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I just completed a magazine article on J. G. Magee that will be part of a series I am doing on Americans who enlisted in the RCAF in 1940/1941.
Enjoy.
J. G. MAGEE
THE POET PILOT
Descending through a hole in the cloud cover, the Supermarine Spitfire Vb, coded VZ-H of 412 "Falcon" Fighter Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), suddenly encountered an ascending Royal Air Force (RAF) Twin-Engine Oxford Trainer from RAF Cranwell! The time was 1140 hours on Thursday, December 11, 1941. The mid-air collision, over the village of Roxholm, was unavoidable and the young nineteen year old American Fighter Pilot, who was returning to his base at Wellingore, Lincolnshire, England, was killed instantly after bailing out of his stricken aircraft at an altitude of less than 400'. His parachute did not have time to fully deploy.
Part of the official letter to the parents of the young Pilot Officer (P/O) read: "Your Son's funeral took place at Scopwick Church Cemetery near the Digby Aerodrome at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, 13th December, 1941, the service being conducted by Flight Lieutenant S. K. Belton, the Canadian Padre of this Station. He was accorded full Service Honours, the coffin being carried by Pilots of his Squadron".
His white stone grave tablet, which has a chiselled RCAF crest and cross, is inscribed as follows:
PILOT OFFICER
J. G. MAGEE
PILOT
ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE
11TH DECEMBER 1941 - AGE 19
"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth -
Put out my hand and touched the face of God"
The first and last lines of his immortal poem on his grave marker are the only clue that someone special lies in this small, but well maintained, English burial ground along with fifty-four other Airmen from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Germany.
P/O John Gillespie Magee Jr. was just one of the more than 8,800 Americans who joined and who were serving in the RCAF when the United States entered World War II on December 8, 1941.
Magee was born on June 9, 1922 in Shanghai, China, the eldest of four sons to missionaries John Gillespie Magee Sr. and Faith Emmeline Backhouse. Magee Sr. was an American from a very well to do Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania family. Disregarding his family's wealth and influence, he chose to become an Episcopalian Priest and was sent to China. There he met and married John Jr.'s mother, an English Missionary.
Magee Jr. was educated in China, England and in the United States from 1929 to 1940. Throughout his academic life, he was an excellent student possessed of exceptional intelligence. After three years of schooling in Nanking, he was sent, in 1931, to St. Clare Boarding School in Walmer, Kent. Scholastically he was far above average and started writing poetry at the age of twelve. When he was thirteen, he moved to Rugby Public School and won their Poetry Prize at the age of sixteen for his poem "Brave New World".
In 1939, John was joined in England by his mother and his three brothers while his father remained in China. Against his wishes, he was persuaded to go to the U.S. to finish his schooling in preparation to attend Yale University, his father's Alma Mater. He attended Avons Old Farms School near Hartford, Connecticut and published a collection of seventeen of his poems which were circulated among family and personal friends. He found it difficult to make friends with boys his own age and they, in turn, found it hard to accept this English fellow who could quote Plato and Aristotle. Magee Jr. was homesick for England and wrote to his mother saying, "I shall never really be happy here - I am convinced that my place is in England and, if I ever get the opportunity, I am coming back".
In the Spring of 1940, he became increasingly restless and one day he announced he was joining the RAF! Despite his best efforts, the U. S. State Department refused to grant him a exit visa.
On his eighteenth birthday, June 9, his father, mother and three brothers reunited with him in Connecticut for a joyous family reunion. Hearing the latest news that England was barely hanging on in the face of the seemingly unstoppable German War Machine, his desire to join up became even more urgent. Deferring a top scholarship to Yale that he had won, he travelled, in September 1940, to Ottawa, Ontario to enlist in the RCAF. To his dismay he was turned down as he was sixteen pounds under the minimum weight restriction! Told to return in two weeks, he avoided any form of exercise, grossly overate, achieved the necessary weight gain and was accepted.
His rank was Aircraftsman Second Class (AC2) and the first several weeks of his training were spent at No. 1 Manning Depot (MD) and Initial Training School (ITS), both of which were located in Toronto, Ontario. Just prior to commencing his pilot training at No. 9 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS) on Tiger Moth Biplane Trainers in St. Catharines, Ontario, AC2 J. G. Magee was promoted to Leading Aircraftsman (LAC).
