Born: Poland
Primarily active in: United States of America

1902 -1960

Born in Cracow, Poland, in 1902, and graduated from Lwow Institute of Technology in 1923, Mr. Ciolkosz spent several years working in French industry and studying at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor before returning to Poland.  There, in the late twenties and through the thirties, he occupied high positions in the aircraft industry and devoted his knowledge and talents to the design of several successful aircraft. His designs in the commercial field ranged from the single-engine, fixed landing gear PWS 20 to the three engines, retractable landing gear, PZL 27 aircraft. In the military field, he was responsible for the design of the LWS 3 liaison aircraft and PZL 30 twin-engine bomber.

Returning to the United States, Mr. Ciolkosz entered the field of rotary-wing aircraft in 1948 by joining Piasecki Helicopter Corporation and later Piasecki Aircraft Corporation where he held the position of Chief of Design and Analysis.  From 1957 to 1959, he was Chief of Preliminary Design at Hiller Aircraft Corporation, Advanced Research Division. The last eight months of his life he worked at the Aero-Space Division of Boeing Airplane Company at Seattle.

In 1953, Mr. Ciolkosz, together with D.N. Meyers, was awarded the Wright Brothers medal of the SAE for their paper on matching turbine characteristics with helicopter performance.

Member of AHS, Associate Fellow of IAS and Royal Aeronautical Society, and member of AMS, Zbslaw (ZEE) M. Ciolkosz died suddenly on June 25, 1960, in Seattle.  His death brought the end to a rich and productive technical career.  Mr. Ciolkosz belonged to the rapidly dwindling group of designers whose aircraft were not a product of innumerable committee meetings and volumes of computer analysis but a result of their creative imagination, hard work, and wide knowledge of aerodynamics, stress, and other disciplines blended into successful aircraft design.

Obituary (page 30) : AHS Newsletter- August, 1960