Is *MASTERS OF THE AIR* good??? | Ep 1 Reaction 

THE FULL SERIES OF BAND OF BROTHERS IS AVAILABLE ON PATREON 😄 (I swear I didn't start this without watching BoB 😜)

Band of Brothers was written by Stephen Ambrose, who interviewed the veterans of Easy Company. He wrote another book called Wild Blue, which detailed the missions of the 15th Air Force, based in Italy. He said the differences between the interviewee's was in the details. The Infantrymen could recall specific days and relate them to places and people. Where the airmen were concerned , one flight was much the same as another, but where their descriptions were most vivid was in their recollections of the flak, the silence before the fighters came in, and the cold. The jarring disconnect between being in the thick of a bombing mission and then landing back at a safe haven, with comfortable beds, hot food, and a pub down the road, was very different to the experiences of your typical infantryman, but no less traumatic.

The thing to remember about Band of Brothers, Pacific, and Masters of the Air is that all these theaters of war are unique to one another. They are telling real human stories, and yes, it's the same war, but arguably, the island hopping in the Pacific, the land war in Band of Brothers, and the fighting in the air in the air war in Europe are all very different. The challenges of each theater of war were very different. The life expectancy of a bomber crew in Europe was virtually nonexistent. Think how brave these men were knowing chances are they were not coming home.

The bombs were dropped in the sea as a safety precaution. All it would take was a bomb being dislodged on landing and not only would they lose the crew, but they'd also leave the runway unusable until the crater could be filled in and tarmacked over.

One of my favorite actors, Jimmy Stewart, was a bomber pilot during WW2. He was not drafted but enlisted. He suffered from PTSD after the war & while filming IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. He retired as a General.

I work at the American National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was able to meet the author of Master of the Air, Donald Miller, since he is one of the museum's house authors. He is a VERY profound intellectual. I will never forget that he once told me that "you can't fight a war without love," and that has stuck with me ever since. You can't fight in a war without the love for your brothers in arms, the people that you spend seemingly countless haunting hours in these B-17 bombers, the people that you spend cold nights living in tiny foxholes hoping that you dont get blown up by artillary; the love for the people that count on you to get out alive and vice versa.

The large breakfast before missions also had a practical purpose. The crew's mission could last more than 8 hours, so they would need the extra energy. Because the cabins were unpressurized, (with temperatures reaching about -40F) they really couldn't bring any food with them besides a bit of candy.

I was an aircraft electrician in the USAF. "Gremlins" are the mysterious electrical, hydraulic, mechanical etc. errors that can happen on a sophisticated machine like a B17 bomber. They pop up and sometimes disappear and they can be frustrating as hell to diagnose. I once had to try to figure out a flickering battery light in an F-16 that would only happen when the jet was flying. We finally found a bad pin/wire connection after about 2 weeks of troubleshooting. The reason they dumped their unused bombs into the English Channel is for safety reasons. These planes were shot up and adding an explosive bomb load to what might be a rough, dangerous landing just isn't something an airfield with more people, ordinance and aircraft really need. The danger is too great.

Being the gunner of that ball turret was the baddest job you can have, that space was so cramped that the gunner can't even wear a parachute, just a seatbelt, that's all that prevent him from falling to his death if the ball was hit by flak or by an ennemy fighter!

It's crazy when you realize these bomber crews weren't 30 or 40 year old men, but ranged in age from 18 to around 25 years old. I believe the average age of a B-17 pilot was 21! Just insane, what an incredible generation.

You should also watch the 1990 film "Memphis Belle" which the story of the 1st B-17 crew to complete their tour of duty of 25 missions.

21:06 the man getting in that bubble is what was called a ball turret gunner. Bomber crews had a short life expectancy but a ball turret gunner’s was even shorter. My grandfather was a ball turret gunner, he got injured in some off base incident (that he said was one thing but my grandmother said was a drunken fall he didn’t like to admit to). He flew 2 missions and then was sidelined for a while for the injury. Planes were getting damaged at a remarkable rate and he was approached by an officer that was over the aircraft repair at that air base because my grandfather had been an apprentice machinist on the railroad and mechanic before the war. Had it not been for that officer wanting his experience to help repair planes I might not exist. Not many of his buddies from the B-17 crews survived the war.

