First there was Band of Brothers. Then The Pacific. And now – *cue stirring martial drumbeat* – comes Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s third small-screen World War II epic. Masters of the Air goes bigger – and higher – than even those two previous depictions of combat. The budget is colossal, the cast is full of established names, with Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Barry Keoghan as headliners, the UK locations are historical in their own right, and the spectacle is unrelenting.
Based on a book by historian Donald L Miller, Masters of the Air follows the men of the United States Army Air Forces’ 100th Bomb Group, based in Norfolk and led into combat by Majors Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven (Butler) and John ‘Bucky’ Egan (Turner). These young American flyers, mostly in their very early twenties and total newbies to high-altitude flying, would clamber aboard their B-17 bombers and proceed at fairly serene speeds over the Third Reich, braving Luftwaffe fighters and constant German flak to drop their bombs. ‘I wanted to tell a story of combat from the perspective of the inside of the plane,’ says Miller, ‘not a Tom Cruise-style story of aerial dogfights. In the bomber war, the major trauma was inside that thin aluminium tube.’
Thanks to their advanced Norden bombsights, the American bombers were usually able to deliver their payloads on – or close to – their targets. But is Masters of the Air as accurate? We asked Miller to talk us through the key questions.
Is Masters of the Air a true story?
Affirmative. All the major characters are based on real American airmen, and special attention was given to researching their stories and accurately representing what they endured. ‘Everything that happens in this, happened in real life,’ says Miller. ‘Every actor plays a real person. War has enough colour and fury and agony to carry itself [with embellishments].
What was ‘The Bloody Hundredth’?
The unit depicted in Masters of the Air – the 100th Bomb Group – flew heavily-gunned, but slow-moving and thinly-skinned B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ bombers from Thorpe Abbotts airfield in East Anglia to targets in Germany from mid-1943 until the end of the war. Its unfortunate nickname was earned over Bremen, Munster and a host of other heavily-defended German cities. ‘There were no foxholes to shelter in or combat medics,’ says Miller of their terrifying task.‘If you reached your fifteenth mission out of 25, statistically, you were a dead man.’
Who was Major John Egan?
The show’s lead is British actor Callum Turner (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), who plays Major John ‘Bucky’ Egan. ‘I urge people to watch Egan’s eyes in the series,’ notes Miller. ‘This guy is a wild man: a heavy-drinking Irishman; chasing women; reckless… you see that gleam in his eyes. Then watch him on a mission and the eyes are almost stationary. There's a deep seriousness – he worries about himself and his nine-person crew.’
What was the most dangerous place on the plane?
‘The pilot, absolutely,’ says Miller of the worst place to be sitting on a B-17 over Germany. ‘Everything was up front in the B-17, so it was the quickest way to disable the plane. Luftwaffe pilots would target the cockpit to cause absolute chaos on the plane.’
What did the bomber crews fear the most?
In the air, peril came in two main guises: anti-aircraft fire from the ground (flak) and fighter attack from (usually) in front. ‘Flak was terrifying in a different way,’ explains Miller. ‘Fighters would bring the men together, working in a coordinated fashion to survive; with flak, they just sat there and took it. One guy described it to me as being like someone strapping you to a chair, sitting in front of you with a shotgun and saying: “I might shoot you or I might not”. What most of them feared was dismemberment. They’re young guys and the idea of being wounded – the genitalia, the face, things like that – drove them crazy.’
How easy was it to escape a burning B-17?
‘Pretty easy,’ says Miller. ‘The hardest was the British Lancaster bomber, which was designed to imprison guys inside. It had a very narrow escape hatch and a lot of men died because they couldn't get out.’
Who does Barry Keoghan play?
The Saltburn star (below) plays the cool-under-fire pilot Lieutenant Curtis Biddick, who has a sideline in bar-fighting RAF men. ‘Our screenwriters picked up on Biddick and put him into the story,’ says Miller. ‘He gets into a bar fight and knocks a guy out with one punch.’
Were downed airmen often murdered in cold blood?
One of the most jarring scenes in Masters of the Air – spoiler warning – comes when a group of downed crewmen is set upon by civilians in a bombed German town. Was this a common occurrence? ‘Not early in the war, but a lot later,’ explains Miller. ‘If you parachuted out close to one of those cities that had been firebombed, you were treated pretty roughly. Goebbels and the Nazis called them ‘terror flyers’ and there were all these crazy myths about them, like that they were organised by the Mafia.’
Who were the Tuskegee Airmen?
Later episodes of Masters of the Air – directed by Mudbound’s Dee Rees – introduce a unit of Black fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, played by Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa (below), Josiah Cross and others. During the war, they flew out of bases in southern Italy, explains Miller, and served as bomber escorts. ‘I've heard some people bitching that we use them and they weren't part of the 100th,’ he says. ‘Well, not everyone in the show is part of the 100th – and they did fly with them on occasional missions.’
Was there segregation in the USAAF?
You don’t have to be especially eagle-eyed to spot that the bomber boys are entirely white. ‘(General of the Air Force) Hap Arnold insisted that no African-Americans fly on bomber crews,’ says Miller. ‘He argued that they wouldn't get along.’ Despite African-Americans representing a tenth of all US servicemen in the war, strict segregation was enforced. ‘[Black soldiers] really had it tough, especially in training in the United States, where they were fired on my white vigilantes. They couldn't even go to the cinemas that German prisoners could go to.’
Was there a rivalry between US and RAF airmen?
The show depicts a testy exchange between RAF and American flyers over a few pints. So, does that reflect a wider rivalry between the two Allied air forces? ‘For the most part, they don't meet that much,’ says Miller. ‘The British flew by night, and the Americans by day; the American bases are located largely south of Norwich and the British are to the north of that.’
How did the men keep going?
Masters of the Air's million dollar question is how the men kept getting back in their planes, day after day, raid after raid, even after watching their friends get killed and with the odds so stacked against them. It was, says Miller, camaraderie that kept them going. 'Not wanting to fail in front of your buddies was a huge factor in keeping them going. Huge. Not wanting to let them down because the bond was so strong. They knew that, without it, they couldn’t survive in the plane.’
How to watch Masters of the Air
The first episode of Masters of the Air streams on Apple TV+ Fri Jan 26. Further episodes land weekly until March 15. Read our review here.
What are critics saying about Masters of the Air?
The critical response has been overwhelmingly positive, with critics praising the production values, action and charismatic cast – as well as the miniseries’ unsparing view of combat in the air. ‘The series is massive, beautifully rendered and a reminder that war is murderous, gruesome and horrifically human,’ writes Variety. ‘A harrowing, sky-bound Band of Brothers’ is Vanity Fair’s verdict, while Slate calls it ‘a beautifully produced, highly detailed show [that’s] like visiting a history museum with an older relative who’s trying to get you interested in a time period they love’.
Not everyone is as up on the show, though. Australia’s The Age also had reservations. ‘The outlook is traditional, but the casualties the American missions took are so staggering that it undercuts the plot,’ writes its TV critic. ‘By trying to tell so many different stories at once, Masters does a disservice to almost all of them,’ concurs Rolling Stone.
‘Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany’ is published by Simon & Schuster.
Where was ‘Masters of the Air’ filmed? The real life filming locations behind Steven Spielberg’s epic on Apple TV+.