Masters of the Air

I have been watching the newest Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks World War II based production, Masters of the Air. It's on Apple Plus. It's considered a sequel to the mostly infantry based Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

It portrays the only time the U.S. military service that became the U.S Air Force engaged in operations that resulted in high casualties. Even World War I didn't match what the bomber groups endured over Europe.

The daytime raids that those airmen conducted were harrowing, and for about a year, the chances of making through that time alive was low until enough fighters were built that had the range to escort those bombers to their targets in Germany, and other parts of German occupied Europe.

But I have some problems with their focus, and I also have problems with what was likely accurate portrayals of those airmen.

As I write this, episodes 1-6 have been released, with two more episodes to go.

First, I have a problem with their focus on officers versus the enlisted men that also crewed those bombers. When they flew on their missions, the enlisted crews are shown fighting alongside the officers and taking their share of casualties. But when they're off duty, we see the officers, the pilots, the bombardiers, and navigators at their officer's clubs partying away, without showing the enlisted men in their clubs. It blurs the different treatments of those two classes. They do the enlisted men who also fought in the skies a disservice. There is some focus on the maintenance crews (or more specifically a particular maintenance chief) but even there, we don't see what he does on his off time. A portrayal of how the maintenance crews at the NCO club mixed with the enlisted men who flew on the bombers might give us a different perspective as well. And perhaps, though they did go to the same clubs, they didn't mix.

Today's Air Force has few enlisted men who go into actual combat. The bomber crews of World War II are really an exception, when you compare the U.S. Air Force's history as a whole. Again, going back to World War I, the air force of the time (the Army Air Corps) consisted of mostly fighter pilots, and the bombers of today's Air Force don't have large crews, which now consist entirely of officers. (A B52 is crewed by 5 officers, no enlisted.) The Air Force does have some rotary wing aircraft that includes enlisted gunners, but mostly those are operated by the Army more than the Air Force. And perhaps that reality today influenced the portrayals in Masters.

Another aspect the series portrays, probably accurately, is how pampered the officers were compared to their Army counterparts on the ground, whether infantry or armor (tanks).

We see pilots – well, combat officers – taken offline and sent to a resort like facility with psychiatrists, to recover. Perhaps some combat enlisted were allowed there, but I doubt it. And while ground combat personnel had their own rest and recovery (R&R) areas, they weren't like that.

The fact is, while those bomber group personnel had it tough – knowing their odds of not coming back from a mission were not trivial and with multiple missions the odds stacked up against them – if they did make it back, they had hot food, alcohol, and a warm cot waiting for them.

Ground personnel had cold rations, mud, and a sleeping bag when they got back.

I've never been in combat, and I am grateful I haven't. And despite my reservations, I have admiration for those men, just as I do their ground based counterparts. But there is a big difference in how they were treated.

The series kind of blurs that difference too.