Low Low position is part of a formation known as a combat box. The lead element, the high element, the low element and the low low element. It's designed so that the planes have overlapping fields of fire and can mutually support one another, but it is dependent of staying together in a tight formation. This shows how en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_box Also, the unused bombs would have been ditched in the Channel because the B-17 wasn't designed to be landing with 6000lbs extra weight. Any damage the plane may sustain in the raid means that landings may not go the way you want and you don't want to be doing that with a full bomb load.

There is a reason why the training stage was, largely, skipped. All of the individual crew wrre trained as separate roles in widely separate bases:, Gunners as Gunners, pilots and Co pilots as those roles, navigators etc so when a crew was assembled for deployment training that was almost always the first time they would meet as a crew. They had to build the teamwork from that meeting and final training, then we're sent to Europe and thrown in at the deep end....

There are two really neat things with this series. The first is that they built 2 full sized B-17s for the show and had them on hydraulic struts. The second is that rather than green screens on the windows, they had a massive LED panel backdrop showing the flack and enemy planes. The actors reactions are so good because they are really reacting to the planes pitching, enemy fighters daring by, and flak going off around them.

Gremlins is how aviators describe any anomaly problems in an aircraft Edit; they have to ditch the bombs at sea for fuel composition

During Desert Storm we maintenance guys also waved at the planes as they took off for a mission and sweated out the time they were gone and counted the planes as they came back hoping they all made it back.

I'm currently reading the book, and watched a few documentaries on this specific bomb group. What's interesting is that they weren't considered the best or most decorated or suffered the most casualties like Easy Company in Band of Brothers, the 100th Bomb group was actually very "average". I think the reason why the spotlight is on them is because out of all the bomb groups, the 100th had the most complete and detailed written history about them. That detailed history was made possible with the help of Crozby, the air sick navigator. He not only wrote a detailed autobiography called "A Wing and a Prayer", but he also became the 100th Bomb Groups historian. Buckle up and grab the tissues though. There's a reason why the group's nickname was "The Bloody Hundredth". Out of the original 350 air crew, only an estimated 50 men survive the war..

A quick note that may help put the experiences of the crews in perspective, more airmen from the 8th Air Force (those flying from England) were killed during the war than the entire Marine Corps, losing 26,000 airmen. Regarding the Top Gun, and looking at aviators historically, I recommend the movie "Devotion" (2022), about Jesse Brown (the first black naval aviator) during the Korean War

3 of my Uncles on my Mom's side fought in WWII. One landed on D-day and was blown out of his landing craft before he hit the beach. The other got lucky and was a meteorologist in Ireland. The other was a bomb loader in the 100th. Uncle Jim saw more blood and gore in 3 years as a bomb loader than I care to think about....and refused to talk about it once. Only learned what he went through reading his diary.

Something to pay attention to in all the episodes is the superstitions and lucky items the crew have. You saw the salt in this episode and the lucky deuce ($2 bill) before the mission. One of the 8th AF veterans said that to fly with the 8th is to have a ticket to your own funeral. So, anything that would bring luck was brought up by the crews.

FWIW, The US Army Air Force had over 20 separate Airforces in its ranks, from The First AF, Second and so on. Some were Stateside for hone defense and others ran the training programs. The 8th AF was one of 2 stationed in the UK, the other was the 9th, a tactical Airforce. On terms of what to expect, between 1942 and June of 1945 the 8th AF ALONE, lost more men in combat that the Entire US Marine Corps lost in the whole campaign against Japan in the Pacific.

The planes these guys are in, B-17s, were notorious for being able to return home after being half destroyed and missing critical components. The reliability of this aircraft to get its crew home safely in the 1940s after being shot up really eases my mind when flying on modern commercial aircraft.

I also had two huskies growing up in the same pattern you had. Mother was all white, her son was black and white. Luna and Noche were their names.

