On this day in aviation history, February 5, 1960, the first Polish-designed jet aircraft, the PZL TS-11 Iskra (‘Spark’) made its first flight. This was the first jet aircraft to be designed and built in Poland and marked a step in the country’s recovery following the devastation of WWII. Only recently retired from military service, the aircraft has also found a niche in the United States, and elsewhere, as jet warbird after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Having been at the epicenter of the Second World War, Poland war utterly devastated under Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945, and was now under the influence of the Soviet Union, which had initially allied with Germany in order to take and occupy the eastern half of the country in 1939, and which soon imposed a communist government that became officially known as the Polish People’s Republic in 1952. In 1955, the Polish capital of Warsaw was the scene where the Warsaw Pact, a defensive alliance between the Soviet Union, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany, was established to counteract Western Europe’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
It was within this context that the Polish aviation sector began recovering from WWII. Before the war, the State Aviation Works (Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze: PZL) in Warsaw had been one of Eastern Europe’s most prominent aircraft manufacturers, and its aircraft represented the bulk of the Polish Air Force during the German invasion, with types such as the PZL P.11 fighter, the PZL.23 Karaś light bomber/reconnaissance aircraft, and the PZL.37 Łoś medium bomber fighting valiantly before the fall of Poland. PZL had even found some export success of their own, such as with the P.24 fighter that was flown by the Bulgarian Air Force, Greek Hellenic Air Force, Romanian Air Force, and the Turkish Air Force, with the Greek examples being flown in combat against invading Italian and Grman fighters and bombers.
When the new communist government was established in Poland, the Polish aviation sector found itself being required to build Soviet designs, such as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and MiG-17, which were known in Poland as the Lim-2 and Lim-5 respectively. These Soviet jet fighters were primarily produced at the Communication Equipment Factory, No. 1 plant, in Polish the Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego – zakład nr 1, known as ‘WSK-1 Mielec’ in brief after the city of Mielec, about 112 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Kraków. Later on, the company was renamed to PZL-Mielec, with PZL being the same initials as the notable pre-war State Aviation Works (Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze: PZL). Many of the ‘MiG 15’ and ‘MiG 17’ jet fighters flying as warbirds or on museum display worldwide today are, in fact, the Polish-built versions.
By the mid-1950s, WSK-1 Mielec had already developed a number of indigenous designs, including the piston engine trainer the TS-8 Bies (‘Devil’), designed by engineer Tadeusz Sołtyk, with his TS initials being included in the name designation of his aircraft. But in this era, jet trainers were also essential for a modern air force, while the Polish military desired a jet-powered training aircraft, designed and built in Poland, and on that could replace the piston powered TS-8.
One of the biggest challenges the engineers at Mielec faced was finding an engine with sufficient power for a small, easy-to-fly and easy-to-maintain trainer. It was decided that the best candidate for Mielec’s requirements was the Armstrong Siddeley Viper. The problem was that the Viper was a British engine, and asking the British to supply such an engine to communist Poland during the Cold War was out of the question, particularly after the earlier political disaster of the British supplying the Rolls Royce Nene jet engines to the Soviets in 1946. Luckily for Poland, there was a country that was willing and able to sell them a Viper engine. While it was a fellow communist state, Yugoslavia was a leader among the Non-Aligned states and were thus able to trade with both NATO as well as Warsaw Pact countries. As such, a Viper engine was shipped from Yugoslavia and made available for the first prototype, while a Polish development of the Viper, the WSK-Rzeszów HO-10 was installed in later prototypes, while the PZL-Rzeszów SO-1 was developed for mass production (with improved models of the TS-11 being powered by its successor, the SO-3).
On February 5, 1960, Polish test pilot Andrzej Abłamowicz took the TS-11 prototype for its first flight. Following this initial flight, the TS-11 Iskra entered produced at WSK’s factory in Mielec. The aircraft could reach a maximum speed of 720 km/h (450 mph) at 5,000 meters (16,000 feet), with a cruising speed of 600 km/h (370 mph), and could reach a service ceiling of 11,000 m (36,000 ft). While many TS-11s were unarmed trainers, the Iskra was also used for weapons training, being armed with a single nose mounted 23mm NS-23/NR-23 cannon and could use four underwing pylons to carry up to 400 kg (880 lb) of bombs, eight S-5 unguided rockets, or gun pods for 12.7 mm machine guns.
In August 1961, the prototype TS-11 Iskra was proposed to be the standard primary jet trainer for the Eastern Bloc nations. Test pilots Andrzej Abłamowicz and Józef Manet flew the third prototype, the HO-10 powered TS-11-03, in stages from Warsaw to Monino Airfield, near Moscow, via Minsk, Smolensk, and Kubinka. At Monino, the TS-11 was put through its paces in flight evaluations against the Russian-designed Yakovlev Yak-30 and the Czechoslovakian Aero Vodochody L-29 Delfin (‘Dolphin’), which were also being considered to become the Eastern Bloc’s primary jet trainer. During the two-month trials, the TS-11 proved to be a superior design to the Yak-30, which flew slower in level flight and had a slower climb rate than the Iskra, but despite the confidence of the Polish delegation, the Czechoslovak L-29 was selected over the Polish Iskra for adoption as the primary jet trainer. The L-29 would also go on to see widespread service around the world and led to the equally successful Aero L-39 Albatros trainer.
