- Samolot
Samolot (full name: Wielkopolska Wytwórnia Samolotów "Samolot S.A.") was the Polish
aerospace manufacturer , located inPoznań and active between 1924 and 1930. It manufactured among othersaircraft under the Bartel name.History
The Samolot was created on 11 August 1923 in Poznań, the name means "airplane" in Polish. The factory was opened on 24 April 1924. It was located on Ławica airfield in Poznań. The factory first produced licence copies of the French trainer planes
Hanriot H.28 (144 built in 1925-1926) andHanriot H.19 (55 built) for thePolish Air Force . It developed anair ambulance variant of H.28 - H.28S (16 were built in 1927-1928).In 1925 there was developed an own design of sportsplane Sp-I (one built). From 1926,
Ryszard Bartel led its construction bureau and started to design trainer aircraft for the Polish Air Force. After a singleBartel BM-2 , a series of 22Bartel BM-4 was built in 1928 (it was the first aircraft of the Polish design built in series). In 1928-1929 there was built a series of 60 trainersBartel BM-5 . The last design was a trainer fighterBartel BM-6 , flown in 1930, that remained a prototype.Apart from designing work of Bartel, several designers built prototypes of their sportsplanes (HL-2, MN-3, MN-5, O-2) or gliders in Samolot factory, but they were not built in series. From 1927 it also produced car bodies on imported chassises, mostly buses, Ford A30 cars and luxury cars.
In 1930, due to a damage by fire (12 September 1929) and lack of orders, the factory Samolot became liquidated. Its machinery was bought by
PZL . TheBartel BM-4 development was taken over by the PWS.References
*Andrzej Glass: "Polskie konstrukcje lotnicze 1893-1939" ("Polish aviation constructions 1893-1939"), WKiŁ, Warsaw 1977 pl icon (no ISBN)
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