Poland's First And Last Line Of Defense: PZL P.11

In this video, we talk about the PZL P11, a Polish fighter aircraft from World War II that served as their main fighter. We first talk about Poland in general, briefly going through some Polish history and how they have often been targeted. We talk about the formation of Poland after World War I, their war with Russia, their economic hardships with hyperinflation and the Great Depression, and their social and political problems.

We then talk about the start of the P 11 fighter lineage in the P.1, a very similar fighter, and how, when it was created back in the late 20's or early 30's, it was one of the more advanced aircraft in the world. We talk about the evolution of the design, to the P.6, P.7, P.8, P.9, and eventually the P.11 in the early 30's. We also talk about why Poland didn't advance past the P-11, and how their stock of P.11's and some P.7's had to defend against the attacking Germans by September 1939. We end by talking about the surprisingly solid performance of the P.11 against more advanced and powerful German aircraft, like the Bf 109.

[maciek_k.cichon]

Puławski died flying and crashing his own flying boat design. He build the plane to fly from PZL at Warsaw to his girlfriend Anna Henneberg at Kazimierz upon Vistula, where she had her painting plainairs. She was aviatrix herself.

[kbilsky]

Polish air defence was very effective, despite outdated fighters and small numbers of AA guns. In first few days (6 or 7 if I remember correctly) of war, none of Luftwaffe organised bombing raids reach Warsaw - all of them were disrupted, at price of heavy casualties. That was exceptionally impressive achivement, considering Luftwaffe's numerical and technological superiority.

[chasselmes]

Most excellent video, Polish pilots in the RAF are legendary, There is a monument to them at RAF Northolt, west of London. Quite a few cars in my area of the UK have little Polish air force stickers on the back, and there is a van painted with a 303 Sqn RAF Hurricane on it.

[scotthammond]

Poland didnt fall quickly. It was attacked on nearly all sides by two armies, lasted 4 weeks. How long did France, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, BEF, and might as well add Denmark and Norway last against one army? Six weeks.

[edxcal]

I'd love to point out Poland lasted as long as France with a military far smaller and against both the Germans AND the Russians! That's impressive!

[michaelschulz]

That P-11c was a beautiful airplane. As I recall, in the late 1970s, Airprogress magazine ran ads for sets of plans for a full-scale replica of the P-11.

[Vmssupplies]

I built me a model of it as a kid, great memories, now refreshed, thank you!

[stanisawkaczmarczyk]

Dziękuję za film i pozdrawiam z Polski 💪🔥

[janekfan]

Poland was such a priome target because while being fairly rich in resources important to a medieval kingdom, such as salt, timber and fertile land, it was situated between most of the great european powers, germany, russia, austria-hungary, and even turkey and sweden to a certain point

[rodneyadamson]

Don’t forget Polish Soviet war of 1919-1920 very important.. good job my Polish brothers ❤

[tomaszmankowski]

You wanted a comment so you will get one.

There are quite many problems with this video, I believe lack of sources is the issue which caused them.

0. The Missing Hawk

The biggest problem with this video is that PZL 50 Jastrząb (Hawk) is not even mentioned. Its history could explain a lot why POL AF entered 1939 with the outdated PZL P.11s.
A story of POL airplane industry which was ambitious, but while some issues would be dealt with in a more developed country in time in POL such a problem would be a major ireason why an entire project was delayed for months.

I believe a short appendix video would be very useful.

P.S. The fighter plane appears in a comic series published in USA. 'Blackhawk' character, who is Polish, is flying this airplane.

1. Poland as a target of invasions.
Poland is in the center of Europe, in the historical highway of migrations and invasions - before Slavs there were Celts, Germans, Huns to name just a few.
Still hardly true POL was invaded so many times. Medieval period was pretty much as anywhere in Europe - kings fighting each other with gains or losses of territory, feudal conflicts etc with the exception of the Mongol Invasion in 1241, which was a nightmare.
Still other countries got worse - especially Rus and Hungary and unlike Rus Poland avoided Mongol occupation. Occupation which in Rus led to the beginning of Moscow Russia.
Later there is 300 years of relative peace with wars waged on borders of increasingly bigger and bigger state, especially after the union with Lithuania which lasted 410 years, so one of the longest lasting unions in Europe.
Only the last two centuries were pretty devastating, which is a lifetime for younger countries such as United States, but just two centuries of several in Europe.

2. Young country.
In Europe pretty much nothing is young. If Poland was 'young' in 1939 one could argue that for example modern Georgia or Armenia are quite 'young' because they are independent since 1991. While in reality Armenia was there when Julius Ceasar was alive and Georgia had relations with Ancient Greece and existed when mythical Jason and the Argonauts travelled to visit it.

Poland was old, in fact older than Russia or Prussia. What it was in 1939 was newly independent.

