The Surly Bonds of Earth Poster

“Oh I Have Slipped the Surly Bonds of Earth...Put Out My Hand and Touched the Face of God ” is part of the famous quote from ‘High Flight,’ a sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on 11 December 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick. Shown here is a Chance Vought F4U Corsair. It was a carrier-capable fighter aircraft that saw service primarily in World War II and the Korean War. The Corsair served in smaller air forces until the 1960s, following the longest production run of any piston-engined fighter in U.S. history (1942–1952). Some Japanese pilots regarded it as the most formidable American fighter of World War II. The U.S. Navy counted an 11:1 kill ratio with the F4U Corsair. Corsairs served with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, Fleet Air Arm and the Royal New Zealand Air Force, as well as the French Navy Aeronavale and other services postwar.