In order to share expenses I foolishly became a the passenger of either one of them as they increased their flying hours and illegally practice dog fights over parts of the countryside and out at sea where no one would report them, they hoped.
Now, that is flying, with the wind in your face rolling sideways over the edges of clouds into a spinning dive hoping like hell the guy at the back knows what he is doing. Realizing how difficult it is to spot anything when your eyes do not have a horizon, the sky looks so vast when you are trying to spot another tiny plane. These biplanes really want to fly, they seem to jump off the ground with their two wings whose lift makes up for their slow speed.
It made one think of that poignant poem, High Flight.
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 windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941