Or if we are being precise all modern nations are young because modern nations were shaped in the XIXth and XXth century including nations without a state.

3. Poland's 'north and south USA'.

Again not really that good comparison. Poland as a whole was undeveloped due to a century of foreign occupation and other, older problems, but dividing a territory into three separate economies causes a lot of issues, Just working how to replace three different legal systems was a nightmare in 1918 and was achieved after 15 years.
The Devastation caused byt the WW1 didn't help either, especially due to Russian 'scorched earth' policy - it literrally wiped out all military industry in places like Warsaw.

Pre-1939 Poland was really poor. It was wealthier than a huge part of Russia or Spain for example, but in 1920s it was not a big achievement.
There were literally 'islands' of relative wealth and development such as the Upper Silesia taken away from Germany after a series of uprisings in 1919-23 or the modern port city of Gdynia which was built from little more than a fishing village.

Which means the entire territory of Poland can be described as 'the south'.

4. The 'quick wars/campaigns'.

The war with Soviets was definetely not a short one - it lasted two whole years with hardest fighting between May and October 1920.

I find the description of POL's fall in 1939 as a quick one fairly inaccurate as well.
Certainly Norway lasted longer with all the Allied support it received, but France's fall in 1940 took only one week longer than that of Poland in 1939.
I am against using the word 'quick' also because using this scale I cannot even find a word to describe how quick was the defeat of the Netherlands, Belgium, Yugoslavia or even Greece (against Germans). 'Lighting fast'?


5. Sides in 1939.

Lithuanis was not on the side of the Soviets. It took a disputed territory the Soviets grasped in 1939 and offered Lithuania. Before Lithuania was swallowed whole, so this proposal could be described as a bait.

6. Polish airforce - modernization

In general the air force had a huge, huge obstacle ahead of it - the land army was first in line and POL was a poor country.
This means the airplane industry had to earn money from export to even survive as industry.

This also means that modernization of the air force could come only in phases.
Because Puławski's fighters were so successful in early 1930s fighter planes couldn't be replaced for years. In mid 1930s light bombers were with PZL 23 Karaś entering service to replace older French models and later came medium bomber PZL 37 Łoś to replace Fokkers.
It is interesting to note that while POL army in general was modernizing quite quickly in the1930s, especially after 1936, in years 1938-39 the air force was degrading due to the generation gap in the fighter force and inability to develop a modern fighter plane despite major attempts. There were even 'alarm' developments such as PZL 45 Sokół or idea to arm PZL 37 Łoś as a heavy fighter, but that was too late as well.
In general before late 1940 POL fighter force would have to rely on import and that mainly from France - US fighters were too expensive and UK could barely equip themselves.

7. POL AF in 1939

The smart order which was given in September 1939 was to use ambushes, to attack using every advantage POL could find and above else - to NOT LET GERMANS destroy POL AF.
That is why POL AF was not destroyed in 1939 as an entity. It suffered losses and many planes were destroyed, but crews were not lost in numbers large enough to destroy POL AF. It survived and continued to fight to the end of the WW2, first in France and later in UK.

Interestingly a big blow came from the Soviets, who murdered many airmen in Katyn and other places.

8. and final one - PZL P.11 in 1939

The confirmed GER losses are to considerably lesser degree caused by POL fighter planes than previously believed. Overclaiming is one issue, but lack of cooperation between POL and GER historians was another. Even today english language sources either repeat what Poles wrote or what Germans said.

There are two factors to consider:
POL AA artillery was never close to what GER had, but it was using modern weapons with well trained crews, so caused numerous losses. That includes damaged planes which couldn't make it back or crash landed.
Another factor were non-combat losses during the campaign in Poland, for example Me-109D and E already suffered from short range and many were lost after running out of fuel. Some were lost this way after fighting POL fighters, so to a degree it was due to P.11s but only to some degree.

In general up to 500 GER airplanes were 'lost' - that includes heavily damaged airplanes and non-combat losses which had nothing to do with the campaign in Poland.

In addition P.11s destroyed a couple of Soviet aiplanes.

In the end what mattered is that about 30% of those airplanes were evacuated after receiving such orders due to the Soviet invasion and only 15 from c.130 PZL P.11's pilots were killed so many survived and could use their experience elsewhere.


Sorry for the wall of text.

I am in geenral enjoying your videos, but here more than one thing had to be corrected.

Take care!

[adriancamano]

And these polish pilots provide great help during the battle of Britain

[Bob-bxv]

Post WW1 Poland was why my great-grandpa left for Hamtramck, Michigan in 1918.

[stanleydomalewski]

The Reason Poland Would Come and Go as A Country, was Really Very Simple. As they Say in the Realestate Business, Its Location, Location, Location ! Great Video, Thanks for Sharing !

