So it has been a while since i did these. Poland was voted as second most popular after Italy in the poll which i made. Now i have been able to make 2 nearly complete lines but since Poland was occupied by Germany and the Soviets at the start of WW2 all of their plane development was stopped and didn’t begin again until the 50’s. Now since Polish airplane designers where very good at designing planes i have been able to make 2 lines up to tier 7 with only prewar plane designs. Some of them might need slight buffs in performance but none of them are forced into their tiers. After the war Poland mainly used Soviet fighters so they didn’t start to develop jets until the end of the 50’s and that’s in minimal numbers. I have only been able to find 3 fitting jet candidates that predates 1960 and one of them is 50% fake. So this tree will unfortunately only end in one tier 10 jet but that’s what happens when your airplane industry gets smushed into smithereens by 2 of the biggest military forces of the the 1930’s. So here is my tech tree proposal. Both are multi role lines with mainly bomb armament. One is centered around inline engines while the other is based on radial engines. The inline line will be mainly focused on speed while the radial will be turning better and have slightly better overall armament.
Now here is the tree. I will start with the radial line and end with the jet line.
Tier 1
PZL P.1
The PZL P.1 was a Polish fighter, designed by the engineer Zygmunt Puławski. He is pretty much the god father to the polish military airplane industry. The P.1 was manufactured by the PZL state-owned factory. It remained a prototype but it was the first of the Polish PZL gull wing fighter series, leading to the PZL P.7, PZL P.11 and PZL P.24. The story starts when the newly founded PZL factory lead by Zygmunt Puławski set out to create a new fighter for the Polish air force. Zygmunt Puławski and his team designed an all-metal, metal-covered monoplane fighter, designated PZL P.1. What made it unique was Puławski’s invention which was a high gull wing which gave the pilot an optimal view downwards which at the time was really good as fighter planes where to often serve as recon planes where they needed to photograph the ground which was really hard to do in a single seat fighter with a low wing which obstructed the downwards view. The P.1 was powered by a 630 hp Hispano-Suiza inline engine which gave it a speed of 302 km/h.
It’s basic armament are 2x 7.7 mm Vickers E machine guns and its basic fuselage is the P.1/I. Its upgraded fuselage is called P.1/II and basically reworks its tail surfaces so it can turn better. Armament upgrade would be 7.9 mm Vickers E machine guns which are the same gun but fires polish 7.9 mm ammo.
Radial multi role line
Tier 2
PZL P.11
The PZL P.7 was developed from the P.6 and is pretty much the same but uses a much more powerful engine, the Bristol Jupiter VIIF 9-cylinder radial engine with 520 hp giving it a top speed of 320 km/h. After the P.7 there was the P.11 which was basically the same thing but better in all aspects including armament.
The P.11 will start out with the P.7/I fuselage and have the Bristol Jupiter VI FH with 480 hp from the P.6 giving it a speed of 310 km/h. It can quickly upgrade to the P.7 engine being the Bristol Jupiter VIIF with 520 hp which will increase its speed to 320 km/h. After that it can upgrade to the P.7A fuselage which has a slimmer tail which will increase the speed to 327 km/h. It will start out with 2x 7.9 mm Vickers E machine guns but you can quickly upgrade them to 7.9 mm PWU FK wz.33 polish machine guns which wont overheat as quickly. Now to the actual P.11. Its second fuselage is the P.11/I fuselage which will allow you to mount a bigger engine in the name of the Gnome-Rhône Jupiter IX ASb with 515 hp. After that you can upgrade to the P.11A fuselage now giving it the ability to mount the Bristol Mercury IV giving it a top speed of 390 km/h. You can now also mount 2 extra 7.9 mm PWU FK wz.33 machine guns in the wings above the engine. After this all 4 machine guns can be upgraded to 7.9 mm PWU FK wz.“36” machine guns for slightly better rate of fire. Now with all of these upgrades we have basically 3 planes and most of their variants in one package here, it starts out as a P.6 evolving to the P.7 and eventually P.11.
