Is there a dramaturg in the house? Five episodes in, Masters of the Air’s narrative rhythms are growing less syncopated and more, well, arrhythmic. Part Three was an all-action installment set during a single day (without telling us what day it was), while Part Four was a relatively quiet entry stretched over a couple of months. Part Five returns to the former formula, organizing itself around an extended aerial battle sequence and unfolding over just two days. I’ll tell you which two days they were, but I shouldn’t have to!
Co-executive producer and writer John Orloff’s arbitrary and chaotic approach to time-stamping would be less bothersome were the show not dramatizing extremely well-documented history. This episode doesn’t tell us this, but the Münster raid to which it devotes the majority of its run time happened on October 10, 1943, two days after the Bremen raid, during which Buck’s fort was shot down. On those two missions — plus another raid on a pair of Germain aircraft plants near Marienburg on October 9 that Orloff hasn’t dramatized — the 100th Bomb Group earned its morbid nom de guerre, losing nearly half its airmen in just three disastrous days. The “Bloody Hundredth,†indeed.
The directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck take the reins from Cary Joji Fukunaga with this episode, which opens with Bucky alone in a cockpit, haunted by the loss of his best pal, Buck. Sergeant Lemmons, the reliable crew chief, asks if he’s okay, and Bucky gives the kid the same obvious lie he spouted back in Chapter Two to his now-dead friend Curt Biddick after 30 of their comrades perished on their very first mission: “I don’t even feel it!â€
Narrator/navigator Crosby’s fort was one of the ones that failed to return to Thorpe Abbots from the Bremen raid, but we now learn that most of its crew survived, with Crosby, Douglass, and pilot Ev Blakely being delivered back to base in a truck. Crosby’s narration tells us that Blakely had to belly-land their heavily damaged B-17 at an RAF airfield on their way home. He also tells us he saw Buck’s fort go down. “Buck Cleven was our leader,†Crosby broods in voice-over. “We thought he was invincible. If Gale Cleven couldn’t make it, who could?â€
Adding to the sense of gloom, the trio finds a replacement crew already occupying their bunks. An orderly apologizes for his efficiency, sheepishly pointing out the three had been reported missing. Douglass asks the orderly if he’s already shipped his trunk back to the States. “I’ve got more fucking rubbers than I can count, and I sure as hell don’t need my mom to count ’em,†he tells Crosby as they adjourn to the Officers Club.
These three guys won’t be buying their own drinks this evening. The comrades who’d feared them dead welcome them with hugs and handshakes, listening rapt as Blakely and Douglass praise their navigator for finding them a friendly port for an emergency landing — and then steering them into a tree.
As Crosby, Anthony Boyle plays this moment beautifully. By now, we know that Harry Crosby is a man as beloved for his humility as for his great aptitude, but Boyle lets us see how much the approbation of his fellows means to him. “Bubbles†Payne, who’d lent Crosby his lucky snow globe for the mission over Norway that earned Crosby a rep as a coolheaded problem-solver, tells his pal that he’s already written a condolence letter to Jean, Crosby’s wife. Fortunately, he hadn’t mailed it yet.
When Bucky turns up at the bar, everyone understands the party will be short-lived. His early return from his weekend pass to London can only mean another mission is imminent. “We’re flying every day now,†one airman laments. The 100th’s complement of aircraft and airmen has been so depleted in the four months since the unit arrived in England that there simply isn’t enough capacity to allow crews to recover from one hairy mission before sending them on another. Crosby’s promotion to group navigator, the job for which he’d recommended Bubbles, now becomes an actual promotion in rank, with a second bar on his collar announcing him as a captain.
After the opening titles, we join the men of the 100th in the briefing room. Colonel Harding tells them their target is the railroad marshaling yard at Münster — a target close to the city center, meaning civilian casualties are much more likely than on the 100th’s prior missions. The marshaling yard is also just spitting distance from a medieval cathedral where Sunday mass will be wrapping up right around the time the bombs fall. Bombing churchgoers is a tough sell. (Indeed, Masters of the Air author Donald L. Miller and other historians have documented that more than a few Eighth Air Force bomber boys objected to this mission, and at least one ultimately consented to fly it only under threat of court-martial.)
