Swidwin Air Base
By: Frank GrealishDate: 5th May 2009
Location: Swidwin (EPSN), Poland
The second base to be visited on the Polish Air Force Press Tour was Swidwin. Swidwin is a Sukhoi Su-22 base in north west Poland.
Swidwin Air Base, officially known as 21 Baza Lotnicza Swidwin (21st Tatical Air Base Swidwin) is home to 40 Eskadra Lotnictwa Taktycznego (40th Tactical Fighter Squadron), both the air base and the fighter squadron are part of the 1st Tactical Air Brigade. 40 elt are equipped with the M4 and UM3 versions of the Russian built Su-22 and are a tasked mainly as a ground attack unit.
The 1st Tactical Air Brigade main tasking is the defence of Polish territory but is also can also be called upon for peace-keeping and stabilization missions abroad.
The weather for our visit went from rain to hazy sunshine then back to more rain. Access to the ramp area was excellent, it was interesting (to say the least) having jet aircraft taxi past only a few metres away and sometimes the wing tips wend overhead, if you were lying on the ramp getting a low angle shot that is.
Our escorts did their best to accommodate the requests of the photographers on the tour to move to different photo locations, the results of that pestering can be seen on the right.
IrishAirPics would like to thank all the personnel at both Swidwin Air Base and at Polish Air Force Headquarters for making the visit possible and for their help & assistance during the visit.
Note:
The first two aircraft pictured in this report were not actually on the grounds of Swidwin Air Base, one Lim-5 was mounted on a pole outside the train station in Swidwin town while the other Lim-5 was mounted in the grounds of what looked like a technical college in the town of Czaplinek (on the road from Swidwin to Poznan)
