High Flight
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- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- High Flight - National Archives and Records Administration 1972 - ARC Identifier 4523565 / Local Identifier 330-DVIC-26749 - Department of Defense. Office of the Secretary of Defense. (09/18/1947 - ). Synopsis: Program is a tribute to the miracle of flight, with a reading of an inspirational poem by John Magee, against background music by the Air Force band and aerial photography of a T-38 in flight.
My uncle, John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is the author of this WWII aviation poem.
Aspirando et Perseverando!
And thank you for our emails on this original of all adventures we knew . . .
Crooning4Leftovers I’m 67 years old and this poem still gives me goose bumps. It had a lot to do with my choosing the USAF as my service to this country. God rest your Uncles soul.
Your uncle had a special gift, to be able to sense the presense of God during high flight and express it in a poem. What's astonishing is how young he was--only 19.
Beautiful, God bess his heart and he perished a few days later. I fail to understand why the video doesn't credit your uncle with writing this?
My favorite poem of all time. I grew up watching this every night when the TV station would sign off. My dad was a navigator in the Air Force and loved this poem. I will always think of him when I hear it.
Mine was the commander of the 339th Fighter Interceptor Squadron and a base commander while I was growing up. We were allowed to stay up late on weekends to watch this. I still tear up. 🥲
Yes
So did I,
As a child late at night! You must be about my age of 72¡ I loved and still love this video! My father was also Air Force in Korea during that War! I just remembered this beautiful poem and that silver jet gracefully slipping through the heavenly clouds!
That late night TV sign-off was SOP for many of us. The wonder of it all was to be able to be there flying from 2 carriers in the western pacific in the 60;s as NFO . . . still active & remembering that & JFK, LT USNR--my first Pres. Vote.
I just stayed up late to listen and watch this. And I am so bitten with memories of this beautiful poem and wonder why did I join the Army.
My grandfather, Col. George B. Inabinet Jr. Passed away on December 4th, 2023 and we played this at his funeral. He was a pilot in the Air Force and South Carolina Air National Guard from 1959-1990 and flew multiple jets ranging from the F-100 to F-16. Although he was my grandfather I always saw him as a father figure, especially since my dad abandoned me when I was 12. He would tell me stories about the wonders of flight and how it was the best thing he had ever done. I'm following in his footsteps, becoming a Naval Aviator once I graduate college and then hopefully going on to fly for Nasa, taking his memory with me as I fly higher than anyone possibly can. Godspeed Jaws, I'll see you up there.
Thank You for your awesome skills and service to our great great nation! May you also fly the surly and reach out to touch The Hand Of God while remembering that God Loves You!! Amen 🙏🏻🇺🇸👊
May God bless you with an amazing opportunity to climb into the cockpit of a truly awesome American Fighter Jet and as you pull back on the throttle to reach up into the surly skies you will be able to also reach out and Touch The Face of The Living God Who absolutely Loves You!! Amen 🙏🏻🇺🇸👊👍
I grew up, begging my mom to let me stay up every night till midnight to watch this, the official sign-off of one of the 3 networks that existed then. Amarillo. No wonder I wanted so desperately to be a pilot and then astronaut. And Christian.
The same here. I loved this. Still do.
I can still hear them say, "KVII, Texas' tallest tower".
This is the first High Flight that I can remember, and I still love it to this day, about 50 years later, possibly longer. When I could, I would sit up late, just to wait for this to come on at channel sign off.
I have flown the F-104. It is one of 17 aircraft I have flown in the Air Force. I have this poem engraved on a plaque in my study. The F-104 was a great fighter and was flown by the German and Canadien Air Forces.
Unforgiving, but a real hot rod, and most who flew and mastered it, loved it like non-other.
It has the true lines of a fighter. It is one of the most legendary that ever was in my mind. Such an amazing design. It looks like it's going Mach 2 just sitting on the ramp. But then, look at the family of Skunk Works designs it hails from. SR-71, P-38, U-2... Clarence Kelly Johnson was one hell of a guy. How thrilling your experiences must have been. Bravo!