Omg I’m loving your reaction to this show SO much!! As a someone else who studied film in school and works in photo and video for a living, I can totally relate and loved you gushing over the beauty of the shots and editing. Just superb. That’s what absolutely sold this series to me! (And yes, your articulation made total sense to me haha). I also really appreciate your opinion from the get-go on the difference in series! BoB and MoA are two different shows, story-wise and production-wise! Most reactors tend to try and compare them but it’s like apples to oranges. Personally I was drawn into Masters of the Air more quickly just because of the production, but ultimately love both for different reasons!

I love your input being a film student, your views are interesting and eye opening Looking forward to your reactions/input/viewpoint on this series, very much so

I am reading the book "Masters of the Air," and am struck by the fact that the American concept of Daylight Precision Bombing was accepted as dogma by the men who ran the US Army Air Force before an airplane capable of carrying 4000 pounds of bombs a long way was even designed, let alone built. I also find it fascinating that the four men at the top of the Army Air Force were the first 4 licensed pilots at West Point, and that some of them had learned to fly at the Wright Brothers' flying school in Dayton, Ohio before or during World War 1.

When you do your reaction to "Memphis Bell" remember this part 13:42, about not being able to land with all your wheels down. It gets demonstrated very clearly near the beginning of the film. Some great cinematography when they filmed that particular scene.

One brutal detail when they got hit by the german fighters is the head-on attacks by german planes. As previously mentioned the B17 is protected by .50 caliber machine guns on all sides. It is however less protected from the front, which led Luftwaffe pilots to fire bursts of autocanon fire through the front which would pierce the glass, kill the pilots and sometimes continue through the planes fuselage causing massive damage. This show is up there with BoB and The Pacific in my book, great reaction!

Hey Young Lady, My Grandfather was a navigator on a B-17 in the 97 Bomb Group and I did not even know till I was in my late 30's. he passed away in 2001. My Grandmother said he never talked about it and I finally got him to, he lost 3 guys on his first mission over France in 1942. He said it never got better. He said it was so cold up there and most of the time his heated underwear didn't work. My Grandfather was 19, he said his pilot was 22. Can you imagine??? Looking at these college kids NOW doing something like this???

There's a great classic Gregory Peck film, Twelve O'Clock High (1949), about the B-17 crews - when I was a new lieutenant in the Marine Corps, our instructors showed it as the lead-in to classes on leadership under stress. I watched it with my parents. My stepfather, who was a World War II veteran, was silent. When one of the B-17s went down my mother turned to me, looking anxious, and asked, "How many men was that, anyway? Four? Five?" I shook my head and told her, "Ten." She was aghast. The highest casualties among all the U.S. armed forces in that war were among the Marines in the Pacific, the bomber crews in Europe, and the submarine crews. It awes me that even after they knew exactly what they were heading into, those guys went ahead and did it, mostly because they didn't want to let down their friends.

17:09 - 'the Wing' basically means every individual unit under the same commander stationed at the same airbase. The three different altitudes that the bombers will fly are to insure that anti-aircraft fire from the ground won't be able to stop them all - back then the guns on the ground had to mechanically reset how high up their shells would explode, and that took a lot of time to do. "Low-low" means the fliers on the bottom of the formation. Easier to see, easier to shoot. But also usually the first to identify the target and let everyone else know they'd arrived. I'm about to turn 62yrs old. The middle-aged fathers of teens on my street when I was a child were these WW2 veterans. After you finish all the modern WW2 stuff (I'm also a fan of BoB and 'The Pacific'), check out "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) if you haven't done it yet. It's monochrome, but magnificent. The guys I knew didn't talk much about the war, but often mentioned what a PITA it was coming back home after it was over.

The standard bomber formation had weak and strong points. The "low" position was more vulnerable to flak and enemy fighters so crews dreaded being assigned to it. The worst position was nicknamed Coffin Corner. The Colonel has a bad ulcer which is why he is puking blood and is drinking milk trying to calm it down. This series shows a much different war experience than Band of Brothers. While in the field the soldiers of Easy Company had to live in dirt, cold and the constant danger of being shot at. The aircrews would fly for half a day and then return to warm food, hot showers and could spend their nights partying. At the same time, Easy Company had 65 casualties during the three weeks of the Normandy Campaign. As we see in this episode the 100the Bomber group could have 30 men killed in the span of a few minutes and this was not even a "bad" mission.

must have been so terrifying now only being so high up in the air but having to deal with German fighters and flak fire. True heroes.

