Hundreds of Americans joined the Royal Air Force between 1939 and 1942. Most were forced to remain anonymous because of the Neutrality Acts. But facts concerning the lives of some of the volunteers, and what made them decide to leave their own country and go to war, did come to light once they were safely in England.

One of the most famous Yanks in the RAF was Pilot Officer John G. Magee Jr.1 The reason Magee is well known is not because of anything he did as a pilot, however; it is because of a single poem he wrote while in the RAF. The poem, “High Flight,” has been included in many anthologies, as well as in school texts. Probably because of his poetic inclinations, Magee's career in the RAF has been the subject of romantic myth, hazy legend, and general inaccuracy.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was born in Shanghai in 1922. His mother was English; his father was an Episcopalian minister from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. John was an American citizen, but he lived in China until he was nine years old, when his mother took him to England. He attended Rugby, the famous boys’ boarding school, where he discovered the romantic poetry of Rupert Brooke, fell in love, and began to write poetry of his own—not necessarily in that order.

In 1939, when war was clearly imminent, young John was determined to be a pacifist—“That's what Jesus would have wanted,” he wrote to his mother. But his father wrote to him from China and told him about the Japanese brutalities against Chinese civilians. His father's letters convinced John that pacifism was not practical in the war that was soon to come.

Shortly after the war broke out, John visited Pittsburgh; it was only the second time he had ever been to the United States. He had planned to spend the summer with his father's family and then return to Rugby for his final year, but when Britain and France went to war against Germany in September, the State Department determined that John would not leave the country—the neutral United States did not want any of its citizens traveling to a country at war. Unable to get back to England, he was enrolled in the Avon School, near Hartford, Connecticut. John was not happy at Avon, and he was also not at all happy with America's almost militant neutrality. He wanted to return to England, but was prevented by the US authorities.

Before he left England, John had seen the Errol Flynn film The Dawn Patrol, about the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, and “subconsciously determined to be an airman.” On his eighteenth birthday, June 9, 1940, he announced that he had decided to join the RAF.

It took four months, but he did manage to get to Canada and join the RCAF. Eight months later, he received his pilot's wings. During the late summer of 1941, he was posted to an operational Spitfire unit, 412 (Canadian) Squadron. Still, Pilot Officer Magee did not see his first Spitfire until he reached England. While he was completing his training in Spitfires, he wrote the poem “High Flight.” “It started at 30,000 feet and was finished soon after I landed,” he said in a letter.

Magee's first combat took place on November 10, 1941. It was a rough initiation—his squadron lost three pilots, including the commanding officer. Magee did get a “squirt” at a Messerschmitt 109, but made no claim. Number 412 Squadron continued to take its losses; “We have had three squadron leaders in the last month,” Magee wrote.

During a practice flight on December 11, Magee's Spitfire collided with another fighter. Both machines crashed, and both pilots were killed. John Magee was buried in Scopwick Cemetery, near Digby Aerodrome, which is close to the city of Lincoln.

Since his death, a number of legends have emerged concerning John Magee. Many believe that he was a fighter ace—he was not; he is credited with no enemy aircraft destroyed. Some believe that he took part in the Battle of Britain, though he did not see combat until more than a year after the battle had ended. Still others think that he was killed in combat—he was killed in a flying accident.

This is John Gillespie Magee's celebrated and much quoted poem, “High Flight”:

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, or 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.

While John Magee was trying to get to Canada, the United States was still intent upon remaining neutral and staying out of the war. There is no record of anyone ever having been arrested for trying to get into the RAF by way of Canada, but several young men were turned back at the border. The FBI kept a close watch on any Americans crossing the Canadian border, especially young fellows in their twenties.

A couple of Americans who were on their way to the war via Montreal were interrogated when their train was stopped at the frontier.2 The officials who boarded the train were full of questions, but the flyers had the right answers.

“Where are you two fellows going, and why?” the federal agents demanded.

The two fellows decided that, under the circumstances, their best defense was to play dumb. “Who, us? We're just going to Montreal to visit a relative who owns a fish hatchery.”

“Are either of you two guys pilots?”

They never heard of anything so idiotic in their entire lives. “Pilots? You must be nuts! Do we look like pilots?”

The FBI men ignored the question, but they did decide to inspect the baggage of the two travelers. Luckily for the would-be fighter pilots, it was only a cursory inspection—only the top layer of clothing in each suitcase was examined. If the agents had bothered to search underneath, they would have found the evidence they were looking for: flying helmets, goggles, and logbooks.