The F-104 was an amazing fighter. It's the only fighter I know of that has a true supersonic wing. The leading edge of the wing is so sharp that the ground crews put a safety cover on it so the pilots wouldn't cut themselves when they did their pre-flight inspection.@@usethenoodle
They used to play this vid on TV when I was a wee bairn (69 YO now), and I was a real wing-nut. I suppose they must have used it during technical glitches to fill dead air. It was the first "adult" poem I memorized as a kid. I still love to see this.
This is some of the greatest prose I've ever heard.My dad was a twenty year man in the USAF,& my brother & I grew up on Air Force bases.We loved it when the fighter jets would do flyovers,right above our house,so low we felt we could've touched them.As others have said,when TV signed off at 1AM,they would play this every night.Even as a lad,I was moved by the words,& now,at 63,I still am.Godspeed,soldier.
I was in grade seven. Our reader was called High Flight. Our teacher, Mr. Johnson told us the story of this poem. He was in the same command as the author. John Magee was his friend and had written a poem while in flight. When Mr. Johnson read it, thought it amazing, asked if he could send it in to his friend a librarian. John agreed and so it was sent, and the very next day he died it battle. I have never forgotten the story or the poem and its beauty and meaning and the fact that his gentle man saw God the day before he passed.
While he was indeed a war veteran, he actually died in a practice mission in the same Spitfire that he had flown in combat about 4 weeks before.
I too viewed this when young. Included with this was Jan Pierce singing ‘The Bluebird of Happiness’ and then the National anthem. A very uplifting few minutes before bedtime. My wife and I and her parents were dining out when we nostalgically began talking about TV sign offs. My in-laws never heard or saw this beautiful video. Thank you for posting this.
I heard this as a kid. It's still moving. I heard the author volunteered for WWII at 19, and was killed in a mid air collision training accident. He left this piece of himself that lives on like an emotion frozen in time. It makes me think of my young father's time in the AAF in the 1940s, and of all of the young people serving today.
That brave kid was my uncle John. My father's eldest brother.
At that time, I was in college USAF ROTC , aspiring to be a jet fighter pilot. It was a long 5 years, till I finally was flying a supersonic jet. After that, my life has been rushing by, mastering one plane after another.. This video always stops me in my tracks and grabs my emotions and memories of all those years.
Bless you.
Brings a tear to my eye, every time I view it.
The aircraft shown is a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (my favorite of the Century Series).
This poem was the reason I went into aviation in the army. I have never heard any written work that better exemplifies the beauty & feeling of pure exhilaration of flight like this single work.
I also joined army aviation but not for the poem but for the book Jonathan Livingston seagull we all have a reasons for the love of aviation I was a crew chief in the army but later became a pilot on my own.
" High Flight" was written by my uncle - Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee.
thank you for your very kind words. I am deeply touched to know the poem holds such special meaning for you.
I always adored this. They did this version on closing of TV stations. Impressive composition
Always made me teary-eye and still does to this day.
My father's grave stone has the first and last lines of that poem . He was an RCAF Navigator on the CF-100 fighter and CC-119 Boxcar aircraft .
I remember seeing this very same piece on CBC in the late 60's - early 70's!
I am writing a series of stories. One story features a Coast Guard Lieutenant who dies when his rescue red Dolphin goes down during a rescue attemp. At his funeral, the priest read this sonnet instead of a more traditional passage from his bible. Truly inspirational.
I would watch this a young boy in the 70's and I was inspired. I HAD to be a part of that. The USAF changed my life for the better! You get out what you put in.
I grew up seeing this and then the TV has lines in it and signed off. Good ole times. Id sit up just to watch this.
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.
thanks for posting the words!
Amen.
I remember this was the signing off for Channel 5 in Nashville when I was a kid. I never knew until recently that the 19 yr old Spitfire pilot who wrote this poem ( John Magee ), died 3 months later, in 1941.......
Me and you both on this. That was back when TV didn't stay on only after midnight. Me lives in Tennessee too!!!