Just think every B-17 had a10 man crew if they went down and couldn't bail out thats 10 men!

I enjoy your comments on the film making. As someone who is much more interested in the history I am thankful to Hanks and crew for keeping these stories alive, I learn things I did not know listening to you. These airmen took higher casualties than the Marine Corps in the Pacific which is rather stunning. So you know, the organization consisted of a Bomber Wing with 3 or 4 Bomb Groups composed of 3 or 4 bomber squadrons with as many as 12 aircraft in each. It was possible to have 100 planes in the entire wing. During the briefing in this episode I believe the CO explains they would be hitting their target with a Wing strength of 78 planes. Anyway, keep up the good work.

It's wild how close people are to this war still. One of my close friends, his grandfather was the navigator on the Enola Gay, my grandfather Drove a tank in the pacific theater, one great uncle a marine in the pacific theater and another great uncle that did his maximum missions in a B-17 in the Atlantic theater.

If you’ve seen the Yellowstone prequel 1893, that’s Elsa, “Lightning with the Yellow Hair” in the opening scene.

To give an idea how tough the B-17s were built, and how well they were regarded by the guys who crewed them, after the war, many of the aircrews who flew them refused to fly in any plane that wasn't built by Boeing.

Recently stumbled on your channel, watched you first few band of brothers and this, really appreciate the reactions highlighting the cinematic elements of things not just the story reactions that so many others do.. its educational and will be changing the way i will watch stuff going forward forsure myself

The key thing to remember is an air combat in World War II. The ammunition is designed to either to compromise physical structure plane, say a wing spa, the thing that attaches a wing to the plane or to go into an engine. So imagine such a round hitting a person. The upside was if you got home you had a bed and a warm meal. If you were on mission there was no medic or aid station nearby to help you.

Loved this review, Jacqui! I think you're spot on about the reverence and the weight of the show. Can't wait to see your reaction to Ep 2!

At the peak of production during the war 16 B-!7s were completed and rolled of the assembly daily. Over all !2,000 17s were built by Boeing during the war .A tribute to The men and women working in factories on the Homefront. Much of the work was done by women working in the factories, they were so good they got the famous name Rosie the Riveter'.

The military has a habit of paring bad news with good food (with good being debatable). Deployment extended, missing a port for operational commitments, leave being cancelled, or something just as depressing, but you get Surf and Turf for dinner. Yay! We had ice cream socials regularly so it wasn't included in the "good" meal + bad news category.

Not to compare myself to the heroes these actors are portraying, or to compare the situations because they were not the same, but I did fly as aircrew in Afghanistan, and I recognize so many things in my experience

One reason aircrew casualties were so high was the lack of escort fighters. The majority of the 8th Air Force's fighters were reallocated to the Mediterranean Theater, leaving the bombers vulnerable to enemy fighters. Once the D model of the P-51 Mustang was around in significant numbers did the Air Force have a good escort fighter that could go all the way with the bombers and back at altitude and superior to its German counterparts.

One of the details I really like is how damaged the B17s are when they get back. The bomber was known to handle immense battle damage and still fly. The other reason they were called the Flying Fortress. The blond actress in the beginning is played by Isabel May, who is one of the main characters in 1883 (Yellowstone Prequel), another series you'd likely enjoy.

If, for any reason, a mission is scrubbed, the SOP was to drop the bombs over open water like the North Sea or English Channel. One of the Bombardier's jobs enroute was to remove the safety tags on the bombs, arming them. Removing tags was easier than replacing them, which theoretically may not re-engage the safety lock. Once removed, the bombs could explode if hit or dropped. Would you feel safe landing a 10 ton aircraft loaded with 8 tons of armed bombs - Especially if it was damaged??

Just recently found out that Jimmy Stewart forced himself onto a B-17 as a pilot, instead of doing the PR campaign that the studio had set up for him. He returned from the war with severe PTSD, which he apparently worked through onscreen in It’s A Wonderful Life.

