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Reviewed by:
  • Janusz Zurakowski: Legend in the Skies
  • Russell Isinger
Janusz Zurakowski: Legend in the Skies. Bill Zuk. St Catharines: Vanwell, 2004. Pp 288, $34.95

Fighter pilots, someone once said, can strut while sitting down. They do, after all, have a popular image to live up to: tall and handsome, dashing and cocky, with a devil-may-care attitude. They drive their aircraft and their sports cars to their limits; they shoot down Germans, Communists, Iraqis (or the occasional cinematic alien interloper) by day and live hard by night. Squadron leader Janusz Zurakowski defied this stereotype: a Polish-born Canadian and family man, on the short side and balding, quiet and reserved, ill at ease in the limelight, not a combat ace (his score was just shy of five), and by some accounts rather nervous when behind the wheel of a car. However, 'Zura' was, according to his peers, 'one of the world's greatest test pilots,' a member of a select breed of pilots who climb into the cockpits of prototypes to test their limits (and often die trying).

Zurakowski's path to Canada was an adventure, his story the story of Poland, luckless victim of European realpolitik. Zurakowski's family, Polish gentry caught up in the Bolshevik Revolution, escaped to the newly independent Poland, where Zurakowski's childhood fascination with flight led him to become a fighter pilot and flight instructor in the Polish Air Force. When Germany invaded Poland, he flew obsolete aircraft against the Luftwaffe but fled with thousands of his countrymen when defeat became inevitable. He went on to France and then Britain; he fought in the Battle of Britain as one of Churchill's 'few.' The contribution of these Polish airmen to the defeat of the Luftwaffe was immeasurable, and Zuk ably tells this often overlooked story. After returning to flight instruction for much of the war, Zurakowski was selected for the Empire Test Pilots' School where he honed his formidable aeronautical skills. As he did not want to return to now-Communist Poland, he remained in Britain after the war, testing aircraft at Boscombe Down and, after leaving the Royal Air Force, with the Gloster Aircraft Company.

Sadly, however, I suspect that few readers will pick up this book to learn about Poland's tragic history, or for an account of the heroism of [End Page 568] Polish flyers during the Second World War, or for that matter because of interest in Zurakowski's aeronautical achievements as the inventor of a new aerobatic manoeuvre (the 'Zurabatic cartwheel'), which so dazzled crowds at Farnborough, or his hours at the controls of aircraft like the Martin-Baker MB5 or the De Havilland Hornet or the Gloster Meteor (or dozens of other types). They will pick up the book because, from 1952 to 1958, Zurakowski was a test pilot with Canada's Avro Aircraft Limited, where he flew the troubled (but ultimately successful) CF-100 Canuck and, more importantly, the mighty but stillborn CF-105 Arrow. In his chapters on Avro, Zuk provides an informative (though in many places overly technical) overview of Zurakowski's role in the flight-testing programs of both aircraft. As for the controversy surrounding the Arrow, Zuk walks a fine line between the (correct) view that the Diefenbaker government's decision to cancel the project was the logical one, given the price tag, lack of sales interest, and strategic uncertainty of the missile age, and the (incorrect) view that the Arrow was somehow the greatest missed opportunity in Canadian aviation history. In the end, one gets the impression that Zuk leans toward the latter camp, as do most aviation buffs.

When once asked what it was like to fly the Arrow, in his typical understated way Zurakowski replied, 'It's like driving slow. Only faster.' He actually retired from flying four months before the cancellation, and after the demise of Avro he enjoyed an idyllic life running a tourist lodge in northern Ontario (colleagues used to tease him that he had been scouting property while flying the Arrow). When Zurakowski passed away in February 2004, there were the obligatory news stories that invariably linked him to the Arrow. In...

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