SAME HERE IN MICHIGAN
Same in Phoenix
@@floydhelms44 Me in Ky.
I remember it as a sign off as a kid in North Little Rock I would see it on Friday nights after dad had let me stay up to watch old horror movies. Became a helicopter pilot in the Army and got to feel it for real.
This brings back the comfort of my childhood.
This is it....no other version even comes close to this !
This is what made the F-104 famous
It’s beautiful and majestic
The Starfighter was an excellent choice to illustrate the superb sonnet.
Beautiful! I was in the Air Force and watched them take off and land! Lovely poetry!
What great memories this brings back, from the 1960's. This is the version I remember as a child as the tv stations in Pittsburgh, PA signed off. Perhaps it should be dedicated to the memory of Neil Armstrong. Good luck on your new journey Mr. Armstrong in a new life. Well never forget you and your "high flight". Al in Pittsburgh.
I take it you saw it on KDKA?
@@jareddicarlo7816 Hi! I can't remember exactly but it was the last thing a station would play before going off the air for the evening. I would say the stations in the Pittsburgh PA area then were 2, 4, 11 and 13. Then UHF channels became available in the late 1960's being 22 and 53. There were also stations 7 and 9 who were in Weirton and Steubenville but maybe not in that order. I believe that "High Flight" may have been played by a few stations over time.
I still play the video every now and then because it gives me a good feeling 🙏🏿
I remember watching the opening of this when I got up at 1 a.m. in the morning and the TV station I was watching was signing off. I believe that it was in the middle of the 1960s.
F-104 Starfighter, light the after-burner and keep it on until the wheels touch the ground again. With a stall speed of 220mph, "low speed fly-by" is not in the 104's vocabulary or it will drop out the sky like a lead brick.
Takes me back to when television went off at night.
beautiful...I am a USAF Brat for 16 years and Active Duty for 4....I heard this daily...and still love it.....thank you for posting.....
Wow, that brought me back. I remember watching Dr. Who late on Friday nights when I was a kid. That video played just before station sign-off (the transmitter was shut down for the night.)
this was the signoff for many tv channels back in the 70's.
+Mark Gailmor and 60s
YUP, WTBS out of Atlanta, Georgia was one.
T-38? Looks like an F-104 Starfighter.
You are correct. The later T-38 version of the sign-off was filmed out of Laughlin AFB, Texas.
“The missile with a man in it.” Fastest thing we had, at one time, not very effective, though.
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
Nothing captures the spirit of this poem better than this video of the beautiful F-104 soaring through the sky
This is the stuff my dreams were made of as I watched the sign off of the public television station station at it's scheduled time. The memory of my childhood is fresh, seeing this, exciting every one of my five senses as fond remembrance flash and flood fills my mind. Melancholy, and wistful those dreams have left me now. Maybe tonight one will revisit. Amen
Very nice... Even better quality than the first video of "Night Flight" I found.
Don't remember this as a TV sign-off (in NYC in the 1970s stations didn't sign off anymore, did they?) but I have loved the poem for years and this is the perfect video accompaniment.
Wonderful memories of seeing this at midnight when one of the local television stations signed off the air (remember when they used to do that?). To be clear, however, your description of the aircraft as a T-38 is absolutely in error. The aircraft shown is in fact a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.
As always, thanks for sharing.
Steve
SO BEAUTIFUL!
This is my favorite version of the sign off. The voice AND the jet-Statfighter
This brings back so many memories Saturday morning’s of tv sign off then what follows is the National anthem geez why do we have to get old. Innocent’s of yesteryear ❤️
Guess Iv'e never seen the T-38 version, This is the one I remember as a kid, Hutchison Kansas.
RIP, Neil Alden Armstrong.
This was the first thing that came to my mind when I heard of his passing.
What came to my mind about his passing is that he was a liar, never did walk on the moon.
@@markstone8915 All astronauts on the Apollo 11 were military veterans. Please take your conspiracy theory BS somewhere.
i always did like this, heard it many times after some late night tv
I remember when this was shown on TV when I was a kid - usually on Canadian TV.