Aircraft crash landings are potentially explosive. I responded to one during my time as a linemen at KIGQ as a teenager. Low-wing aircraft landed, then veered off the runway into a drainage ditch. 2 carloads of mechanics and other linemen rushed there with fire extinguishers and prybars. Both wing tanks had ruptured and were pouring fuel around both sides of the cabin. The pilot and passenger were unhurt and managed to get free of the wreck before any fire took place though. They don't always end that well, unfortunately.

My late father-in-law was a side gunner on a B-24 Liberator. He enlisted right after Pearl Harbor and served from 1942 to the end of the war. He signed back up after completing the required missions according to Ann, his wife. All he ever said to me was, "Be grateful you never had to see what a 20mm cannon shell from a Bf109 did to s man." God must have been with him as he got through 3 years of war without a scratch or being shot down. After the war, Jim went to work for GE. Jim became a Lay Preacher in his Baptist Church. He never suffered from PTSD, only bad dreams that dissipated with time (according to Ann). They had a biological daughter and adopted a brother and sister (my wife). Joe, her brother was killed in an auto accident when both were in their teens. Ann said that Joe's death was harder on Jim than the war. Jim was a kind and generous man that was devoted to his family. He came from a family of 7 kids. During the Great Depression he cut and split wood to help support his parents and brothers and sisters. Both Ann & Jim are gone from us and I find the world a more empty without them. They were married for 69 years, with Jim dying 2 years after Ann. Jim was a hero in my eyes; not because he fought in the war but for the life he led.....a true Christian. RIP Jim & Ann.

Interrogation was debriefing, but also critical to intelligence gathering and future mission planning. Interrogation is where things like flak (anti-aircraft fire) and fighter attack tactics.

They dump their bombs, even if the mission get scrubbed, because landing overweight is dangerous. It's why, when a commercial airliner has a problem that requires it to land early, they will dump fuel. It's basically safety. It's assumed that when they come back, the weight of the bombs will be gone, along with the spent fuel.

Yup, majestic indeed. You should see them for real, you'd see why it's shot that way, it's just what it looks like but more powerful in person. It's a real living legend. And yes you got it! Interrogation is basically the debrief, all the crews are asked about details on the mission. From flak locations, fighters, fighter types, what they saw, what planes they saw shot down, how many parachutes they saw, a lot of details and questions are asked. You can only imagine if it was a bad mission, how tough it would be to relive the entire thing afterward.

Very good review! You had so many interesting observations on the various aspects like camera, light, music, that I hadn't noted when I watched it. Very insightful, thank you.

If you like these series you should also really consider adding the HBO miniseries "From The Earth To The Moon" to your list, it's another Tom Hanks produced show and it's extremely well done. It's about the Apollo moon program but you don't need to be a space geek to appreciate it, they make it accessible to a general audience.

The 8th air force lost over 26,000 crew men, more than the Marines lost in the Pacific campaign. -50 and 5 Miles up! And the German fighter the "Focke Wolfe 190" was Nick named the "Butcher Bird " for a reason.when you see there wingtips twinkle, that means there is a quarter pound of lead coming at you ! Honor those brave bomber boys!! It's not the band of brothers,not the Pacific, it is the Air war, with high attrition rates.

You always dump the bomb load if the mission is scrubbed (1) it reduces weight and conserves fuel but critically (2) in the event of needing to crash land it means you do not belly land in a damaged plane with several hundred kilos of high explosive sitting on the bottom of the aircraft. So they usually would dump the bomb load in the ocean (in this case the Channel) where it was very unlikely to do damage to anyone (except maybe a very unlucky fisherman or maybe you luck out and accidentally hit a German E-Boat patrol.

They drop the bombs in the channel because it’s too dangerous to try and land with the bombs still in the airplane. Also, the significant weight of the bombs requires a lot of additional fuel use, so if they can’t drop them on the target, they dump them on the way back.

30:42 One thing that will be missing from this is the eyewitnesses, especially the veterans. Twenty five years ago almost, when Band of Brothers was filmed, the veterans being portrayed were in their seventies and eighties. Now, if they are alive, they are nearly 100 years old. Easy Company is gone. The last survivor died in the summer of 2022.

