A picture of Scopwick

The grave of PO J.G.Magee, Scopwick cemetery, Lincolnshire. Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., wrote the internationally known poem High Flight. An American born in China in 1922 he enlisted in the RCAF in 1940 and graduated as a pilot. Within the year, he was sent to England and posted to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF. On September 3, 1941, Magee flew a high altitude (30,000 feet) test flight in a newer model of the Spitfire V. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem - "To touch the face of God." Once back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents. In it 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." Just three months later, on December 11, 1941 Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was killed. The Spitfire V he was flying, VZ-H, collided with an Oxford Trainer from Cranwell Airfield while over Tangmere, England. The two planes were flying in the clouds and neither saw the other. He was just 19 years old.

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