Kraków 2015-09-02
Polish Aviation Industry – Part 19
Military Aviation Works
Description to the photo: The SB Lim-2 A nb 2004 aircraft. The aircraft manufactured by CCCP, built on December 22, 1954, as the MiG-15 UTI No. 27004. Delivered to Poland on January 4, 1955. Rebuilt on January 30, 1967, on SB Lim-1A nb 2704/2004 in WZL No. 2 in Bydgoszcz. The rear of the fuselage from the Lim-2 aircraft. The plane served in 15 SELR Siemirowice until 1988. In 1995 it was transferred to Czyżyny.
Military Aviation Works.
The history of Military Aviation Works in Poland began in 1945, when the organization of Mobile Air Field Workshops was started to maintain the technical efficiency of military aircraft. They were also called Mobile Aviation Repair Workshops. The moving word was related to their movement behind the advancing front. As they were typically military entities, they were organized on the basis of battalions. They were part of an air regiment, and were organized at the airport where the division headquarters operated. As individual divisions had different types of aircraft, over time workshops began to specialize in the repair and repair of specific types of aircraft. The first major reorganization of these workshops took place in 1951, and was related to the widely introduced into armament with turbojet engines. Mobile workshops were then closed. Some of them were transformed into current service workshops, and some of them became Military Repair Bases, which provided specialized services for the entire air force within a given specialty. In the mid-1950s, four basic repair and repair services centers for air forces were already known in: Łódź, Bydgoszcz, Dęblin and Warsaw. In 1957, these four repair plants, then called Lotnicze Zakłady Remontowe, were transformed into state-owned enterprises. Thus, the typical military structure disappeared. In 1982, Lotnicze Zakłady Remontowe was transformed into Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze. This change allowed for better financing of these companies in the face of the permanent economic crisis. After the socio-economic transformations of 1989, these plants gradually underwent reorganization, becoming joint-stock companies operating on the free market. Like any company, Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze must look for a market for its services. Out of the three currently operating (2015) WZL, the most important is WZL No. 2 in Bydgoszcz, which are repaired by planes. Another one is WZL No. 1 in Łódź, which renovates helicopters and which in 2010 absorbed WZL No. 3 in Dęblin. The last one is WZL No. 4 in Warsaw, which specializes in engine repairs.
Written by Karol Placha Hetman