Sepalar wrote:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ote]thanks for the info. Was Rayski's campaign to destroy the private Polish aviation industry was an aberration then?
Rayski was in charge of the Polish Airforce in the late interwar period. During the 1930's he bankrupted two of Poland's three successful aircraft firms by quite devious means. For Lublin Aircaft at least he awarded contracts for large numbers of aircraft,prepaid them so that the firm could buy the raw materials and then after the planes were completed he had them declared unfit, demanded a refund of the prepayment - which was beyond the firm's resources. To solve this problem he nationalized the firm giving Poland the LWS aircraft firm from which he then turned around and accepted delivery of the original aircraft order. J.P. Cynk Polish Aircraft...
( I might be confusing LWS with PWS, I have not had a look at the book in a while.)
I studied to be an Economic Historian and actually left studies when I was informed there was no interest in studying interwar Eastern Europe. Despite what J.K.Tanas writes we know very little about the Polish Economy in this period, we have remakably incomplete national accounting statistics and poor information on the implementation of business law in Poland in this era etc.
I do know that there was a strong split in the General Staff (the people who really ran the country) over many economic issues and AFAIK they usually took unwisely nationalistic choices. For example: there was a debate over whether Poland should purchase foreign tanks or develop their own designs. Interestingly Marshall Rydz-Smigly was for purchasing foreign designs but was overruled on this point. Because of this Poland produced a lot of tank prototypes which were usually abandoned while they could have put those significant resources into the production of licensed types, i.e. the 7TP. It seems that similar policies also weakened the airforce through the Zubr program and several others. The Polish government wasted a lot of money and, much worse, time developing domestic armaments instead of rearming.
We ignore the interwar Polish economic policies because we know they were much better than what the Communists saddled Poland with after the war. This is not the same thing as saying that Poland ran its economy in the best way possible or that it rearmed in the best way possible, it certainly did not. [/quote]
Thank you for the information.
A site on the Polish Air Force has only good things to say:
I will see if I can get a copy of Cynk's book: Polish Aircraft. I have read several years ago:http://www.polandinexile.com/airforce.htm
As a fledgling state, Poland could not match the inter-war arms race between Germany, Britain, France, Italy or Soviet Russia. The early years of Lotnictwo Wojskowe saw the development of Europe’s second largest airforce under the direction of General Wlodzimierz Zagorski and later General Ludomil Rayski who may be regarded as the driving force behind Poland’s military aviation industry. By 1929 the PZL (Panstwowe Zaklady Lotnicze) P.1 had flown. This all metal, gull winged aircraft was an advanced fighting machine and largely went for export to countries like Rumania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. By 1936 15 Squadrons were equipped and then General Ludomil Rayski shifted the production of aircraft towards bomber production at the expense of fighter development and up-grading. In 1934 work had begun on the PZL P.37 Los bomber which began to enter service in 1938. The relatively small defence budget was no match for the European arms race and by the late 1930s Poland had slipped behind Russia, Britain, France and Germany (Zaloga and Madej, 1991). Contemporary historians like Liddell-Hart portrayed Poland as ill-prepared and weak without taking into account that large-scale industrialization had not started in Poland until the mid-1920s. Between 1936 – 1939 military capital expenditure accounted for 70% of all domestic capital investment and represented a Defense Budget of 800 million Zloty (Zaloga and Madej, 1991).
History of the Polish air force, 1918-1968 / Jerzy B. Cynk. Osprey Publishing Ltd., [c1972].
What I remember from that book is that the Polish Government considered the prime role of the Air Force to be in support of the Army and was against obtaining bombers.
Here is an interesting item. Hopefully someone will publish this important historical information.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/arch/ar ... E.PT9.html
National Air & Space Museum
Rayski, Ludomil, ? -? .
Papers, photographs; 1914-1945; 1 box.
Unpublished history (typewritten in Polish) by Rayski, Commander and General of the Polish Air Force until September 1939, entitled "Fakty" (Facts) and a mimeographed history entitled "Poland's Treason" relating to the Polish Air Force, 1914- 1945. Includes photographs and documents pertaining to the Air Force and Rayski's military career.