"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee Jnr.

Red Arrows simulation booth (Royal Air Forces Association)
[Whitehaven Festival 2015]

On 18 August 1941 Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jnr., R.C.A.F., wrote the poem "High Flight" after being inspired by a high altitude training flight of a Spitfire. On 3 September 1941, Pilot Officer Magee wrote a letter home to his parents, enclosing the words of the poem: 

"I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed. I thought it might interest you."

It would become one of the most famous poems of WW2 and has remained popular ever since. According to the Venerable (Air Vice-Marshal) Jonathan Chaffey QHC, Chaplain-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force: 

"It has significance for many members of the Royal Air Force, as they discover in its words an expression of the joy, spirituality and pathos of their own experiences."
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