Made by the U.S. Air Force in the 1980s, HIGH FLIGHT presents the famous poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. as read by actor William Conrad. This version features the then-new F-15 Eagle. (The aircraft are apparently from various squadrons including those marked “LA” which are from the 405th Tactical Fighter Training Wing, and the 27th TFS/1st TFW “Fighting Eagles”, tail code “FF”, based in Langley AFB, VA.
This short film was often used on television in the 1980s and 90s as a sign off for stations going off the air.
John Gillespie Magee Jr. (9 June 1922 – 11 December 1941) was a World War 2 Anglo-American Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and poet, who wrote the poem High Flight. He was killed in an accidental mid-air collision in England in 1941. Magee’s posthumous fame rests mainly on his sonnet High Flight, which he started on 18 August 1941, just a few months before his death, whilst he was based at No. 53 OTU. In his seventh flight in a Spitfire Mk I, he had flown up to 33,000 feet. As he orbited and climbed upward, he was struck by words he had read in another poem — “To touch the face of God.” He completed his verse soon after landing.
Purportedly, the first person to read Magee’s poem later that same day in the officers’ mess, was his fellow Pilot Officer Michael Henry Le Bas (later Air Vice-Marshal M. H. Le Bas, CB CBE DSO AFC, Air Officer Commanding No. 1 Group RAF), with whom Magee had trained. Magee enclosed the poem in a letter to his parents, dated 3 September 1941. His father, then curate of Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, reprinted it in church publications. The poem became more widely known through the efforts of Archibald MacLeish, then Librarian of Congress, who included it in an exhibition of poems called “Faith and Freedom” at the Library of Congress in February 1942. The manuscript copy of the poem remains at the Library of Congress.
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter aircraft designed by McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) to gain and maintain air supremacy in aerial combat. Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force selected McDonnell Douglas’ design in 1967 to meet the service’s need for a dedicated air superiority fighter. The Eagle first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976. It is among the most successful modern fighters, with over 100 victories and no losses in aerial combat, with the majority of the kills by the Israeli Air Force.[3][4]
The Eagle has been exported to Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. The F-15 was originally envisioned as a pure air superiority aircraft. Its design included a secondary ground-attack capability[5] that was largely unused. The aircraft design proved flexible enough that an all-weather strike derivative, the F-15E Strike Eagle, an improved and enhanced version which was later developed, entered service in 1989 and has been exported to several nations. As of 2017, the aircraft is being produced in different variants with production set to end in 2022.
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