"Zura" as he was mostly known in his (final) home country Canada had a truly exceptional life, fighting against the German 109's in the outdated Polish fighters at the very first days of WWII, through his fighting in the Battle of Britain, his test pilot career within the RAF and later at Avro Canada, this period of time is without a doubt one of the most interesting in aviation history, and thus should be a true treasure vault for any aviation enthusiast. Unfortunately, this book missed the mark by too far in terms of trying to be a real biography of Zura.
It seems the material about Zura's life is not more than 1/3 of the book content (of an already rather thin volume), and thus the author had to somehow fill the pages to get to a minimum page count (at least that is my impression). Accordingly, we here about general context of the contribution of Polish pilots to the RAF, the history of Gloster aircraft factory, the politics behind the Avro Arrow cancellation, etc... While these are all issues that have some connection to Zura, they do not relate and/or influence directly his life. On the contrary, he must have had hundreds if not thousands of flying anecdotes from his years with the Polish Air Force, the RAF and in Canada, flying so many different and sometimes rare aircraft prototypes. He was probably one of the few Polish WWII pilots still alive who actually flew combat missions against the Luftwaffe, and had a distinct career as a test pilot, particularly associated with the Avro Arrow, and yet you will not find one real description of any of the aircraft flying characteristics in the book - this is really a missed unique chance.
Zura wrote his own memoir, but it has not been widely published, since it was written in Polish. This book does simply not make justice to such an exceptional man with his interesting life and unique experiences, and it makes one very sad that since he passed away there's no way we will ever know all his stories, what a pity.
In the end, in the book the "real" content about Zura's life is not much more than an expanded Wikipedia article, but at least the reader gets a glimpse at his life and the very interesting time period in aviation, accompanied with some nice pictures (unfortunately all in B&W, with some known to be originally in color).
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