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’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.
                   PO JG Magee RCAF

That certainly sums up at lot but I got thinking about a few other things and thanks to men just like PO John Gillespie Magee RCAF I was able to savour and write about them.

Flight is also:
-bouncing across a snow covered grass strip in an old rag
and tube bugsmasher, watching the snow fly off the skis
and feeling every bump

-sitting around a table with a warm wood fire going,
listening to the stories and sometimes tall tales of your
fellow aviators...perhaps enjoying a warm toddy with
the comradery

-rubbing your hand over a dew covered dope and fabric
wing or fuselage, perhaps feeling the wet cold rivets of
an all metal aircraft as you pass your hand over the
surface

-laying on top of the wing of your floatplane or seaplane,
just watching the sky, doesn't matter if there are clouds
or not, feeling your trusty steed rocking you gently
(great way to get a suntan also)

-sitting or laying on the wing of your floatplane or
seaplane, watching the beautiful northern lights, just
watching the stars...no one around for miles...many
miles

-sitting on a log, admiring your trusty steed as she is
beached tail first on the shore, the water slapping against
her floats or hull...waiting patiently for that can of pork
and beans you opened and removed the paper label from
to cook over your little water side fire....awww...green
onions, pork and beans, bread and butter....a bush
drivers delight

-sitting on a float with your bare feet splashing in the
water, talking out loud to your trusty steed and hoping
that the moose, deer, bear or wolves that have been
watching you don't think you are completely off your
rocker

-leaning against the side of your trusty wheeled steed,
your arm on her fuselage, your fingers tapping out an
unknown tune and chatting with someone who shares
your passion of flight....hmmm....happens more ofter
when you become an old retired rocking chair flying
geezer

-hearing an aero plane or a helicopter you stop and
observe...always with that silly grin on your face

-sitting at a computer desk, admiring the works of others,
who build simulated cockpits, post wonderful aviation
shots and you have never ever met them....but they
all share the same passion of flight you do
simulating actual flight, being licenced aviators...perhaps,
enjoying a dream, living a passion, it's all part of flight,
simulated or not

I think if PO John Gillespie Magee, Royal Canadian Air Force had been around a little longer he would have added to his famous poem..."High Flight"...

So what is this Flight thing all about, I am not sure, hell I have only been around just under eight decades...

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

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

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

Magee was killed in a mid air collision over Lincolnshire on December 11, 1941.  Exactly when he wrote the poem, not sure. 

The Sunday Mirror was (still is?) a UK paper.

I'll have to research this further when I have time. 

Now I'm really wondering just who found and saved that article, and was it the first publication.  Dad is gone, so can't ask.  He was in the Pacific at that time.  I guess it will always be a mystery. 

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

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.  A good part which many many folks will never savour or perhaps see from sitting in the cockpit.

Sitting in a wooden lawn chair last summer the sky seemed empty forever and then several of us heard the sound of radial and rotary engines. (there might have been an in-line there as well... )
Just above us were three Bi-Planes and a Tri-Plane enroute from Ottawa to just the other side of Toronto, several hundred miles I suppose as the crow flies.
What a sight, what a sound...

While sitting at a picnic table last summer at a Flying Farmers Field his young lad never locked the gate right and several cows came over to lick the dope on his bugsmasher...we watched them for several moments before his young lad chased them back through the gate.

If folks really want to know what flying is all about I think they should go down to a dock which operates float aircraft or go to a small flying field, grab an outdoor table and a beverage, hotdog or hamburger and just watch what goes on for several hours.  Amazing what one can learn...

I was good enough to retire from a great airline which operated bush camps also.  They purchased several small bush outfitters and amalgamated into a company.  When not flying the heavies I got to spend my time flying bush.
I was lucky, a monthly paycheck plus flying time where many a seasonal bush pilot for several other outfits only got flying pay and no base pay...

I used to laugh at some of our pilots who did the same thing as me but they would show up wearing blue jeans and a pressed dress shirt complete with epaulettes and their little gold bars.... to fly a Cessna 185 or a Beaver on floats.
Each his own I guess but many did not stay long...

I learned many many years ago while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force that it is the man that makes the uniform, not the uniform that makes the man...

Well folks with Flight being a hundred years plus a decade or so old I have managed to learn several things about flying during my almost eight decades which are:
-never stand on a float and pee toward a running engine
-do not miss that first step getting out of a float plane as
your position in the choir shall change
-know the wind direction if you are going to pee on a
campfire to put it out
-if you see a bear, moose, deer or wolf staring at you from
the bush with a look on their face that says you are nuts,
you probably are and will make a fine aviator...

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

Flying Trucker wrote on Feb 20^th, 2011 at 1:40pm:

Yet another gem of a post Doug. Thanks for the advice. #3 I already knew, but had not really thought of #1 or #2 before. I think #4 is obvious. 

And you caused me to think back of when I was a youngster, prowling the grounds around the airport, playing on the second floor of the old military hangar that would later house a Lear Jet, twin Beech and several smaller

GA when I would work for the local flying service. My memories of pushing that twin Beech into it's spot by hand, up a slight incline make it seem much larger than the Baron in my sim. I remember how much cooler

it was in the hangar than out on the ramp, where the sun tried to melt the asphalt strips in the concrete. I can still remember the sights, smells, and sounds of that old hangar and the machine shop it held.

Slipping the surly bonds is far from being the only joy of being around aviation. As Bob Hope would have said Doug, "thanks for the memories."

Flying Trucker wrote on Feb 20^th, 2011 at 8:59pm:



Never heard that one before. Have to remember that for my son. 

patchz wrote on Feb 20^th, 2011 at 4:16pm: