High Flight
On August 18th, 1941, based at No. 53 OTU. John Gillespie Magee had launched on his seventh flight in a Spitfire Mk I, and climbed to an altitude of 33,000 feet. There, as he orbited high above the clouds, he was struck by words he had recently read — "To touch the face of God." Soon after landing, John Gillespie Magee, Jr began to write down what would become the most remarkable sonnet ever written about flight, one that seemed to capture the feelings that all pilots know too well but could never properly put into words...
The next day, Magee wrote a letter to his parents. In which he commented, "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed." On the back of the letter, he jotted down his poem, 'High Flight.'
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HIGH FLIGHT
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Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
— John Gillespie Magee, Jr
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
— John Gillespie Magee, Jr
Just three months later, on December 11th, 1941 (only three days after the US entered the war), Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was flying a Spitfire V, VZ-H. when he suffered a mid-air collision with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield flown by one Ernest Aubrey. The mid-air occurred over the village of Roxholm which lies between RAF Cranwell and RAF Digby, in the county of Lincolnshire at approximately 400 feet AGL at 11:30am, as John was descending in the clouds. At the enquiry, a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggle to push back the canopy. The pilot, he said, finally stood up to jump from the plane. John, however, was too close to the ground for his parachute to open. He died instantly.
John Gillespie Magee was only 19 years old...
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