John Gillespie MaGee Jr. was the author of High Flight: one of the most enduring war poems of the Second World War.

John was born in Shanghai, China, to an American father and a British mother. His parents worked as Christian missionaries. He had three younger brothers.

John was first educated at the American school in Nanking, before moving to England with his mother where he spent four years at St Clare Preparatory School in Walmer, Kent. He later attended the Rugby School between 1935 and 1939.

While at Rugby, John won the school’s poetry prize for Sonnet to Rupert Brooke. The Great War poet was a Rugby alumnus. John’s poet dramatized Brooke’s burial in an olive grove on the Greek Island of Skyros, after succumbing to illness in April 1915.

John would continue writing prose and verse for the rest of his life.

John travelled to the United States in 1939, where he attended Avon Old Farms as the outbreak of the Second World War prevented him from returning to Rugby to complete his schooling.

While at Avon School, John decided to join the Royal Air Force, determined to do his part in the fight against fascism to help protect his friends in Britain, as Avon School headmaster Reverand W. Brooke Stabler recalled:

“One afternoon, after lying on top of a tower [at the School] for a couple of hours in the sun, Magee turned to his companion and suddenly announced, ‘Well, I think I’ll join the RAF.’”

After discussions with his parents, John travelled to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), joining up in October 1940. He had turned down the opportunity to join Yale University to enlist.

After training at various Canadian flight schools, John earned his pilot wings in Ottawa in June 1941 and was promoted to the rank of pilot officer.

John was sent to the UK where he joined No. 53 Operational Training Unit at RAF Llandow near Cardiff, Wales.

On 18 August 1941, John took a spitfire to 33,000 feet. This was by far the highest he had flown at that point in his career to date. It is believed this trip provided the inspiration for John’s most famous poem High Flight. 

Describing how he conceptualised High Flight in his cockpit, Magee said: “It started at 30,000 feet and ended by the time I touched the ground”.

High Flight’s imagery is certainly evocative of the sensations of speed and powered flight far above the world below:

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 nor ever 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.

After completing training with No.53 Squadron, John was assigned to No. 412 (Fighter) Squadron, RCAF, at RAF Digby, Lincolnshire.

A Royal Canadian Air Force squadron, No. 412 was comprised of some famous faces, including “Cowboy” Blatchford, who scored the first Canadian aerial victory of WW2, and Flight Lieutenant Hart Massey, son of Governor-General of Canada Vincent Massey.

Engaged mostly on convoy escort missions, 412 Squadron was involved in an attack on railway yards at Lille in November 1941.

Of the four aircraft in John’s four-man section, John’s was the only one to make it safely back to the UK. The rest were shot down by Luftwaffe fighter ace Joachim Müncheberg. This was John’s only engagement with enemy aircraft during the war.

On December 11 1941, John was flying above Roxholme, Lincolnshire when, descending through the clouds, he collided with an Airspeed Oxford training vehicle. 

He was killed instantly, aged just 19.

A farmer witnessed the incident, saying he saw John struggling to open his Spitfire’s canopy as the out-of-control craft plummeted towards the earth. John was able to bail out, but was at too low an altitude for his parachute to be effective, dying as he hit the ground.

Leading Aircraftman/Pilot Under-Training Griffin, pilot of the Airspeed Oxford, was also killed in the incident.

John is buried at Scopwick Church Burial Ground. His headstone bears the below inscription, based on his famous poem:

“OH I HAVE SLIPPED THE SURLY BONDS OF EARTH… PUT OUT MY HAND AND TOUCHED THE FACE OF GOD”

Magee’s father, John, published High Flight in several church publications in tribute of his dead son. Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish discovered the poem and included it in his exhibition called “Faith and Freedom”, which drew significant attention to MaGee’s poem.

In tribute, Magee’s father John published High Flight in several church publications. It drew the attention of Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish who included it in an exhibition called “Faith and Freedom” which greatly increased its fame. 

Copies of High Flight, as well as pictures of Magee, were sent to airfields across England, his words serving as an inspiration to young pilots taking to the skies over Europe. 

John’s last published poem Per Ardua is a homage to the Battle of Britain, especially those who lost their lives in the great aerial war over Britain in the summer of 1940:

They that have climbed the white mists of the morning;
They that have soared, before the world's awake,
To herald up their foeman to them, scorning
The thin dawn's rest their weary folk might take;
Some that have left other mouths to tell the story
Of high, blue battle, quite young limbs that bled,
How they had thundered up the clouds to glory,
Or fallen to an English field stained red.
Because my faltering feet would fail I find them
Laughing beside me, steadying the hand
That seeks their deadly courage 

Yet behind them
The cold light dies in that once brilliant Land...
Do these, who help the quickened pulse run slowly,
Whose stern, remembered image cools the brow,
Till the far dawn of Victory, know only
Night's darkness, and Valhalla's silence now?

Per Ardua ad Astra (through adversity to the stars) is the motto of the Royal Air Force and can be seen inscribed on the Runnymede Memorial, dedicated to missing Commonwealth pilots.