I remember seeing this when the TV stations signed off.
Put out my hands and touched the face of God. Bless our troops.
I can remember watching this in the 1960s in Mobile Alabama
Maybe it did not have the greatest combat or safety record, but damn isnt the F-104 awsome to look at. This video needs to be redone now that we all have HD televisions. The High Flight films that were made in the 70s look like crap compared to this one shot on real film.
I wish they redid this in HD with the F104.
I'm here because Chuck Yeager died tonight, 7 Dec 2020. RIP Chuck Yeager!
Oh yeah this part made me cry and still to this day.
magnificent music,which is in perfect balance with the F-104 in flight
I feel the same.
I agree with mlovmo. There was a tv signoff version that featured the T-38, but this is a Starfighter. I saw them many times when they were in active service, and saw one at the March Air Base museum in Riverside earlier this year.
I know you have to be so honored and so proud of your uncle! Lebanon, TN.
Crooning4Lefovers - This is my absolute favorite poem.
There was an earlier one of a propeller fighter. Never been able to find it.
Its true. All of it. The day you solo, it all becomes real, even if you've never hear the poem, you already know the words.
Great memories, but the aircraft is a F-104, not a T-38.
This poem always gives me goosebumps, especially knowing that the Poet; John Gillespie Magee Jr., an American Pilot serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, died at 19 years old, (12-11-1941) in a training mid-air collision over Lincolnshire, just three months after writing it.
The video doesn't match the description. There is another video that shows a T-38 that was made in 1972. The F-104 version was done in 1960.
The original is a 104. There is one. Here with a T-38 though.
The speaker isn’t close to as good in delivery
There was also one (I guess the last made) with a F-15 Eagle. Been a while, but from what I remember it looks like it was shot on video tape and really horrible when compared with the Star Fighter version that was shot on actual film.
Congratulations Sir Richard
We now conclude our broadcast day.
Dating myself here but as a young kid this was played on the TV channels each night before they signed off for the night.
I remember listening to this late at night at the end of local channel broadcasting before cable, streaming, etc. came out, depending on which channel. Sometimes they would play "You'll Never Walk Alone" by The Lettermen or just play the National Anthem😴
“This concludes our regular programming”. I can’t remember if the National Anthem was before or after High Flight. Either way, the tube was afterwards, “snowy”.
The 4 dislikes are 4 Cold War Commies.
beautiful
That plane took off from Tyndall Air Force Base
That's a F-104 Starfighter not a T-38 but they did make a High Flight with a T-38 later.
Cadets at the US Air Force Academy are required to memorize this poem and recite it from Memory.
WHIO Channel 7 in Dayton,Ohio closed broadcasting day with Star Spangled Banner and High Flight. Better times.😢
My All favorite
Waitaminnit . . .it was in COLOR???? After seeing this a couple of hundred times on TV as the broadcast day started in summertime, it was always in black and white . . .on our TV!
This version was natively in color. (NOT colorized) In those days, however, not all TV was in color, so B&W prints of many commercials and PSAs were sent to stations to save on film lab costs.
And what you're saying to me I believe that came on TV channel 7.
AFN Europe signed off with this before the anthem in the early 1970's.
F-104 the 'Missile with a man in it'.
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 ever eagle flew -
A " Pilot`s Prayer" written by a WW11 fighter pilot.
Is the Air Force Band music to this video available anywhere?
No contrails here.
I remember the 1950s version where F 86 Sabres were the aircraft used.
That's NOT a T-34. It's an F-101 "Starfighter".
Not a T-38. It's a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.
This means it’s time to go to bed.
This is not a T-38, saw enough of them while stationed at Williams AFB. This looks like it would be an F-104 Starfighter.
That is an F-104 Starfighter
The DEI fascists would ban this today!
I AM AN 80 YR. OLD MAN OF GOD WHO LOVES THIS POEM AND VIDEO, MAY I USE IT ON ONE OR MORE OF MY CHANNELS AS A TRIBUTE?