COBI Lim-1 Polish Air Force 1952 Set 5822

COBI's Lim-1 Polish Air Force 1952 is a 1:32 model built from 504 blocks. The wheels move and the canopy opens for the included figure of a Polish pilot. A display stand with a plate carrying the set name and national marking is supplied. All markings are printed; no stickers.

Poland learned to build jet engines from this aircraft

The Lim-1 is a MiG-15 built under licence at WSK-1 in Mielec, and the airframe is the less interesting half of the story.

The engine was licensed too. The Lis-1 — a Polish-built copy of the Soviet RD-45, itself an unlicensed copy of the Rolls-Royce Nene — was manufactured in Poland from the early 1950s, and starting jet engine production from nothing is a far harder undertaking than assembling an airframe.

It requires metallurgy that did not exist in the country: alloys that survive red heat under load, precision casting for turbine blades, balancing to tolerances measured in fractions of a gram, and test facilities to prove every unit. All of it had to be built, and the people to run it trained.

The programme did that, and the industrial capability outlasted the aircraft by decades. Mielec went on to build the Lim-2, the Lim-5 and Lim-6, and then Polish-designed aircraft and the An-2 under licence. It made Poland one of the few countries in the Eastern bloc with a genuine aviation industry rather than an assembly plant.

The first Lim-1 flew on 17 July 1952, and around 227 were built in two years.

In the COBI range

Set 2416 is the MiG-15 in Soviet colours, and COBI also makes the Czechoslovak S-102 version. Set 5825 is the later Lim-5 in East German service.

Specifications

Pieces: 504 · Figures: 1 pilot · Scale: 1:32 · Display stand and nameplate · No stickers