Satisfied with their luggage and their answers, the two federal agents passed the two Americans and wished them good luck.

The two visitors to Canada would need all the luck they could get in the coming months—they were Red Tobin and Andy Mamedoff. They met Shorty Keough in Montreal. The three of them arrived in France in June 1940 and eventually became the first three members of the new Eagle Squadron.

The border between the United States and Canada is very long, and the FBI could not be everywhere at once. Many, many more Americans slipped past federal agents than were apprehended. Not everyone who made it into the RAF wound up in the cockpit of a Spitfire or a Hurricane, however. The glamour boys of Fighter Command got most of the publicity, but others served with distinction in other commands.

John H. Stickell, from a small town in western Illinois, is one such pilot.3 Stickell flew with RAF Bomber Command and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He became interested in flying when he was a teenager, but his parents would not let him take flying lessons, even though a flying school had just opened in Peoria. He was too young, they told him, and flying was too dangerous.

Stickell did not do anything about becoming a flyer until August 1940. Then, when he was twenty-six years old, he decided to join the Army Air Corps. He passed the medical examination, but was told that he needed at least two years of university education to become a pilot. The Air Corps also gave him a mental exam in November—they told him that he flunked.

It was too late for him to go to school, he explained, so he went to Windsor, Canada, and joined the Canadian Air Force instead. He started his training course in the early part of 1941.

By October 1941, Stickell had been commissioned as a pilot officer in the RCAF and received his wings. Shortly afterwards, he sailed to England and began training in twin-engine Wellington bombers.

For the next phase of his training he was scheduled to begin instruction on four-engine bombers. But on May 30, 1942, Stickell and his crew were ordered to do an operational sortie—they were going to bomb Cologne. Bomber Command were sending over one thousand aircraft to Cologne that night and wanted every airplane that could fly to participate. Stickell flew the same Wellington he had flown during his final training.

Pilot Officer Stickell returned from Cologne with only eight gallons of gasoline left in his Wellington's tanks—enough for only two minutes’ flying. A bursting antiaircraft shell had torn open one of the bomber's fuel tanks. Luckily, the plane did not catch fire.

A gathering of Eagles. Former Eagle Squadron pilots pose for the photographer after returning to England following a brief visit to the United States. All of the pilots wear miniatures of their RAF wings on the right side of their uniform, opposite their silver USAAF wings. Pictured here, left to right, are Major Carroll W. McColpin, Lt. John I. Brown, Capt. Reade Tilley, Maj. William J. Daley, Capt. John J. McClosey, Lt. Dale Taylor, Lt. A. L. Haynes, Capt. Harold Strickland, Lt. Bradford, Capt. Sam A. Mauriello , Lt. George L. Strauss, and Lt. Fred Cullen Smith. (Courtesy of the National Museum of the United States Air Force®.)

Two nights later, Stickell took his Wellington to Essen. This time, the bomber nearly became a victim of a German night fighter—bullets from the fighter shattered the Wellington's instrument panel, and one of the bullets grazed Stickell's sleeve.

Stickell eventually completed his four-engine training, as originally planned, and was assigned to 214 Squadron as pilot of a Short Stirling bomber, B-Beer.

His first trip over Germany at the controls of B-Beer came on July 3, 1942, his twenty-eighth birthday. His last operational sortie was in October of the same year. In between, he had gone on twenty-seven bombing missions: Nuremberg, Bremen Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, and Kassel, among other places. His Stirling was damaged by antiaircraft fire on several occasions. Over Coblenz, his rear-turret gunner was nearly killed by a bursting antiaircraft shell.

By this time, American bomber units were arriving in the British Isles in a fairly steady stream. The Flying Fortress crews were making their presence known on the ground in Britain as much as they were in the sky over Germany. Resentment was beginning to build against the Americans: the cause was mostly money. The Americans were paid several times more than their British counterparts and did not mind showing off their wealth by buying whiskey, cigars, and fancy presents for their British girlfriends—gifts that the British could not afford. This high spending led to bitterness on the part of the British pilots and aircrews. They did not see why the bloody Yanks in the US forces should get so much more money than they were getting paid.

Stickell was annoyed by all the complaining about money and how bloody the Yanks were for having so much of it. “For the first time, there was a note of ill-feeling between himself and the British air force boys.” Stickell tried to convince the RAF that the Americans were not overpaid; he insisted that the RAF—including himself—were being grossly underpaid.

Nobody listened to him at first—it was easier, and more fun, for Britons to knock the Americans than to criticize their own country. But Stickell kept up his line of argument and eventually persuaded them that he was right. The Yanks should not be paid less; they should be paid more.

