A seaplane pilot buys a bankrupt workshop

In the autumn of 1923 a small, debt-ridden engine firm in Novi Sad went bankrupt. Dimitrije Konjović, a retired naval seaplane pilot convinced that aviation was the coming industry, persuaded the engineer Josip Mikl, who had designed seaplanes for the Austro-Hungarian navy, to join him. On 13 October 1923 work began on a first trainer, and the company was registered in November under the grand name Ikarus, the first Serbian industry of aeroplanes, cars and machines. On 28 March 1924 it handed its first aircraft, a licence-built Brandenburg trainer, to the air force.

Zemun and the Potez years

Growth was quick. By the end of 1924 Ikarus had built four landplanes and six seaplanes with 66 workers; in 1925 it built 32. Mikl’s own ŠM naval trainer and IO coastal reconnaissance flying boat went into service. In 1927 the air force ordered combat aircraft, and Ikarus built a purpose-designed factory at Zemun, beside the new Belgrade airport, with help from the French firm Potez. From 1928 it turned out 220 Potez 25 reconnaissance bombers. Seaplanes stayed at Novi Sad until 1932, when everything moved to Zemun. The Depression nearly finished the firm, which survived by making propellers and fuel tanks.

Two engineers and a gull wing

The revival came from two young engineers. Ljubomir Ilić and Kosta Sivčev had trained in France and come home to desk jobs. In 1931, borrowing from their families, they designed a gull-winged fighter with a cannon firing through the propeller hub. The air force ordered a prototype from Ikarus, and the IK-1 flew on 22 April 1935, the first Yugoslav-designed fighter. Its test pilot’s unplanned aerobatics broke it on its third flight, but the improved IK-2 followed, 12 of them. Between 1935 and 1941 Ikarus employed about 2,000 people and built Hawker Furies and Bristol Blenheims under licence.

Occupation, bombs and confiscation

In all, Ikarus built 477 aircraft between 1923 and 1941. On 17 April 1941 the Germans seized the factory as war booty and ran it as a branch of Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke, making parts for the Messerschmitt Bf 109. Allied bombers wrecked much of it in April 1944. After liberation it restarted in January 1945 making spoons, spades and artificial limbs. In 1946 a court convicted Konjović and two other directors of economic collaboration and confiscated the company, which absorbed the staff of the Rogožarski and Zmaj factories to become the state aircraft works. In 1948 and 1949 it fitted new metal fuselages to 250 Il-2 attack aircraft.

First jets, last Kurir, then buses

The break with Stalin in 1948 left Yugoslavia without Soviet parts, so Sivčev and his colleagues revived their pre-war IK-3 as the S-49 fighter. The Aero 2 trainer was built by the hundred. On 25 October 1952 the little twin-engined Ikarus 451M became the first Yugoslav-built jet to fly, and its derivatives set class speed records. From 1951 the factory was steadily converted to civilian work: radiators, then bus and trolleybus bodies. The last aircraft, a Kurir liaison plane, left the line in 1962, and the aviation work passed to SOKO in Mostar. The factory lives on as the bus maker Ikarbus.

Factories

• Novi Sad works · Šumadijska Street, Novi Sad — Original works; seaplanes until 1932
• Zemun factory · Zemun, Belgrade — Purpose-built 1927–1928 with Potez help; now Ikarbus

People

• Dimitrije Konjović · founder and director — Retired naval seaplane pilot; convicted of economic collaboration in 1946
• Josip Mikl · co-founder, chief designer — Former Austro-Hungarian seaplane designer
• Ljubomir Ilić and Kosta Sivčev · fighter designers — IK-1 and IK-2; Sivčev also co-designed the S-49
• Boris Cijan · designer — Aero 2 and Kurir

Records and firsts

• First Yugoslav-designed fighter, IK-1, first flight 22 April 1935
• First Yugoslav-built jet aircraft to fly, Ikarus 451M, 25 October 1952
• Class speed records: S-451MM Matica 750.34 km/h in 1957; S-451M Zolja 500.2 km/h in 1960
• Ikarus sports society of 1928 was the first in the country to build gliders