Advanced Technology Warfare: A Detailed Study of the Latest Weapons and Techniques for Warfare Today and into the 21st Century (Hardcover)

In 1954, nineteen-year-old Mike Zrymiak drove into Regina to follow a whim and enlist in the RCAF. So began a thirty-year adventure that saw this one-time Saskatchewan farm boy flying Harvards to Cosmopolitans, nervous students to royalty, during one of the most politically charged eras of modern history—the Cold War. He remembers this career in his latest book, Leaving a Contrail. As one of seven children born to Ukrainian emigrants during the Great Depression, thoughts of becoming a pilot and an officer were the furthest from anyone’s mind—including Mike’s. Yet Mike discovered his passion in flying, and found himself thriving in an environment that demanded both discipline and initiative. While he, like many of his generation, considers the unification experiment of 1968 the low point of his time in service, his career afforded many high points as well, including serving as Harvard instructor to NATO pilots, pilot with 412 Squadron flying VIPs, protocol officer with Northern NORAD HQ North Bay, commander of Lahr Airfield, studies at the National Defence Staff College, military attaché to Czechoslovakia, deputy commander of Air Command Air Reserves, and commander of CFB Namao. However, as Vic Johnson, editor of Airforce Magazine, states, Leaving a Contrail is much more than just another military memoir. "[It] expresses many closely held opinions on the DND HQ hierarchy, [including] enforced bilingualism, the effect of ‘human rights’ on Canada’s military and other controversial subjects based on his many years at the ‘Head Shed’ in Ottawa . . . . [yet] is written in a breezy, easy-to-read style and flows from one posting to the next." One of those postings included a two-year stint behind the Iron Curtain during the 1980s, where more than once he found himself face-to-face with nervous representatives of the ruling Communist regime, their fingers on the trigger.