Nevertheless, the TS-11 was adopted as the primary jet trainer of the Polish Air Force and the Polish Navy. As such, the Iskra’s native Poland was the only Eastern Bloc nation to employ the aircraft. Meanwhile, Tadeusz Sołtyk was awarded the Medal of Merit for National Defense, while the entire design and construction team for the TS-11 Iskra received the title of Master of Technology.
The TS-11 prototypes also set four new records that were officially certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world governing body for air sports, for the class of aircraft with an empty weight of up to 3,000 kg (the production model TS-11 would have an empty weight of 2,650 kg (5,644 lb). On September 2, 1964, test pilot Andrzej Abłamowicz reached a speed of 715.69 km/h (444.71 mph) over a closed circuit 100 km course from Warsaw to Tłuszcz, then Kołbiel before finishing back in Warsaw. On September 24, 1964, another test pilot, Ludwik Natkaniec, set two more records over both a 500 km closed circuit course and a 510 km course from Warsaw to Kraków and beck to Warsaw, reaching a speed of 730.70 km/h (454.03 mph). Finally, Natkaniec set a fourth record for the TS-11 on September 26, 1964, reaching a speed of 830.00 km/h (515.73 mph) on a 15/25-kilometer course from Warsaw to Piaseczno. There could be no doubt that Poland’s first indigenous jet was a very capable trainer.
In addition to its domestic success, the TS-11 Iskra would be exported to serve in the Indian Air Force, which received 50 Iskra bis-D aircraft in 1976, followed by a further 26 examples. The Indian Air Force would end up becoming the only other air force to operate the Iskra, but nevertheless they served dutifully until the Indian air Force retired the last of their Iskras in 2004.
In all, a total of 424 PZL TS-11 Iskras were produced between 1963 and 1987, when production was halted due to lack of demand for further aircraft. Around this time, big changes were occurring across the Eastern Bloc, and Poland was at the center of this change, with the Solidarity Movement granting citizens greater freedoms under the authoritarian rule supported by the Kremlin.
In 1989, the same year that the Berlin Wall fell, pluralistic elections were held in Poland for the first time since 1947, and the Polish People’s Republic was dissolved and replaced by the democratic Third Polish Republic. This momentous event, followed by the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to a surplus of excess military aircraft throughout the Eastern Bloc. These were also now cheap enough for private owners in Western countries to export and register as privately-owned and operated aircraft.
This was not the end of the Iskra’s time in military service, however, as the Polish Air Force modernized the remaining examples to be compliant for training pilots to transition to Western aircraft, especially once Poland joined NATO alongside Hungary and Czechia in 1999.
Earlier, in the 1970s, a replacement for the TS-11 was being considered. WSK-Mielec (which had been renamed WSL PZL-Mielec) in 1975 as an homage to the pre-WWII PZL, introduced the I-22 Iryda (‘Iris’), which first flew in 1985. But due to budget cuts to Polish military spending during the 1990s, I-22 production was cancelled after only 17 aircraft were built.
Eventually, in 2013, with only 30 TS-11 Iskras still in service. Poland agreed to purchase the Italian-designed Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master to replace them. By 2016, the first M-346s arrived in Poland, and on December 9, 2020, the last training flight with the TS-11 in the Polish Air Force took place and was followed by a formal ceremony for the type’s mainstream retirement.
The longest serving unit to fly the TS-11, however, was the aerobatic demonstration team Biało-Czerwone Iskry (the Red and White Sparks). Created in 1969 as part of the 60th Aviation Training Regiment in Radom under the name Rombik, (‘Rhombus’, for the square shape of the four aircraft formation) in 1991 thry were renamed the Zespół Akrobacyjny Iskry (Iskra Aerobatic Team) before becoming the Biało-Czerwone Iskry in 2000. the TS-11s flown by the Red and White Sparks came to be associated for their distinctive paint scheme wearing the national colors. On July 27, 2022, the Red and White Sparks were officially disbanded due to lack of spares, with this occasion also marking the final retirement of the type from military service.
Today, numerous examples of the PZL TS-11 Iskra are on display in museums around the world, and some aircraft remain in flying condition today. Many aircraft are on display in museums across Poland, such as the Polish Aviation Museum in Krakow and the Polish Navy Museum in Gdynia. Other Iskras abroad have been flown by private collectors, including for warbird pilot training converting onto flying jet aircraft, or are in museums such as the Planes of Fame Air Museum of Chino, California, and the Cavanaugh Flight Museum.
Additionally, the retirement of the Polish Air Force’s White and Red Sparks official demonstration team has been filled in by a private foundation operating out of Mielec called the Fundacja Bialo-Czerwone Skrzydla (‘White and Red Wings Foundation’) that offers flights in TS-11 Iskras, Antonov An-2 “Colts”, Aero AT-3s and Extra 300 sports aircraft.
In the end, the PZL TS-11 Iskra can be seen as a truly remarkable trainer. It remains an important aircraft in the history of aviation in Poland, having been in operational service with the Polish Air Force for nearly 60 years, and becoming an aircraft that has seen global success as privately-owned and operated jet aircraft that have thrilled audiences at airshows and air races around the world.
Today in Aviation History is a series highlighting the achievements, innovations, and milestones that have shaped the skies. All the previous anniversaries are available HERE