Tier 3
PZL P.24
The PZL P.24 was developed as an export version of the PZL P.11. Since the P.11 was powered with a license-built Bristol Mercury engine the PZL P.7 had a hard time being exported without major modifications. The license for the Bristol Mercury did not permit export sales so the French Gnome-Rhône company proposed using their engines in the P.11. This lead to the development of the first P.24 prototype. It was based on the P.11a but was powered by a Gnome-Rhône 14Kds 760 hp (570 kW) engine. It flew for the first time in May 1933. The second P.24/II prototype, named the “Super P.24”, set a world speed record for radial engine-powered fighters (414 km/h) in 1934. The third P.24/III prototype was the “Super P.24bis” with a more powerful 14Kfs engine. The type was shown at the Paris air show in 1934 attracting great interest from the participants.
Now to the upgrades. It starts out with the P.24 fuselage which is basically a P.11A fuselage. It has a Gnome-Rhône 14Kds 760 hp engine from the first prototype and a top speed of 414 km/h. Its armament are 4x 7.9 mm PWU FK wz.36 machine guns although this time they are all mounted in the wing. It can quickly upgrade to the P.24A fuselage which will unlock 3 new upgrade paths. A new Gnome-Rhône 14Kfs 14-cylinder double row radial engine with 930 hp giving it a top speed of 420 km/h. Its now able to replace 2 of its mg’s for 20 mm Oerlikon FF cannons. And lastly it can also unlock bombs since its a multi role. 4x 12.5 kg bombs or 2x 50 kg bombs. The last fuselage is the P.24H fuselage which will make it possible to mount the last engine a Gnome-Rhône 14N-21 engine with 1,100 hp which will raise the speed to 430 km/h.
Tier 4
PZL P.45 Sokół
Even though this plane was built i haven’t been able to find a picture of it so this model will have to show how it would have looked. The PZL.45 Sokół (falcon) was a Polish prototype fighter designed from 1936–1939. It was probably like the P.24 meant for export as the work on the PZL P.50 had begun at this time and it uses a Gnome-Rhône engine which more or less proves my theory. Work started on the aircraft in late 1936. The P.45 had a fixed undercarriage and the aircraft was powered by a Gnome-Rhône 14M05 Mars with 760 hp. Work on the aircraft was temporarily stopped but later resumed in 1938. The design was finished in 1938, and work on the prototype was started in February and completed in June 1939. A second prototype was designed to have retractable landing gear.
The P.45 was a single-seat all-metal fighter aircraft and had an enclosed cockpit. The P.45 was meant to have 4 machine guns in the documentation i have found but since basically all other planes developed by PZL at this time its not so far fetched to say that this would have had cannons as well. So upgrades. Standard fuselage will have the fixed landing gear (P.45/I), 4x 7.9 mm PWU FK wz.37 machine guns and the Gnome-Rhône 14M05 Mars with 760 hp. Its base speed will be 430 km/h. Now it can upgrade its fuselage to the model with retractable landing gear (P.45/II) which will give it a top speed of 450 km/h. It can upgrade it’s engine to a Gnome-Rhône 14Kfs with 930 hp expanding its speed to 490 km/h. Armament wise it can replace 2 of its machine guns with 20 mm cannons and unlock a 100 kg bomb.
