Tadeusz Sołtyk

Tadeusz Sołtyk (born 30 August 1909 in Radom, died 14 July 2004 in Warsaw) was a Polish aircraft designer and aerospace engineer, most famous as the creator of the PZL TS-11 Iskra After graduating from the Mechanical Department of the Warsaw University of Technology in 1934, he became a designer at the State Aviation Works (PZL).

During his tenure at the company, he participated in the development of the PZL 23 Karaś light bomber and its potential successor, the PZL.46 Sum.

After the Germans were pushed back from eastern Poland, Sołtyk organized, in 1944, the Experimental Aircraft Workshops (LWD) in Lublin.

That success allowed Sołtyk to work on the first Polish jet aircraft, the PZL TS-11 Iskra, test-flown in 1960.

Iskra became the basic jet training plane in Polish military aviation, and was also exported to India.