On 22 August 2021, a team of red-and-white jets flew its last public display over Poland. The PZL TS-11 Iskra had trained Polish military pilots for more than half a century, and the Biało-Czerwone Iskry, the “White-and-Red Sparks”, were the last unit in the country still flying it.

The Iskra — the name means “Spark” — was Poland’s first home-designed jet to reach series production. It lost the contest to become the Warsaw Pact’s standard trainer. Poland bought it anyway, and kept it flying for 58 years.

A design office reborn

After the Second World War, Poland’s aviation industry was reorganised to Soviet requirements. By early 1951 its design offices had been dissolved and its factories were building Soviet types such as the MiG-17. Some designers found refuge at the Institute of Aviation, and after Stalin’s death in 1953 original projects slowly became acceptable again.

In 1957 the Polish Air Force asked for a jet to replace its piston-engined TS-8 Bies trainer. The project began at the institute and moved to PZL-Mielec. Its chief designer was Tadeusz Sołtyk, and his initials gave the aircraft the first half of its designation: TS-11.

The Iskra was a tidy, unusual-looking machine. Its gently swept wing sat mid-fuselage with the air intakes in the roots, and the engine exhausted under a tail carried on a short boom. Student in front, instructor behind, both on ejection seats. A single 23 mm cannon in the nose and, on later versions, four underwing hardpoints made it a weapons trainer too.

The engine Poland did not have

The engine was the hard part. Mielec wanted the British Armstrong Siddeley Viper, but according to Wikipedia the negotiations to acquire it broke down, and Poland developed its own powerplant. The prototype still flew on an imported Viper 8, on 5 February 1960. The next two used the WSK HO-10, a Polish copy of the Viper, and production aircraft later standardised on the Polish SO-1 and SO-3 turbojets.

The Polish Air Force Museum’s interview series with former Biało-Czerwone Iskry pilots (in Polish).

The public saw the Iskra for the first time over Łódź in September 1960. Deliveries of the first production version, the TS-11 Iskra bis A, began in 1963.

Losing to the Delfín, winning at home

In 1961 the Iskra was flown against the Czechoslovak Aero L-29 Delfín and the Soviet Yak-30 at Monino near Moscow, in a fly-off to choose a standard trainer for the Warsaw Pact. The L-29 won. Every other Warsaw Pact member bought the Czechoslovak jet.

Poland did not. It went ahead with its own aircraft and became the only Pact air force to train its pilots on the Iskra. For a country that had just rebuilt its design office from scratch, that was a statement of industrial independence as much as a procurement decision.

Production at Mielec ran from 1963 to 1987. Wikipedia, the European Airshows anniversary history and the Polish defence magazine Zbiam all give 424 aircraft; the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków gives 419. The only export customer was the Indian Air Force, which took a first batch of 50 Iskra bis D trainers in 1975 and more in the 1990s, flying them at Hakimpet alongside the HAL Kiran until December 2004.

The White-and-Red Sparks

In February 1969, the Polish Air Force formed an aerobatic team at Radom with four Iskras. It was called Rombik, after its diamond formation. Rombik was disbanded in 1981, during the political crisis in Poland, and reborn in 1989 as Iskry, with seven aircraft. The red-and-white paint came in 1991, along with the team’s first displays abroad, in Hungary and Belgium.

The Biało-Czerwone Iskry flying their TS-11 display at Radom Air Show 2018.

In 2000 the team moved to Dęblin and took the name Biało-Czerwone Iskry. For two decades its jets were a fixture at Polish and European air shows, from Radom to the Royal International Air Tattoo.

The last Spark

The Iskra’s replacement was a long time coming. Poland’s own successor, the PZL I-22 Iryda, never made it into large-scale service. In the end, the Italian-designed M-346 Master, called Bielik in Poland, took over advanced training. The last Iskra training sortie flew on 9 December 2020, and the team flew its final display on 22 August 2021. A farewell ceremony at Dęblin on 27 July 2022 closed more than 58 years of Iskra service.

The story did not end there. On 12 September 2025, the seven team aircraft were handed to the Biało-Czerwone Skrzydła foundation at Mielec, the town where they had been built, and the foundation said it hoped to return them to air shows.

The Iskra never won the Warsaw Pact contest. It won something rarer: half a century of Polish pilots, and a place in Polish hearts that a Czechoslovak trainer could never have had.

Sources: Wikipedia (PZL TS-11 Iskra; Biało-Czerwone Iskry), Polish Aviation Museum Kraków, European Airshows, Zbiam, Dziennik Wschodni