Tier 5
PZL P.50 Jastrząb
The PZL P.50 was meant to be the modern polish fighter of the 1940’s and be equal to other nations contemporary fighters such as the Bf 109 which had just seen success in the Spanish civil war and the Spitfire which had just been revealed to the world in the end of the 30’s. The project actually started in 1936 when it was acknowledged that their current state of the art PZL P.11 was not gonna be competitive at the end of the 30’s so work on a replacement was started. The new plane was to be of full metal low wing construction with retractable landing gear with a top speed of 500 km/h just like all other modern fighters where being designed during this time period. The British 840 hp Bristol Mercury VIII radial engine was picked as the project’s power plant. Now history on this plane is sparse so now to the upgrades. First fuselage is the P.50/I and together with the 840 hp Bristol Mercury VIII engine it has a top speed of 430 km/h which is rly slow but it turns rly good. It base armament are 4x 7.9 mm PWU FK wz.37 machine guns and an optional 100 kg bomb. Only having 4 mg’s might sound weak but they have a rly high rate of fire which will be great with its turning ability. Its second fuselage is the P.50A which has a different canopy and simplified engine cowling which makes it lighter which will not only improve its speed but also its turning radius. It speed with this fuselage will be 500 km/h. It can now also install 2x 20 mm cannons in the wings which coupled with the 4 machine guns will give it a really solid armament even if u get up tiered. The last fuselage is the P.50B which will give it some extra hp and let it install the Bristol Taurus III engine with 1,145 hp which will increase its speed to 530 km/h and a 300 kg bomb.
Tier 6
PZL P.53 Jastrząb II
The PZL P.53 was meant to be a replacement of the PZL P.50 which showed to not meet the standards of a 1940’s fighter. The P.53 had 2x 20 mm FK wz. 38D cannons and 4x 7.92 mm PWU wz. 36 machine guns and couldmount a 300 kg bomb just like the P.50 but used a much stronger engine. It where to have a PZL Bristol Hercules III with 1200-1300 hp which would give it a speed of 560 km/h. Its basic fuselage is the P.53A fuselage but when upgraded to the lighter P.53B fuselage it can mount the Gnome-Rhône 14R-4 with 1590 hp its speed will go up to 630 km/h.
Tier 7
PZL P.63
The PZL P.63 was probably the last design of PZL before the invasion. It was meant to compete against the PZL P.55/56 depending on the source. It was basically gonna compete against an equal design but with an inline engine. Its engine is the same as on the P.53, the Gnome-Rhône 14R-4 .92 octane with 1,590 hp which gives it a base speed of 640 km/h. Its armament would have been 2x 20 mm cannons and 4x 7.92 mm PWU wz. 36 machine guns at the very least but seeing as other planes at the time such as the P.24H which was at a point gonna be a stop gap measure this late into the invasion was gonna have 4x 20 mm cannons i don’t really see a reason why a modern design like this wouldn’t be able to mount 4x 20 mm’s too? So for fun’s sake it can have a quad 20 mm upgrade if its base armament becomes to weak. Its not too unhistorical since the design wasn’t finished at the time of the Invasion. Now i haven’t been able to find its blueprint so what is shown above it my artist impression using the correct engine and engine cover but the fuselage is based on the P.56. It would probably have looked like something in between this and the P.53. Since the design wasn’t finished it will also get the 300 kg bombs seen on the 2 designs above.
Now that’s it for today. In part 2 we will visit the Inline multi role line.
So here we go.
Starting from tier I – as a prototype, PzL P.1 doesn’t have any modules to develop, and its basic configuration is at the level of fully developed other tier I planes. And it wasn’t a multirole fighter as there were no plans to use bombs from it.
Better candidate is, unfortunately licensed, Avia BH-33 produced as PWS-A – it has enough modules to be a standard plane – 2 engines – Bristol Jupiter IV, Skoda L, 2 versions of armament.
Tier II
PZL P.11 is too low, even as it’s a mixup of 3 planes.
There should be only PZL P.7, with starting configuration of PZL P.6.
P.11 should be tier III, with versions a, c and final version as PZL P.11g Kobuz which was pretty comparable to PZL P.24.
PZL.45 is a paper plane. There were no finished prototype of, only a mockup.
Expected armament were 4 machine guns, no 20mm guns nor bombs as it was to be light fighter like. You must mistaken armament description with PZL 50.
PZL 50 at tier V is another mistake.
Finished prototype was underpowered and lost a fight against PZL P.24.
Also, there are stories that it was kind of rip-off from US Seversky P-35 and Curtiss P-36 Hawk (both were in-metal and flying), which are at tiers III and IV.
So putting comparable but worse plane at tier V seems inappropriate, and proper tier for this plane is IV.
