RIP Carolyn Grace

This lovely and amazing woman, legendary in the Warbirds community, has died in a car crash near Canberra in Australia.

Tragically, this is just what happened to her husband 34 years ago, soon after he had finished restoring what then became known as the 'Grace Spitfire'. His widow, already a qualified pilot, went on to learn to fly this beautiful aircraft and indeed demonstrated it at airshows over the years.

This poem, by Spitfire pilot John Gillespie Magee (died 1941) I think probably sums up how Grace felt about flying the Spitfire and, by chance, even uses her name in the verse

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.