Hi Jacqui, it's great you've started this brilliant new war series, yes it is good... Very good, so far. And is set to get even better. It's fantastic you're reacting to aerial warfare and seeing war from an aerial perspective - it's a sub genre that gets tragically overlooked on youtube. War is also very much fought in the air but land war has gotten all the attention/glory in recent years. Quite befuddling really, considering it's all the same thing. And it's awesome to see a few reactors reacting to this in the last few days :) I rate it above band of brothers and the pacific. Air war is my thing, it's so much more exciting and entertaining to watch than land based warfare. I'm looking forward to watching your reactions through this series, please continue your react to aerial warfare, with amazing movies like Memphis Belle, Red Tails, The Battle Of Britain & The Dambusters :) they're just a taster of the wonderful back catalogue of air war that's just waiting to be reacted to :)

I read this book. One stat that jumped out at me was that the 8th Air Force lost more men than the Marine Corps. in WWII.

To answer your question about the bombs, they’re not time released but they were armed. They dumped them because it’s safer when landing. If something happens like it did to Croz’s group, and they have to do a belly landing or have a rough landing, you don’t want to risk a bomb getting knocked around, detonating and killing your whole crew. Unnecessary risk.

I'd waited for this for a long time. I've seen BOB, The Pacific and now I'm enjoying this as well. I'd read a book about the air war over Germany "Black Thursday" by Martin Caidin and it was interesting and quite unnerving to read how soldiers on the ground tended to think the USAAF had it easy in the air and it was easily as violent and frightening during missions over enemy skies. You're doing great in your reactions and I'm looking forward to watching you react to the rest of em!

11:00 a gremlin is a joke airmen had in ww2 about little flying monsters who’d get in ur plane and tear things apart

Its hard to express how lethal this job was. I fought in combat in my life. The bomber boys saw near 100% fatality rates for the guys who came in early in the war. An aside, the use of tense music during a basic pre flight checklist emphasizes the stress they all felt heading into airial combat

B-17 is a gorgeous plane!! I love the way they shoot them in this. Got a chance to fly in one, the Nine O Nine, before she crashed a couple years later. We heard a story from an old crewmember one year about him in the bomb bay, trying to pry the bombs out of the bomb racks because they had become stuck and were already armed. So they couldn't land with them in the bomb bay. So he was on the narrow catwalk over open sky with a screwdriver he said, trying to pry the bottom bombs loose and drop them into the channel. These guys were nuts but considering their life expectancy compared to an infantryman .... they had to be!!

There’s an old saying in aviation, “Never point the nose of your airplane someplace your brain hasn’t been five minutes earlier.” Seems like someone forgot that when they ended up over France.

Band Of Brothers and Pacific did a good job of conveying hte differences between the two theatres of war (ETO, PTO) [European Theater of Operations, Pacific Theater of Operations]. The air war was very different than the ground fighting. From what I have seen so far, this looks like it conveys that also.

"We're in a war. A shooting war. And some of us have got to die." Brigadier General Frank Savage 918th Bomb Group (Heavy) TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH

Bombers colliding with one another in bad weather was unfortunately not uncommon. Also (and this is nuts) bomber crews received NO JUMP TRAINING, so if they had to bail out that was the first time they were doing that. The temp at the altitudes they were typically flying was around 40-50 below 0 F, and the fuselages were unpressurized. That's why the guy's hands got messed up by touching the .50 cal with his bare hands.

A series but a different style. No satellite weather prediction, no GPS, no in-plane-radar. Zoot-suit ... stylish Chicano gangsters in LA.

All chaplains are called "Padre" in the military. Steak and eggs are traditional breakfast for Marines on ship before amphibious ops.

YESSS LET'S GOOO. So hyped to watch BoB and now THIS along with you on Patreon 🙌🙌🙌

His hands weren’t burnt from heat but from the cold. It gets -40 to -60 up there.

A gremlin in an airplane is an intermittent technical fault that's hard to troubleshoot.

Love the passion you have for the art of filmmaking...🙂

There's always something off when modern day people are trying to play people from the 40's. A war movie/series from the 80's would still have people from that time in them. "Memphis Belle" is from 1990 and is really good.

