PZL.37 Łoś
Polish bomber aircraft
The PZL.37 Łoś ('moose') was a Polish twin-engined medium bomber designed and manufactured by national aircraft company Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze (PZL). It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "PZL P.37", but the letter "P" was reserved for fighters of Zygmunt Puławski's design (such as the PZL P.11).
Upon its introduction to service, it was popularly considered to be not only the most modern and effective weapon then possessed by Poland, but also to be one of the most advanced bombers then operational in the world. From mid-1938 onwards, interest was expressed by various nations in potential export sales of the PZL.37; in response to this highly favourable reception, PZL, being keen to meet the demands, developed additional variants that were intended for the export market, such as the PZL.37C (which was to be powered by a pair of Gnome-Rhone 14N-0/1 radial engines). An improved enlarged derivative, known as the PZL.49 Miś, was also developed for the Polish Air Force.
The Łoś was extensively used in the defense of Poland during the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939. On 1 September 1939, the Polish Air Force had roughly 86 PZL.37s in total, but less than a half of those actually saw active combat use due to aircraft being used by training units, being in maintenance, or having been held in reserve. The bombers suffered from a high attrition rate due to lack of fighter protection, and the final Polish combat missions were performed on 19 September. In October 1940, around 26-27 of the PZL.37s that had been evacuated from Poland were seized by the Romanian government and 23 of these aircraft were subsequently used by the Royal Romanian Air Force in the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Development
Background
Throughout the majority of the interwar period, the dominant military philosophies and practices within the leadership of Poland was that aircraft were of a secondary importance and a separate air-oriented service within the Polish Armed Forces would be of questionable value.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q925815. The Library of Congress control number is sh97003932. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1939 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “PZL.37 Łoś” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.