Since PZL.50 goes from tier IV to V, PZL.53 Jastrząb II should go tier V as it was redesigned PZL.50.
Otherwise it would be plane originated in 1936 with obsolete construction fighting against planes designed few years later like P-51A.
If you want answer with Bf 109 – check what construction Bf 109 had, and what happened between versiond E and F.
Which again brings plane planed for tier VII to tier VI.
PZL.63 is even more paper than any other mentioned so far.
Now we should take a look at other line, which is also built from paper, as before 1939, Polish commanders decided to not produce engines and the only model that could be used, is the final one – PZL.56, with one slight modification – as it happened for La-5, change of unsuccessful inline Hispano-Suiza engine to paper radial PZL Legwan engine, and becoming something PZL.63-like.
The only indigenous Polish attempt to build inline engine was a flop and ended with a fail of PZL.38 Wilk failure.
And here we came to tier VI, wich is the real end of Polish tech tree, with technology development ending in 1939, and paper in 1940/1941. As I wrote long before.
Non described here TS 11 Iskra hadn’t enough armament – single 23mm cannon is barely enough in Jak-3RD at tier VII.
A lot of planes in wowp has fake upgrades. But the fuselage upgrade i talked about happened. They did modify the P.1 for better turning. And i never said it would get bombs but since its tier 1 it doesn’t matter since u generally attack ground targets with ur machine guns at that tier. The machine gun upgrade is fake to a point but its simply a barrel switch and new ammo nothing else. I didn’t mention an engine upgrade as it is not needed and i haven’t been able to find anything yet, i will probably find something if i start digging into p.2-5.
This tree isnt 100% historical but its meant to be diverse yet at the same time have a smooth progress. If u want an historical tree we would see PZL.P24’s to tier 5 and no p.50.
The P.11 is about as good as for ex the I-15 which is at that tier in the russian tree. Besides there is no direct visual difference between the P.7 and the P.11 and therefore i merged them.
The P.24 is about equal to the I-16 which is on tier 3 in the russian tree.
The P.45’s armament as i said is just pure guess work. Since it was an export fighter and where to replace the P.24 on the market i bet it would have 2 cannons.
The real life P.50 is a tier 4 yes but due to its planned upgrades it can easily be tier 5. It was meant to be equal to the 109 and spitfire irl and i want that to reflect in game. Besides with the Bristol Taurus III engine with 1,145 hp it is equal to those planes. Check their in game stats they are about the same.
For the P.53 its just too good for tier V when its fully upgraded. Its Gnome-Rhône 14R-4 with 1590 hp is even good enough for tier 7.
As i stated the P.63 barely came of the drawing board before the invasion. But that also gives us an excuse for it to be tier 7. But there are documents that says it had a potential speed of 640 km/h which seems fairly likely with that engine power and would make it fit for this tier. The hole line is a bit slow but great turners, a bit like the japanese which are a lot slower.
Im not gonna go in on the inline line yet.
As for the Jets i have said that there is literally nothing else and one of them is 50% fake.
Again: base PZL P.1 is as good, or better, than fully developed tier I planes, which means that it shouldn’t be classified as tier I. In fact it shouldn’t be at all in regular tree since there are better candidates.
There are no visual difference between Spitfire Mk I and Mk V, yet they are planes at different tiers.
Same with P.11 and P.7 – differences were minor as more powerful engine, placement of engine axis to provide visibility
And since there is PZL P.11g version, which utilized some P.24 parts, P.24 isn’t really needed, and could be a premium plane.
PZL.45 is out of question, as it was a kind of Polish C.714 – light fighter powered by low power engine, and all 3 competing planes (PZL.45, RWD-25, PWS-42) were to be armed with 4 machine guns.
As the history shown, low power fighters aren’t good fighters.
Planned upgrade to PZL.50 was PZL.53 where some deficiencies were to be eliminated, and this is the reason of their placement.
P.50 was meant to be equal to for example Spitfires, but was not. According to person who flew P.50 prototype and Hawker Hurricane, they were pretty similar. Since I strongly believe that Hawker Hurricane should be tier IV plane, PZL P.50 should be there as well.
