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The P.Z.L. 18 was a design for a heavy torpedo-bomber that never got beyond the design stage.
In 1930 the Polish Marine Aviation Wing issued a requirement for a heavy torpedo-bomber seaplane as part of a general plan to expand Poland’s naval air air. Three designs were submitted – the Lublin R-XX, P.W.S. 62 and P.Z.L. 18 - were submitted in response to the requirement.
The P.Z.L. design was a rather unusual twin-boom twin-float seaplane. It had a thick tapering wing, with the crew and the torpedo carried in a short central nacelle. The engines were carried in the twin booms, which went back to a twin tail. The floats were carried on struts that connected vertically to the booms and across to the base of the central nacelle, and with a rear strut connecting diagonally to the boom. The tail had twin fins and rudders, one at the end of each boom, with a single elevator carried at the back of the tailplane. The single-step duralumin floats would have been 27ft 11in long and carried on welded steel streamlined struts.
The shape of the central nacelle gave the aircraft its unusual appearance. The top of the nacelle was level with the top of the wing, while the bottom of the nacelle was some way below the wing, a rather unusual looking configuration. It would have carried the crew of four, with open cockpits for gunners in the nose and rear, and an open cockpit for the two pilots with side-by-side seating and dual controls. The bottom of the fuselage was in the form of a long gondola, which carried photographic reconnaissance equipment, one torpedo or an equal weight of bombs and a swivel mounting for rear firing ventral machine gun.
The P.Z.L. 18 lost out to the much more conventional Lublin R-XX, a twin float low twin-engined wing monoplane. However this aircraft also never entered production, after the collapse of the original company that was to build it.
Engine: Two 650hp Hispano-Suiza twelve-cylinder upright vee liquid cooled engines
Power: 650hp each
Crew: 4
Span: 91ft 11in
Length: 55ft 10in
Height: 14ft 10in
Guns: Up to three machine guns
Bomb load: One torpedo or equivalent weight of bombs