Warsztaty Szybowcowe Mewa

In 1935, Szczepan Grzeszczyk and Antoni Kocjan collaborated in the design of the Mewa, an aerodynamically clean, high performance, two seat sailplane. Its first flights were made early in the following year, though it was not ready for competition until 1937.^[1]

The Mewa was a wooden aircraft with a two-part, cantilever, shoulder-mounted gull wing. Each part was built around a single spar which acted as the rear member of a torsion-resistant D-box formed with plywood surfacing around the leading edge. Behind the spar, which was assisted by an internal diagonal drag strut to the fuselage, the wing was fabric-covered. The high dihedral, inner part of the wing was rectangular in plan but the outer wing was trapezoidal, tapering to rounded tips. The outer wings carried long, narrow-chord, differential Frise ailerons outboard with mid-chord, upper-surface air brakes inboard.^[1][2]

The Mewa's fuselage was an oval-section, semi-monocoque, plywood structure. The two crew sat in tandem, with dual controls, under a long, multi-part transparency. This extended rearwards over the wing, allowing the second seat to be positioned over the centre of gravity to avoid re-trimming when occupied. A broad, semi-elliptical, balanced rudder, fabric-covered except on its balance, was mounted on a small fin which was part of the fuselage structure. Close to its root, the fin carried an all-flying tail, fitted with Flettner tabs and also largely fabric-covered.^[1][2]

The landing gear consisted of an under-fuselage, pneumatically sprung skid, assisted by a tailskid under the rudder.^[1][2]