A factory that built a town

PZL-Świdnik’s roots lie in the Lublin aircraft works of Plage i Laśkiewicz, opened in 1920. After the Second World War the communist government decided to rebuild an airfield outside Lublin and put a new state aircraft factory beside it. Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego Świdnik, the Communication Equipment Works, was built from 1950 to 1953. Its first products were licence-built MiG-15 jet fighters, the Lim-1 and Lim-2. The village next door grew around the plant and became the town of Świdnik. In 1957 the works took the prewar PZL name, and by the mid-1950s the government had decided its future lay in helicopters.

The Soviet helicopter made only in Poland

Świdnik began with the Soviet Mi-1, built as the SM-1, and its own SM-2 development. Then Moscow made an unusual decision. The turbine-powered Mi-2, first flown in the Soviet Union in September 1961, was handed to Poland for final development and production in 1964. The first Świdnik-built Mi-2 flew on 4 November 1965, and it became the only Soviet-designed helicopter built solely outside the Soviet Union. Nearly 5,500 were made before production ended in 1999, mainly for Soviet and Eastern Bloc users but also for buyers as far apart as Mexico and Myanmar. Świdnik became one of Europe’s largest helicopter makers.

Two million motorcycles

Helicopters were not the factory’s only product. From 1954 to 1980 it also built motorcycles under the WSK brand, light two-strokes of 125 and 175 cc with bird names such as Kobuz, Dudek and Perkoz. Some two million were made. The works also made SZD-30 Pirat gliders in the 1970s, later the PW-5 and PW-6, and from 1976 parts for the Soviet Il-86 airliner. Its engineers developed a modernised Mi-2, the Kania, first flown on 3 June 1979, but only 19 were built as Western certification proved a struggle.

The Lublin July

Świdnik has a place in Poland’s political history too. On 8 July 1980 workers in its machining department stopped work. Within three days they had signed one of the first agreements of that summer with the authorities, and the protests spread to more than 150 workplaces across the Lublin region from 8 to 24 July. The Lublin July, as it became known, opened the way for the August strikes on the Baltic coast that created Solidarity. Inside the plant, meanwhile, designers were working on something new: the first helicopter designed and built entirely in Poland.

Falcon, owl and Leonardo

That helicopter was the W-3 Sokół, or Falcon, a twin-engine medium type whose first prototypes flew on 16 November 1979. About 149 had been built by 2011, for Poland, the Czech Republic, the Philippines and Myanmar, including the Anakonda naval rescue version. The light single-engine SW-4 Puszczyk, the tawny owl, flew in 1996. After the state firm became a company in 1991, it made A109 fuselages for Agusta, and in January 2010 AgustaWestland bought 87.62 per cent for PLN 339 million. Now Leonardo PZL-Świdnik, it builds AW149s for the Polish Army under a 32-helicopter contract signed in 2022, worth PLN 8.25 billion gross.

Factories

• Świdnik works · Świdnik, Lublin Voivodeship — Built 1950–1953 beside a grass factory airfield, now next to Lublin Airport (opened 2012)

People

• Bronisław Orda · director general — Colonel and engineer who led WSK PZL-Świdnik

Records and firsts

• Only Soviet-designed helicopter produced solely outside the Soviet Union, Mi-2
• First helicopter designed and produced entirely in Poland, W-3 Sokół