A long-in-the-making follow-up to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, the latest World War II TV epic from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, Masters of the Air, tells the story of US bomber crews risking life and limb over Nazi Germany in the final two years of the conflict. It’s everything you’d expect: huge in scale, full of blistering action, and scrupulously authentic in its history and depiction of combat. It is, in short, terrific viewing and it will only deliver further airborne mayhem on a weekly basis between now and late March.
As charted in more granular historic detail in Donald L Miller’s account of the story, ‘Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany’, the men in the miniseries fought their war from the countryside of Norfolk – specifically Thorpe Abbotts, an airfield about 40 miles south of Norwich. The old base is now a museum to their unit, the 100th Bomb Group, so the show’s producers had to recreate it – and the war – elsewhere in England...
Where was Masters of the Air filmed?
The lion’s share of Masters of the Air takes place either in the perilous skies above occupied Europe or back at the 100th Bomb Group’s Norfolk airfield, Thorpe Abbotts. The actual Thorpe Abbotts is now the site of the 100th Bomb Group Memorial Museum, a trove of reference materials and artefacts for the show’s researchers to draw from.
The base was reconstructed from scratch using photo references at the former RAF Abingdon – now Dalton Barracks – in Oxfordshire. ‘We found an old runway at the RAF Abingdon station in Oxfordshire for the taxiing shots and to stage the control tower,’ says production designer Chris Seagers. “And then we found a piece of land closer to the studio (Symmetry Studios in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire) in Newland Park where all the huts and main camp were built.’
The runway and taxiways at Abingdon have an almost identical relationship to those of the real Thorpe Abbotts, adding to the show’s historical accuracy.
Thorpe Abbotts’ Nissan huts, from which the airman set off for missions and returned for post-flight debriefing sessions, were constructed and filmed at Buckinghamshire’s Newland Park – along with the base’s command center, hospital, chapel, officers’ club and mess hall – over three months.
While Newland, just outside London, is hardly deep countryside, its rural feel worked for the show. ‘When all these air bases were built in England for the war, they were in the middle of farming communities that maybe had a tractor, but more likely just horses and plows,’ says Seagers. ‘These planes probably seemed like spaceships that were invading their communities.’
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Who’s in the cast?
Headlining the cast are Austin Butler and Fantastic Beasts’ Callum Turner as buddies and fellow Eighth Air Force pilots Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven and John ‘Bucky’ Egan respectively. Also suiting up to take to the skies are Banshees of Inisherin’s Barry Keoghan, Anthony Boyle (Kevin Murdoch in Tetris), while Stephen Campbell Moore (The Lady in the Van), James Murray, Raff Law and Bel Powley adds to the show’s Brit contingent.
How can I watch Masters of the Air?
The first two episodes are streaming on Apple TV+ now, with additional episodes landing every Friday until March 15. There are nine in all.
How historically accurate is Masters of the Air? The historian behind it explains.
Review: the masterful ‘Masters of the Air’ is Spielberg-sized television.