Simviation Forums

Goodly afternoon all...

Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee...RCAF...Royal Canadian Air Force wrote this wonderful poem just before his death.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I

Doug, if you don't start making copies of all these posts for a book we may have to do it for you. Great post.

Thanks Larry and as always your advice and comments are most appreciated...

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

On October 18, 1942, the Sunday Mirror, which I believe was a New York paper (haven't googled it yet), published Magee's 'High Flight'.

Someone, maybe my father, tore the published poem article out of the paper and somehow kept it.

Magee was killed in a mid air collision over Lincolnshire on December 11, 1941.

[quote]Wikipedia:
Magee's posthumous fame rests mainly on his sonnet High Flight, started on [glow=yellow,2,300]18 August 1941[/glow], just a few months before his death, while he was based at No. 53 OTU. He had flown up to 33,000 feet in a Spitfire Mk I, his seventh flight in a Spitfire. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem

Thanks Larry for that information...the poem has been an inspiration to many an aviator.

Pilot Officer JG Magee Royal Canadian Air Force was only nineteen (19) years old when he died.

Please read the whole article, it is educational and informative...

http://www.macla.co.uk/scopwick/magee.php


I can remember saying that poem outloud when climbing alone in the Tiger Moth, Chipmunk, Harvard and T33 "T Bird" and a few rag and tube bugsmashers that took forever to climb to nine thousand feet... ...but a puffy wuffy is a puffy wuffy no matter what altitude it is at or what you are flying and when you get to it the game begins....
We saw one of our son's doing the same thing, flying and playing in the puffy wuffies with the Cessna 337 we owned.  We gave him the months fuel bill, he soon found something cheaper to fly...

The number of young men not even in their twenties who gave so much and were lost in training accidents runs probably in the hundreds but I do not think we will ever know.

It does make one wonder who likes to play in the puffy wuffies what might be on the other side or coming through the puffy wuffy.

It is a dangerous beautiful game many of us have played.

Again thanks for the comments gentlemen.

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

[font=Comic Sans MS][color=#0000ff]This is a very touching post Doug and I want thank you very much for stirring up 'a young mans dream' memories. When I was much younger I used to listen to this poem every night on the television. In fact I'd say it was a major factor in my passion for aviation. Long before the Internet and cable we had only three networks and ever since the '50's T.V. was a very big part of some peoples lives, (the movie the Cable Guy w/Jim Carrey comes to mind). When the nights programming was finished, around midnight I believe, they would show an aircraft flying high through the puffy wuffys and a golden voice would recite this homage to flight! Once again I hadn't thought about it in a long time, thank you

Good afternoon Greg...

I do not ever remember seeing that on Canadian television at any time....nice video though...

Thanks for posting that link and I do not recall ever seeing it here before.

I try to tell folks what aviation is all about, fighters and bombers with blazing guns and glowing rockets, huge commercial jets with several hundred paying passengers in the rear is only part of aviation.

[quote][font=Comic Sans MS][color=#0000ff]This is a very touching post Doug and I want thank you very much for stirring up 'a young mans dream' memories. When I was much younger I used to listen to this poem every night on the television. In fact I'd say it was a major factor in my passion for aviation. Long before the Internet and cable we had only three networks and ever since the '50's T.V. was a very big part of some peoples lives, (the movie the Cable Guy w/Jim Carrey comes to mind). When the nights programming was finished, around midnight I believe, they would show an aircraft flying high through the puffy wuffys and a golden voice would recite this homage to flight! Once again I hadn't thought about it in a long time, thank you

[quote]Good afternoon Greg...

I do not ever remember seeing that on Canadian television at any time....nice video though...

Thanks for posting that link and I do not recall ever seeing it here before.

I try to tell folks what aviation is all about, fighters and bombers with blazing guns and glowing rockets, huge commercial jets with several hundred paying passengers in the rear is only part of aviation.

My pleasure Larry...my pleasure...

Oh and Larry...your post just reminded of something one of my older brothers used to say to me when we were growing up and still in grade school.

He would tell me I reminded him of Bob Hopes brother...."No Hope".....       ;D

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

[quote]My pleasure Larry...my pleasure...

Oh and Larry...your post just reminded of something one of my older brothers used to say to me when we were growing up and still in grade school.

He would tell me I reminded him of Bob Hopes brother...."No Hope".....

I often wonder what else Magee might have come up with had he lived longer... he had a knack for poetry, for sure.

And yes, I often think of that poem when I am up there flinging "my eager craft through footless halls of air". You don't have to fly as high as he did to understand what moved him to write that.

But never actually in the puffy-wuffys... I always open the canopy and stick my arm up to determine when I am at cloud base. 

[quote][quote][font=Comic Sans MS][color=#0000ff]This is a very touching post Doug and I want thank you very much for stirring up 'a young mans dream' memories. When I was much younger I used to listen to this poem every night on the television. In fact I'd say it was a major factor in my passion for aviation. Long before the Internet and cable we had only three networks and ever since the '50's T.V. was a very big part of some peoples lives, (the movie the Cable Guy w/Jim Carrey comes to mind). When the nights programming was finished, around midnight I believe, they would show an aircraft flying high through the puffy wuffys and a golden voice would recite this homage to flight! Once again I hadn't thought about it in a long time, thank you