Three students, three initials

RWD began in a student club. In December 1925 aviation enthusiasts at the Warsaw University of Technology set up workshops in the mechanics students’ club, and three of them, Stanisław Rogalski, Stanisław Wigura and Jerzy Drzewiecki, joined forces in 1928 on a sports plane they named after their initials: the RWD-1. Rogalski led on aerodynamics, Wigura on stress calculations, and Drzewiecki brought the ideas and test-flew the early aircraft. In 1930 they moved into new workshops at Okęcie, beside the aerodrome that is now Warsaw’s main airport.

Challenge 1932 and a tragedy

Their breakthrough came at the Challenge, Europe’s great touring-aircraft contest. The RWD-6, with side-by-side seats, folding wings, slats and flaps, flew on 3 June 1932, and in August Franciszek Żwirko and Wigura won Challenge 1932 in it, the highest technical scores of all 43 competitors. Weeks later, on 11 September 1932, the same aircraft broke up in a storm on the way to Czechoslovakia, killing both men; weak wing mountings were blamed. The RWD name continued, and RWD-9s took the first two places at Challenge 1934.

The smallest plane across the Atlantic

In 1933 Stanisław Skarżyński took a single-seat RWD-5bis, its rear cabin replaced by a fuel tank and with no radio or safety equipment, from Warsaw to Rio de Janeiro. On 7–8 May he flew 3,582 km from Saint-Louis in Senegal to Maceió in Brazil in 20 hours 30 minutes, a light-aircraft distance record. With an empty weight under 450 kg it was the smallest aeroplane yet to cross the Atlantic. The workshops became a company, Doświadczalne Warsztaty Lotnicze, in March 1933.

Trainers, tourers and coffee

The RWD-8 parasol trainer won the air force’s contest for a basic trainer, and over 550 were built, 100 by DWL and 500 by PWS: the most numerous Polish-designed aircraft before the war, a record unbroken until the 1970s. The RWD-13 tourer of 1935 sold about 100. DWL nearly went under when LOT refused the twin-engined RWD-11 feederliner, built with the firm’s own money amid pressure to absorb private workshops into state industry. A sale of RWD-13s to Brazil, paid for in coffee, kept it afloat.

September 1939

The late designs, the RWD-17 aerobatic trainer, the RWD-14 Czapla observation aircraft built by LWS, and the RWD-21 sports plane, showed a team at its peak, with a modern RWD-25 fighter and RWD-22 torpedo bomber on the drawing board. The German invasion in September 1939 ended RWD and DWL. RWD-5s flew as liaison aircraft in the campaign, and Skarżyński’s record machine was seized by the Soviets at Lwów.

Factories

• Okęcie workshops · Okęcie, Warsaw — Built with LOPP public funds; RWD base from 1930, DWL from 1933

People

• Stanisław Rogalski · co-founder, head of design — Aerodynamics
• Stanisław Wigura · co-founder — Stress calculations; killed with Żwirko 11 September 1932
• Jerzy Drzewiecki · co-founder and test pilot — Flew RWD-1 to RWD-7
• Franciszek Żwirko · pilot — Won Challenge 1932 in the RWD-6
• Stanisław Skarżyński · pilot — South Atlantic crossing in the RWD-5bis, 1933
• Jerzy Wędrychowski · director of DWL

Records and firsts

• Winner, Challenge 1932: Żwirko and Wigura, RWD-6
• First and second places, Challenge 1934: RWD-9
• FAI light tourist class distance record, 3,582 km, Skarżyński, RWD-5bis, 7–8 May 1933
• RWD-5bis: smallest aeroplane to cross the Atlantic at the time