Very long flights in absolute cold. The dark sky was covered by the light sabers of the searchlights and then suddenly the dark hammering of the 88 and 105 millimeter guns of the Flak, the German anti-aircraft cannon. The explosions turn the sky into a field of deadly shrapnel. But the silence afterwards is even worse. The flak is silent as the fighters arrive and hunt the bombers like a pack of wolves a flock of sheep. To defend themselves, the slow and large B-17s line up closely together, forming a fighting box that desperately fires bullets in all directions from the onboard machine guns. This is the hellish existence that Allied pilots led as they fired their death rockets over German cities. One flight after another, the other planes crashing, counting the missions that separated them from returning home. And yes, also aware that their bombs turned German cities into huge bonfires in which innocent civilians and the Allied prisoners themselves, caught up in Nazi madness, also died.
It is precisely these lives on the edge that are told in the new series that has now landed on Apple TV+: Masters of the Air. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, it is the third chapter of an ideal trilogy that began with Band of Brothers and The Pacific, a tribute to the American fighters of the Second World War. This third project, the first in the streaming era, has a production budget of $300 million, an exorbitant cast that includes Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan and Callum Turner, and a directing team led by Cary Fukunaga, writer of the first (very popular) season of True Detective, who directed the first four episodes of Masters of the Air.
Let's move on to the plot, which follows the events of the 100th Bombardment Group, which became famous during the war as the “Bloody 100th” precisely because of the huge losses suffered by its B-17 crews during combat missions. The series is based on a linear narrative and in many passages refers to two great classics of the genre such as the film “Memphis Belle” and the more recent film “Red Tails”. It begins by introducing a handful of characters with all the hallmarks of the heroic aviator. The two leaders of the group, Buck (Austin Butler) and Bucky (Callum Turner), stand out among them all. The first is idealistic and romantic, the second is the classic heartthrob pilot who doesn't care about the rules. The fact that Austin Butler/Buck is a sort of clone of Val Kilmer/Iceman from the much sloppier Top Gun doesn't hurt the narrative.
For the rest, what can I say: the reconstruction of the dynamics of the missions, the characteristics of the devices, the difficulties of the navigators who had to orientate themselves in the clouds by manual navigation with the map, the violence and the speed of combat is practically perfect. Fans of the genre will have little objection to this.
The best thing to do is to alternate the stress of the flight with the boredom or joyful exuberance of the moments on the ground. There has always been a kind of double life around airfields. As specialized fighters far more cosseted by orders than simple infantrymen, airmen have always lived in a kind of heroic bubble. Every return to land is a celebration. A constant fluctuation between the hell in the sky – in B-17 planes you often risked being burned alive while the plane crashed in flames – and the little paradise on earth of the English villages, where the aviators became fallen angels to the locals Babes became. The desperate joy, the airsickness, the camaraderie, the suffocating cold of the rear machine gunner's position: the series tells almost everything well.
It also manages well to be a choral story, with the only limitation perhaps being that the very large number of characters makes it difficult for the viewer to develop empathy for any particular character. It's also a good idea to talk about the side on the ground in the bombed areas, thanks to the airmen who crashed and were captured by the Germans. In short, to find a comparison with this series you have to go to an absolute gem like “The Black Sheep Squadron”, produced in the 70s by Donald P. Bellisario. But Masters of the Air has all the benefits of 21st century budget and technology. The result is an amazing narrative, thanks in part to the stellar cast, even if it isn't innovative in its storytelling styles.