[franek.]

Actualy there was two more plains that were in adwance developmend in pre WWII Poland, that was PZL P.45 Jastrząb and developed from it PZL P.53 Jastrząb II. These would be fair match for Luftwaffe if there would enter production on time

[kubicaPOL]

The export model, P.24, produced as early as 1936, was much better than P.11 with enclosed cockpit, better armament (two 20mm cannons and two machine guns), and a top speed of 430 kph.
It was so much better, although still worse than bf109, thanks to a more powerful powerplant, a double row Gnome-Rhone engine. Licence for Bristol engines didn’t allow export. The funny thing is that Polish Air Ministry didn’t allow Polish Air Force to have engines that couldn’t be produced in Poland, and the Gnome-Rhone was only bought, but not bulit in Poland, so Poles still had to use interior P.11. They did very well considering the pace of german blitzkrieg that quickly forcer Polish planes and mechanics to be constantly moved to new airfields. There caused also problem with logistics leading to fuel shortage.

Unfortunately the top mounted wing was a dead end. Poland didn’t have enough resources to develop many models at the same time. Developing P.1 to P.24 took too much resources for such a dead end. A very decent PZL 37 Łoś medium bomber was a waste of resources for a plane that was not suited to Polish defence plan at all! The same with PZL 38 Wilk, as Poland didn’t need heavy fighter. At the end there was not enough time and resources to make PZL 50 Jastrząb that was more up-to-date low-wing monoplane.
Interestingly Romanians woquiye succesfully transformed P.24 into their IAR80 low-wing fighter. Obviously such a redesign is still a lot of work, but it showed how much drag could be reduced and how this improves plane performance.

[janmale]

I also built an Airfix PZL as a kid modeller, the Polish airforce did look rather archaic compared to the Luftwaffe in design appearance but so did many of the other early airforces on the continent, the French Dewoitine was a bit more modern looking and the Moraine saulner to a slight lesser degree and then the British Hurricane and marvelous looking Spitfire was on par with the German hardware.But make no mistake that gull wing design had visibility and manueverability strong points, all out superior top speed is only really advantageous for one part of aerial combat albeight being a rather important one choosing to disengage to outrun your opponent or to chase him down to reengage but once the engagement takes place many other factors come into play, good manueverability being one of them wherein the gull winged light PZL exelled! The Soviet Polikarkov rata was a similar example of excellent manueverability!

[mikolajtrzeciecki]

6:56 The huge size of military forces was enforced by the Franco-Polish military treaty. This contributed to the economic problems of the country.
8:26 The moustache was just fashionable back then. Face this like a man.
8:52 Pronounce it like: Pan-stvo-veh zack-waddy lot-Nietsche
13:53 Yes, non-linear physics of turbulent flows has some surprises
17:52 There was a Polish-Romanian alliance back then too, and Germany was disarmed, so this seemed to make sense
22:40 Polish intelligence estimated that the war would start late 1940 due to a slow rearmament of Germany. Nobody expected that Czechoslovakia with its factories and arms would be annexed by the 3rd Reich.

[mwhite]

I would guess that the image at ~12:45 has been retouched by hand, which was a very common thing before digital image restoration was a thing.

[michaeltelson]

⁠Greece and Turkey (in a museum there) flew the PZL 24. With Greece they replaced the 20mm guns as they were Czech guns and parts and ammunition weren’t available as the Germans controlled the resources.
Poland had spread out the combat aircraft to rough airfields. When the Germans bombed the main airfields that held obsolete and phony aircraft.
Not having radios in the aircraft caused the pilots had tremendous situational awareness. Witold Urbanowitz when he flew “unofficially” with the 23rd Fighter Group amazed those young pilots as he could recall where everyone was during the dogfight.
Urbanowitz didn’t fly in 1939 as he was the commandant of the flying cadet corps and guided his charges over the mountains to safety. It is said that about 90 to 95% of the Polish Air Force’s staff and pilots escaped to Romania then to France.
Poland was buying aircraft and tanks from France and England. A Hawker Hurricane was due to arrive at the docks of Gydnia of Sept. 1, 1939. It was an early 2 bladded propeller from RAF reserve stock. MS 406’s were on their way to ducks in Romania as the war started. A company of French built Renault R35 tanks not fully equipped and assembled fought against Soviet armor in eastern Poland.
The one squadron of PZL P37 Los medium bombers was used unescorted on low level attacks against German armor columns and positions.
The 2 prototype PZL P46 Sum attack bombers (future replacements for the PZL P23 attack aircraft) were used to transport diplomatic and other personnel until the hostilities ended. Urbanowicz is supposed to have flown one from Romania after getting his charges to safety.
If you look at the length of the time the Poles lasted, it was at least equal in days or a day longer than the French resistance in 1940.