Take radial engine powered plane from tier V and VII and check power output:
tier V: XP-44 – 1200 to 1450, tier VII: 2000 to 2450, so no – GR 14R isn’t a material for tier VII,
So it should go like:
tier I: PWS-10
tier II: PZL P.6/P.7
tier III: PZL P.11 a/c/g
tier IV: PZL.50 I/II prototype, premium PZL P.24
tier V: PZL.53
tier VI: PZL.56 with paper PZL Legwan radial engine with constant 1500 hp power, as give GR 14R power was take-off power.
Tier VII planes are planes designed after 1940 year, when there were no Polish planes.
And a thing – description PZL P.X comes from family name of their constructor – Puławski – 1, 6, 7, 8, 11, 24.
Planes designed by other people are just PZL.X, like PZL.50.
Poland might not have solid enough planes to fill all tiers naturally – but there are enough paper concepts to extrapolate a tree for WoWp just as it has been done for some branches/planes. seriously, the WG has worked with far less for some of the branches in their games. that said the PZL TS-11 can be split into two to make it fill the last two tiers. armament would have to be extrapolated on the assumption that it would be fully reworked into a combat multi-role plane – sure that’s not historically correct but that’s what “world-of-“games are.
for tiers VII-VIII the situation is of course most tricky. but as engines and other equipment go they weren’t in large parts of polish make. given prior imports there is enough for these tiers from foreign manufacturers. so what is needed it to find some paper designs that could hypothetically make use of the potentially available engines with minimal modifications required.
and in the worst case one still can fill a few holes with soviet clones.
besides, as polish aviation goes i bet that digging in archives would yield some additional proposals – enough to make a bigger polish tech tree with a little help of WG fantasy.
if the 2.0 patch actually makes the game more attractive then WoWp will have to expand their available planes anyway and a polish tree might be useful to attract some further attention & players.
I will not play WoWp anyway, but i can give you hand or two for help.
Jets were problematic, you may think about Lim-6bis.
There was also project named ITL M.48 but i dont know if it made to anything you can use- at least draw. It probably is buried somewhere if still exist.
Tier 9 on your list is most possibly a FM-13 Delta from 1954.
There is a project TS “Iskra 2” from 1963.
I was considering the Lim-6M for a while but its too soviet comapred to the other jets. The ITL M.48 is just a propeller trainer with no armament. I have not heard about a TS Iskra 2. Any links?
[Edit] Found it, this is perfect, now the jet line makes much more sense.
Lim-6 is a MiG-17 licensed version, which means that it’s too advanced. Earlier Lim-1 was MiG-15 licensed version.
Which brings the other issue after the gap after tier VI – Soviet clones at high tiers, because that way history went.
are any of those even historical? i mean actually produced
The PLZ P.50 was the last fighter made by poland before they got invaded. Their next flying military plane was the TS-11 in 1960.
Actually first military plane made in polish industry after war was TS-8 Bies, from jets Lim-1 which was copy of Mig15.
Was referring to the first polish design.
Then TS-8 Bies if we speak about military planes and not include something like non-armed training planes. TS-8 was basically a armed training plane which could in time of war be used as light attack craft if you had air supremacy . First jet was clearly Iskra i can agree here with you.
TS-8 Bies was a polish design and was mass produced, and it was a trainer as TS-11 Iskra. And they had the same constructor.
There were also few earlier prototypes.
And BTW – there are few heavy fighters that depending on wishfulness, could be placed on tiers III-V or even VI.
I have tried to do a heavy fighter line but it stops at tier 6 as u said.
Poland was holding its own against Germany. Yes there Air Force was outclassed but was still putting up a good fight. Then the back stabbing Satlin showed up. What would the world be like today if Hitler never turned his intentions to the West? France would have surrendered anyway, so that would not have mattered. The only country to have four flags in there homes. German, Russian, Great Britain and American. Now they also have the ISIS flag….