LWS-3 Mewa - Operational History

Operational History

None of the aircraft entered service in the Polish Air Force before the outbreak of the World War II on September 1, 1939. The problem was with propellers, which had to be delivered from France. The first two aircraft were ready for delivery on September 2, but one of them was damaged on the factory airfield in Lublin by German bombers. The fate of the other one is not clear.

Following that, some of the almost finished aircraft were hidden in Lublin park and in a forest nearby. A couple were modified to use wooden propellers with a fixed pitch. Two such aircraft were evacuated to an airfield near Lwów, and given over to the 26th Observation Escadre on September 12. One of them crashed during a night landing on Medyka airfield near Przemyśl on the same day, the other was burned on September 17, when it could not be evacuated. According to some sources, two other Mewas were assigned to the 23rd Observation Escadre on September 11, but this has not been confirmed. It is not clear whether any of these aircraft were armed. One of the aircraft was also seen during evacuation to Pinsk in mid-September. The rest of uncompleted aircraft were seized by Germans and scrapped.

Contrary to its direct predecessor, RWD-14 Czapla, the Mewa was a modern close reconnaissance plane, comparable with leading foreign aircraft of that period, like Henschel Hs 126 or Westland Lysander. Its advantages were quite short take-off and landing, which enabled it to operate from fields.