Spitfire Victory Roll, UK.

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The poem, High Flight, has over the years become a mantra to pilots.

It is reproduced here as a tribute to, and in memory of pilots of all generations.

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High Flight

 

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 windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew -

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untresspassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

 

 

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

No 412 squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December 1941

 

Written by John Gillespie Magee when he was 19 year old fighter pilot during WW11 - as he soared into the atmosphere during a high altitude test flight of a Spitfire V.

 

Magee died three month later in a mid-air collision.

 

Done