SZD-6x Nietoperz 'SP-1220' (14374230653)

The following info is taken from the museum's website:-

"A single seater experimental tailless, all-wooden glider of mid-wing configuration. A short fuselage houses an enclosed cockpit and is ended with the residual vertical stabiliser with the rudder of very big surface. The wings centre section is equipped with flaps, the external parts have divided elevons, which also play a role of the air brakes. To improve the cockpit visibility and the directional stability, a wings centre part features a characteristic sweep. This original shape of construction was a reason of giving a name Nietoperz (bat) to a glider. By the end of the 1940s, in the Gliding Institute in Bielsko-Biała, a team led by engineers Władysław Nowakowski and Justyn Sandauer started the initial works on the glider, aiming at build of the cheap experimental construction, allowing for testing the unique tail-less configuration. The first flight of the one and only example of the "Nietoperz" took place in January 1951, at the Katowice airfield. The in-flight tests of the "Nietoperz" were carried out at the Gliding Institute in Bielsko-Biała until 1959. The three variants of steering were tested. The most interested were the two variants of the so called drug rudder-spoiler control, done by opening of the external elevons, acting as an aerodynamic brakes. The gliders then, flew with removed or blocked vertical rudder. The similar steering system is applied on the American bomber, the Northrop B-2 "Spirit". The "Nietoperz" being a machine difficult to fly, served only for the in-flight tests. After concluding it, the glider came to the Polish Aviation Museum in 1964."

It is now on display suspended in the new entrance building at the Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego Krakow, Poland.