This was only a small diplomatic triumph in the stormy course of Anglo-American relations. But winning the argument did not get Stickell, or anybody else, an increase in pay. In October, Stickell and his crew were given custody of a new Stirling, K-King, and assigned to a Pathfinder unit. The Pathfinders went in to the target ahead of the main bomber force and lit up the area by dropping flares and firebombs.

Life as a Pathfinder was not any easier than it had been with 214 Squadron. K-King always managed to get back to base, but Stickell saw other Stirlings limp back to the field all shot up, with dead and wounded aboard. It did not take long for him to come to the conclusion that there was absolutely no future in being a Pathfinder pilot. Of the sixty men who completed their training with him, only three were still alive.

Future or not, Stickell flew eighteen trips as a Pathfinder, including two to Berlin. This gave him a total of forty-eight operational missions, which was three more than the Air Ministry allowed. The absolute maximum was forty-five—thirty as an operational pilot and fifteen additional as a Pathfinder.

The RAF planned to ground Stickell and assign him to a training command. Stickell wanted to keep flying operations, but the RAF flatly refused. Stickell decided to transfer to the US forces.

The US Army Air Force offered him a commission as a major and his own Flying Fortress squadron, as soon as one became available. Now that Stickell had the Distinguished Flying Cross and forty-eight combat sorties to his credit, the American authorities were willing to overlook the fact that he did not have a university background. But Stickell had the feeling that the air force planned to keep him on the ground. The US Navy, on the other hand, promised that he could continue flying. So Stickell joined the Navy.

The Navy gave Stickell exactly what he wanted—assignment to an operational bomber unit. After a visit to his home in Illinois, he was posted to an aircraft carrier in the southern Pacific.

On December 12, 1943, Lieutenant Stickell took part in a bombing raid against a Japanese installation in the Gilbert Islands. During the raid, his aircraft was hit by enemy antiaircraft fire. Stickell managed to bring his plane home in spite of being badly wounded. Six days later, he died from his injuries.

Not many people know about John Stickell, either in the United States or in Britain. He made no attempt to conceal his real nationality—when King George presented Stickell with the DFC, he mentioned that he knew Stickell was an American.

There are several reasons why Stickell remains obscure, while many others, with lesser war records, became widely known to the American public. For one thing, he was a bomber pilot. Bomber crews rarely received the publicity accorded fighter pilots—“knights of the air dueling the foe in single combat” makes for more exciting copy than a six-hour round-trip flight to Germany in a Stirling.

Also, Stickell did not begin flying operations until May 1942. By that time, the United States had become involved in the fighting and was mainly interested in hearing about “our boys” in the US forces.

Stickell's motives for joining the RAF were fairly straightforward—he wanted to fly, and the USAAF would not take him. John Magee's reasons are a bit hazier—he felt compelled to defend the land of his heart (as he probably would have put it) and had recently seen Errol Flynn and David Niven battle the beastly Hun in The Dawn Patrol. Magee's reasons are a vague mix of duty and romanticism. The vast majority of the Americans who volunteered for the RAF did not really know why they did it, or at least have not put their motives into words.

Frank A. Roper, who joined the RCAF in November 1940, was one such volunteer. As a pilot officer and a flying officer, Roper completed thirty bombing missions between October 1941 and July 1942, flying four-engine Manchester and Lancaster bombers, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Roper was either the first, or one of the first, Yanks to complete a tour of bomber operations with the RAF.4 But Roper gave no indication of why he decided to go to Canada in the autumn of 1940 when it would have been much easier to stay at home and wait for what the fates, and his local draft board, had in store for him.

Even over a half-century later, the inarticulate boys having turned into old men, the reasons were still difficult to put into words.5 One former Hurricane and Spitfire pilot, who lived in semi-retirement in New Jersey for many years, was embarrassed when he was asked his motives. He did not know why and said that it all had happened fifty years before anyway—he supposed that he was just too young and stupid to know any better.

Another volunteer probably came closer to reflecting the motives of his fellow volunteers with his reply. He said that he did not really know why any of them went. Part of it was for romantic reasons—going off to the wars and joining a foreign air force. There were mercenary reasons, as well—he had always paid for flying lessons, and now someone was going to pay him to fly.

The old former pilot explained, very quietly, that he was very young at the time and not very bright, and he might have joined the British air force for any number of reasons. But whatever his reasons, he was glad that he went. By the time he left the RAF in 1943, he hoped that he had made a difference.