) (in Polish). ''Samoloty wojskowe w Polsce 1924-1939''. Warsaw: Bellona. . pp.213-214) for the

Polish Air Force The Polish Air Force ( pl, Siły Powietrzne, , Air Forces) is the aerial warfare branch of the Polish Armed Forces. Until July 2004 it was officially known as ''Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Powietrznej'' (). In 2014 it consisted of roughly 16,425 mil ...

. It developed an

air ambulance Air medical services is a comprehensive term covering the use of air transportation, aeroplane or helicopter, to move patients to and from healthcare facilities and accident scenes. Personnel provide comprehensive prehospital and emergency and cri ...

variant of H.28 - H.28S (16 were built in 1927-1928). In 1925 there was developed an own design of sports plane Sp-I (one built). From 1926,

Ryszard Bartel Ryszard Bartel (22 March 1897 – 3 April 1982) was a Polish engineer, aircraft designer and aviator, one of Poland's aviation pioneers. Life and career Bartel was born in Sławniów village near Pilica. He was interested in aviation from h ...

led its construction bureau and started to design trainer aircraft for the Polish Air Force. After a single

Bartel BM-2 The Bartel BM 2, originally Bartel M.2 was a Polish biplane primary trainer aircraft prototype of 1926. Design and development The aircraft was designed by Ryszard Bartel, a chief designer of Samolot factory in Poznań. It was the first Polish ...

, a series of 22

Bartel BM-4 The Bartel BM.4 was a Polish biplane primary trainer aircraft used from 1929 to 1939 by the Polish Air Force and Polish civilian aviation, manufactured in the Samolot factory in Poznań. It was the first plane of Polish design put into producti ...

was built in 1928 (it was the first aircraft of the Polish design built in series). In 1928-1929 there was built a series of 60 trainers

Bartel BM-5 The Bartel BM 5, initially known as M.5 was a Polish biplane advanced trainer used from 1930 to 1939 by the Polish Air Force, manufactured in the Samolot factory in Poznań. Design and development The aircraft was designed by Ryszard Bartel i ...

. The last design was a trainer fighter

Bartel BM-6 The Bartel BM 6 was a Polish biplane trainer fighter aircraft of 1930. It did not advance beyond the prototype stage. Design and development The aircraft was designed by Ryszard Bartel in the Samolot factory in Poznań, as a trainer-fighter p ...

, flown in 1930, that remained a prototype. Apart from designing work of Bartel, several designers built prototypes of their sportsplanes ( HL-2, MN-3, MN-5, O-2) or gliders in Samolot factory, but they were not built in series. From 1927 it also produced car bodies on imported chassises, mostly buses, Ford A30 cars and luxury cars. In 1930, due to a damage by fire (12 September 1929) and lack of orders, the factory Samolot became liquidated. Its machinery was bought by

PZL PZL (''Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze'' - State Aviation Works) was the main Polish aerospace manufacturer of the interwar period, and a brand of their aircraft. Based in Warsaw between 1928 and 1939, PZL introduced a variety of well-regarded air ...

. The

development was taken over by the

PWS PWS may refer to: * Pressure wave supercharger, a type of super-charger technology *Performance work statement, term used to summarize the work that needs to be done for a contract * Personal weather station, a weather station owned and operated by ...

Aircraft

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Fabryka "Samolot" 1924-1931 – Infolotnicze

Wielkopolska Wytwórnia Samolotów S.A. "Samolot" – Samoloty w Lotinctwie Polskim
{{bartel aircraft Aircraft manufacturers of Poland