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Anyone watching Masters of the Air?

I wish someone would make a really good film about Bomber Command and the night offensive. i don't mean a gung-ho thing - I mean something fully conscious of and representing what was happening to thousands of women and children on the ground and all the vicious ambivalence that entails. As it did for many crews at the time; he wasn't actually called "Butcher" Harris by his aircrews for nothing.

The closest we have to this is probably the near-legendary Radio 4 version of Len Deighton's "Bomber", spread over 24 hours in 2000 or thereabouts.
 
The Americans flew larger formations of poor aircraft (B-17s) that achieved their aim in daylight just by sheer numbers.
 
Just watched about 20 minutes of the first episode and quit. Too glossy, predictable, banal and boring. Dull, stereotyped characters, with too many perfect ultra-white teeth, blue eyes, stylish haircuts and perfectly tailored uniforms. Boring dialogues, really no story.
"Band of Brothers," instead, was so good one wonders how this could have come about.
 
PaulMB said:
"Band of Brothers," instead, was so good one wonders how this could have come about.
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Possibly as a result of Stephen Ambrose's excellent book providing such good material. Perhaps it's because it dealt with a particular unit and a particular group of characters who were so well fleshed out. Ambrose also wrote an excellent book on the taking of Pegasus Bridge at around midnight on the 6th June 1944, again dealing with a particular group of men.

I did like the tale in Pegasus Bridge when one of his interviewees said to him, "Now don't you be making me out to be some sort of bleedin' hero in this book of yours!" (The interviewee, armed with a PIAT and knowing the thing's shortcomings, had waited until a German tank was virtually on top of him before he fired). Ambrose's reply: "I don't make heroes, I merely write about them".
 
Tony Lockhart said:
The Americans flew larger formations of poor aircraft (B-17s) that achieved their aim in daylight just by sheer numbers.
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Their bomb site was seriously over-rated. Large numbers of bombers missed their targets on many occasions. By throwing huge numbers of aircraft at the factories and refineries, some of them eventually got lucky.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
The Americans flew larger formations of poor aircraft (B-17s) that achieved their aim in daylight just by sheer numbers.
Click to expand...
I wonder if the psychological effect was as important as the material. Seeing thousands of bombers flying over Germany in broad daylight must have underlined the fact that the war was as good as lost.
AJP Taylor thought that strategic bombing cost those bombing as much as those being bombed, but that you had to be seen doing something.
 
davidsrsb said:
Their bomb site was seriously over-rated. Large numbers of bombers missed their targets on many occasions. By throwing huge numbers of aircraft at the factories and refineries, some of them eventually got lucky.
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Yep, the supposed excellence of the Norden Bombsight has been exposed as a myth in recent years.
 
Night bombing,…..terribly inaccurate, awful attrition rate. Throw enough stones & eventually a few will hit the target, maybe more luck than judgement. Plus a high civilian population death rate.

Daylight bombing, a bit more accurate, an even more horrendous attrition rate, a near Suicidally low life expectancy rate, especially prior to the P51 escorts.
But when “accuracy” is measured in miles, you know it’s a bit of a misnomer to put it politely.
Some argued that the civilian deaths were excuseable because they started it & after all, we are suffering our own civilian losses. And it was war, & war is bloody awful.
Air warfare, & mass bombing raids of targets several hours away was very a new capability in WW2, & strategies, techniques & consequences were still being learnt. Even 5-10 yrs prior to 1939, heavy bombers were in their infancy. Nobody really knew how & what they could achieve.
I watched MOTA, started off nearly not bothering, as others have said, too much heroic flag waving, model good looks & cliche’d American portrayals of the RAF.
But thought it picked up a bit & the ending was better than the 1st couple of episodes. Agree it’s not a patch on the BOB series though.
 
The book by Donald L Miller is fairly dry & goes into detail about the strategy & politics behind the USAAF bombing effort. The people who appear in the series are mentioned, but it doesn't focus on them.
 
Speaking of the Tuskegee fighter pilots, this is a much better viewing experience than Masters of Air, less 'America saves the day and everyone else is inferior' to an important story being told..


The Battle of Britain made in 1969 still trumps any of these CGI creations though.

Having had the extremely life humbling experience of being up in a Spitfire for an hour and having the controls for a whole 5 minutes at Biggin Hill, witnessing such a miniscule percentage of what it must have been like for pilots in the day, often many with little training and flight hours, it has never left me to this day three years later, one of the most important life experiences I've ever had.
 
Sounds like I'm the only one who was thoroughly engaged by it.
I was absorbed into it as I have a son of 24. The sheer terror comes through of the 10 young men taking to the skies against terrible odds. Nothing but the deepest respect for these lads that gave or risked their lives for us.
The air battle sequences were gritty as hell.
Camaraderie, girls and drinking were the only positive things in their almost certainly few remaining weeks. Can't blame them for trying to let their hair down a little, I'd have been the same.
 
venton said:
Sounds like I'm the only one who was thoroughly engaged by it.
I was absorbed into it as I have a son of 24. The sheer terror comes through of the 10 young men taking to the skies against terrible odds. Nothing but the deepest respect for these lads that gave or risked their lives for us.
The air battle sequences were gritty as hell.
Camaraderie, girls and drinking were the only positive things in their almost certainly few remaining weeks. Can't blame them for trying to let their hair down a little, I'd have been the same.
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I enjoyed it as well. It took a few episodes to get off the ground (pardon the pun) but investing a few hours to give it a chance was worth it.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
The Americans flew larger formations of poor aircraft (B-17s) that achieved their aim in daylight just by sheer numbers.
Click to expand...
A good watch is the episode of the famous The World at War ITV series, called Whirlwind (from the passage in Hosea 8:7, "For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind"). It describes the bomber offensive.


I rather liked the rather famous participant at 20:26 who was simply titled "James Stewart, squadron commander".
 
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