...The nearest the non-pilot will ever get to what it felt like to sit alone in the cockpit of a Spit is a poem by John Gillespie Magee, a Scots-Irish American who came to Britain in 1941 to fight the Nazis:
“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-lit clouds - and done a hundred things;
“You have not dreamed of…
“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.”
On 11 December, 1941, Magee was killed when his parachute failed to open. He was 19. At a time when the RAF is being cut to shreds, we should remember the Spit. But we should also remember the men and women who built it and flew it.
I think President Reagan recited that Poem in his speech following the Challenger disaster.