Each B-17 carried Ten men. Remember that.. Ball Turret position. There was one story I read where one actually fell out during flight and actually lived. Since you really couldn't have anyone in there with a parachute. Can you imagine? It was also set up in such a way as to have the actual machineguns right up around your ears. "Gremlin" was a term used by aircrews when something odd or out of the ordinary was going on with the controls and systems. Warner Brothers actually had a cartoon Gremlin go head to head with Bugs Bunny during one of their cartoons. It was made during the war and is still out there on youtube. It's funny how it ends because it takes a dig at fuel rationing. Side note. A female gremlin was known as a Fifinella. in 1939 thanks in no small part to First Lady Elenore Roosevelt. A female pilot wrote to her and gave her the idea for using female pilots to let them help in some way. The WASPs {Women Airforce Service Pilots} used that term and design for their unit. They were used to free up Combat pilots and other duties.

2:08 don't forget Austin Butler also plays Feyd Rautha in Dune 2.

Meatball is the truest member of the 100th Air Refueling Wing. I don't know how the history books wrote it, but I'm pretty sure Meatball won the war.

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" By Randall Jarrell, 1945 From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

It really does have the feel of a Hollywood Blockbuster (hence the budget), and the score from Blake Neely really captures the atmosphere perfectly. Definitely some similarities to The Pacific which he also worked on.

The US Eighth Air Force had 135,000 men that flew in combat during the war, and suffered 26,000 killed (a 19.3% death rate) and 23,000 (17%) became prisoners of war.

It took me two episodes to realize that unlike band of brothers and the pacific, this show doesnt have the interviews with the people who were there. Its such a sobering and haunting thought knowing that its because theres very few left now to tell the story. An amazing generation mostly gone

I don’t know how it is in the military but if you were a civilian pilot, you would normally would put the plane down on the runway and not the grass. What I think is the problem is that the Army Air Force needs that runway to stay open so the normal procedure is basically out the window. 17:13 they are at the very back and very bottom of the formation. This is probably the most dangerous place to be in a bomber flight. Also, the guy puking blood probably has tuberculosis or something.

at the start of the involvment of the USA in the war, B17 bomber crews were one of the deadliest jobs in the war. even though the B17 was a practically great feat of engineering at the time, being the heaviest and largest mass produced bombers in the world as well as the most heavily armed, they were also prime targets.

The war in the was the actual front line. This is what made WWII. There are so many stories that never get movies or even documentaries they deserve.

I hope that The Spook of St. Trond will make an appearance or two, he was our best Night Fighter against the endless allied bombers

Loved the first episode. Glad you caught on to the importance of the frantic music. Another channel said it wasn’t needed for some scenes. 🙄

Looks like I picked a great day to subscribe

First episode, so far so good including your reaction and commentary. Can't land with a bomb load, the planes usually dropped the load into the English Channel.

I’m loving Barry Keoghan’s bad ass role in this series. It’s like we’re getting the polar opposite of his performance in Dunkirk(2017)

I watched your reaction to the first couple of episodes of BoB (which I just started watching over 20 years later), and compared to this one I noticed now that they didn't do so much of the handheld camera / found footage feel stuff. I think that part of the difficulty that this series will have compared to BoB is going to be how most of the time the central characters aren't even going to be on the same planes, because that's often how it was.

watching this is very different for me because my grandfather was a B-17 pilot and might have been on some of these missions as well.

Literally every human being watching this: "I would fucking die for meatball" 😂😂

A sombre detail for me in this is that after Band of Brothers and The Pacific i really miss the interviews with the veterans before the episode begins proper. A proper sign of how much time has past since The Pacific, we no longer have 99% of these veterans to interview. This is just one of many reasons that these miniseries are so important, we cannot forget these true stories, it is our duty to showcase these events whether the veterans are physically here or not.

you realize that every time a bomber goes down, it takes at least 10 to 12 guys with it.

I love the opening intro - this show is east Anglia which is where I live so it’s really good history o7

It was the Norden Bomb sight the won the bombing war for the U.S. with this bomb sight the US army Airforce was to achieve precision daylight bombing