The sky-high probability of dying while crewing a USAAF bomber during World War II has inspired a variety of screen treatments. Just after the war, Gregory Peck was whipping a low-morale unit into shape in 12 O’Clock High, a gritty response to the propaganda films that preceded it. In 1970, the film of the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – a past B-25 bombardier like his fretful lead character Yosarian – was part of a wave of irreverent Hollywood anti-war films in the Vietnam era. It was revived as a George Clooney-helmed television series in 2020.
In his 1985 Amazing Stories anthology, Steven Spielberg wrote and directed The Mission, a story of life-or-death peril for a gunner aboard a B-17 which leapt into fantasy, as did NZ director Roseanne Liang, who made a Flying Fortress an aerial house of horror in her 2020 feature Shadow in the Cloud.
And, of course, 1990 film Memphis Belle focused on the most famous B-17 as its crew reached the milestone of 25 missions over Germany unscathed.
Now, there is Masters of the Air, a nine-episode miniseries with an estimated US$250-300 million budget, making it the most expensive warbird drama in screen history. It’s the belated third of the Steve Spielberg-Tom Hanks-produced WWII trilogy after 2001′s Band of Brothers and 2010′s The Pacific. They were both HBO productions but this time Apple TV+ has picked up the tab.
Like the early shows, it’s based on a book – Donald L Miller’s 2007 Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. And like its predecessors, it focuses, mostly, on one unit’s war. Eight of the nine episodes follow the 100th Bomb Group, which, like all UK-based Allied bomber squadrons, suffered massive losses. In his book, Miller pondered the flawed strategy of sending thousands of inexperienced American airmen in vulnerable planes to demolish Nazi Germany, but the series isn’t much bothered with those questions.
Ticking a diversity box, it does feature another USAAF unit. The penultimate episode follows a couple of African American fighter pilots from the segregated “Tuskegee Airmen” squadron. In their red-tailed P-51 Mustangs, they often flew as long-range escorts to bombers, the all-white crews of which they were barred from joining.
Starring in that one-off episode is the new Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa, one of a number of British and Irish actors playing real US flyers. Among the main 100th Bomb Group cast are Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), Callum Turner (The Capture), and Raff Law (the son of Jude Law). The biggest American star is Elvis himself, Austin Butler. “Bombardier, it’s now or never …” is surely a line the show’s writers at least considered. He may be too sexy for his oxygen mask at any altitude, but Butler is good as Major Gale “Bucky” Cleven, whose friendship with Turner’s wildcard, Major John “Buck” Egan, is its own camaraderie drama throughout.
Like all military history shows, Masters of the Air will get some, ah, flak for accuracy – like, wasn’t there another air force also flying out of England and covering the night shift? If you’re a waist gunner at a very draughty open window higher than Everest, maybe goggles might help the aiming? Would those adorable local English village children be allowed to always be hanging around the 100th’s ground crew, the ones dealing with high explosives and avgas? And with apologies to the Blitz evacuees among them, don’t they have homes to go to?
For all its budget, its computer-generated air battle action is suspension-of-disbelief required and just okay. But it’s as much a character-driven drama and following the ensemble inside the planes or back on terra firma is where Masters of the Air earns its wings.
Yes, like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, it’s another “Greatest Generation” homage, one that ends up waving the stars and stripes in such a way that it makes Memphis Belle look like Catch-22 by comparison. But like Band of Brothers and The Pacific, it makes America’s WWII hellishly entertaining and exciting, all over again.
Masters of the Air: Streaming Apple TV+ from January 26.