He successfully passed this phase of his flight training and soloed after only six hours of flight instruction. Magee was sent to No. 2 Service Flying Training School (SFTS), Uplands (Ottawa, Ontario), for single engine training on Harvard (AT-6) and Yale (BT-9) Aircraft.
He was awarded his cloth RCAF Pilot Wings and was commissioned with the rank of Pilot Officer on June 22, 1941 - thirteen days after celebrating his 19th birthday!
He embarked for overseas service from "Y" Depot Halifax, Nova Scotia by troop ship on July 5, 1941 after having enjoyed a two week pre-embarkation leave with his family.
Magee was posted to RAF No. 53 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at RAF Station Llandow in South Wales where he began his fighter conversion training on Spitfire Mk II's. It was at this Unit, on September 3, 1941, when he wrote his immortal poem "High Flight" while on a high-altitude test flight of a newer model Spitfire Mk V.
Inspired by the ecstasy of this experience and back on the ground, he wrote a letter to his parents and told them he started composing the verse at 30,000' and had finished it soon after he had landed. He jotted down the words to "High Flight" on the back of his letter.
P/O Magee was posted, on September 23, 1941, to RCAF 412 Squadron which was, at that time, based at RAF Digby. The Squadron moved from Digby to a satellite airfield at Wellingore on October 20, 1941. Magee flew operationally with 412 for almost three months until that fatal mid-air collision.
In an email to the author, W. Barry Needham, from Wynyard, Saskatchewan, says he joined 412 the same day as Magee and quite possibly is the sole remaining pilot who flew operationally with him! Needham, a Sergeant Pilot, did not have a close relationship with Magee, but certainly knew him while lounging around the dispersal hut while on readiness. Barry says that on the morning of the accident, the entire Squadron was up above the cloud layer taking part in a Wing Flying Practice. He also said that one of Magee's close friends at 412 was R. I. A. (Rod) Smith. In a letter to Magee's brother, David, dated April, 1987, Smith describes rushing to John's crash site along with the Squadron's Intelligence Officer, Hart Massey. They could not get close to the burning Spitfire wreckage as the heat and flames were cooking and exploding the 20-mm cannon and .303" machine gun rounds! Nearby they found a hole in the ground with the imprint of Magee's body at least a foot into the soft soil. He had struck the ground with his back. There was nothing that either one could do. Following directly behind Magee, and witnessing the tragic collision, was Sergeant Pilot Dwayne Linton, another American flying with 412. Linton was the principal witness at the Court of Inquiry which was held at RAF Cranwell on December 19, 1941. This informaton on Linton was passed to Barry Needham in a letter dated September, 1994 from Ivan M. L. Henson in Gloucestershire, England who has unearthed and amassed a great treasure trove of information on the life and times of John Gillespie Magee Jr. Henson was able to track down and interview Magee's room mate at No. 53 OTU where "High Flight" was composed. RAF Wing Commander (Retired) Roy Kingsford said Magee loved to read and write poetry which he thought was rather odd for a budding fighter pilot. They played a lot of squash together and were very competitive both on the ground and in the air. They did not, however, always see eye-to-eye on some issues.
The adventure and the thrill of aircraft flight was truly captured in all its glory by that young American when he penned those special words that have become identified as the sonnet of the Air Force:
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.
Hovering 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 untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Magee's "High Flight" was reprinted widely in American and British newspapers after Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress, displayed it in an exhibition of poetry entitled "Faith and Freedom" which took place in Washington, D.C. in February, 1942. Macleish acclaimed Magee as the first poet of the War!
The rest as they say is history and P/O John Gillespie Magee Jr.'s poem has become a classic of aviation literature reproduced the world over.
Magee's wartime RCAF Squadron still exists today as part of the Canadian Forces based at the Ottawa International Airport flying Canadair Challenger Jets worldwide in support of VIP and Government Officials. 412 has had an unbroken record of service since 1939. To honour their Poet Pilot, the Squadron's current work place, in the Transport Canada Hangar, is dedicated as "The Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr. Annex".
- END -
The author gratefully thanks the following who partly provided information for this article:
W. Barry Needham, Ivan M. L. Henson, R. I. A. (Rod) Smith and the Winter 1982 Issue of "This England Magazine" by A. H. Lankester which was reprinted in Airforce Magazine Summer 2004.
Cheers,
Tom Walsh.
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