Anticipating his men’s reservations, Harding points out that the people most likely to be killed are railroad workers, whose deaths would degrade Hitler’s war-making capacity. As the crews suit up, an unsettled Crank points out to an untroubled Bucky — who will be flying as command pilot in Brady’s fort, M’lle Zig Zig — that the women and kids they’re about to bomb did not shoot down their friend Buck. Bucky doesn’t want to hear it. Their superiors have embraced the philosophy espoused by those night-flying RAF officers back in Chapter Two: “It doesn’t matter what we hit as long as it’s German.â€
The crews also have more to fear than just pangs of conscience: The 100th will be sending only 17 ships to Münster because that’s as much of their inventory as is airworthy this morning. Their fighter escorts have the fuel capacity to accompany them only across the English Channel; once the bombers are over enemy territory, they’ll be unprotected and vulnerable to Luftwaffe fighters.
Crosby, who’ll be sitting out this mission now that he’s been promoted to management, returns Bubbles’s lucky snow globe. Bubbles will be navigating for a crew flying a ship newly detailed to the 100th called She’s Gonna. Another of the replacement ships is called Aw-R-Go, a nickname that leaves its new crew baffled. Finally, Rosie’s crew is assigned to a ship called Royal Flush. Their usual aircraft, Rosie’s Riveters, is out of action for repairs. (Harding said two of the aircraft flying this raid were new to the 100th, so why three crews asked about their new ships’ names is a detail that puzzled me.) Before taking the copilot seat aboard Brady’s fort, Bucky trades coats with another officer. When Brady asks him why he gave up such an enviable sheepskin garment — these airplanes were punishingly cold — he says, “Buck always hated that jacket.â€
These airplanes have been much abused in recent weeks, and mechanical failures cause four ships from this already understaffed raiding party to turn back before they reach their target. That leaves only 13 heavies to accomplish a mission that many among their crews believe they shouldn’t be flying at all. With all their engine problems, the 100th’s ships can’t keep up with the 95th Bomb Group ahead of them, and the 390th is, says the tail gunner aboard M’lle Zig Zig, five miles behind. Bucky frets that this loose formation will make them easy pickings for the German fighters who must surely be inbound.
The ball turret gunner aboard Brady’s ship relieves himself into a condom and tosses the piss-balloon out of a gun port before climbing down into his station, shouting, “Bombs away!†Juvenile, but the closest thing to levity we’ll be getting for the remainder of this episode. Flak bursts take down two of the 100th’s 13 ships, and one of the waist gunners aboard M’lle Zig Zig has half of his face blown off before the fighters even show up. When they do arrive, they come in swarms, the sound of several hundred diving aircraft engines accruing into something unholy.
“We’re fine! We’re maintaining speed!†Bucky shouts as the second of the command ship’s four engines sputters out. They’re a minute away from their target, the bombardier says. Two of their other gunners suffer grievous wounds, and a third engine explodes. Brady is trying to hold the bomber level on a single engine long enough to give bombardier Howard “Hambone†Hamilton a reasonable shot, but it’s no use.
Bucky orders Brady to salvo the ship’s full bomb load and hit the bailout alarm. Hambone is bleeding and in agony, but he still has the presence of mind to remind one of the gunners to put a couple of rounds from his .45 service pistol through the Norden Bomb Sight to prevent the device from being captured intact. After all the other crewmen are out, Bucky and Brady quarrel manfully over who should be the last to jump — the senior officer onboard or the captain of the ship. According to an account attributed to Bucky and published on the National World War II Museum’s website — one that offers a number of other illuminating details about the Münster raid, including the flyers’ objections to bombing a civilian target — this really did happen, though what made Bucky finally bail out ahead of Brady was a fresh trail of bullet holes puncturing the door of the bomb bag from which both men were about to dive.
There’s an impressive skydiving sequence as Bucky drifts through a terrifying scene of carnage, then lands uninjured on a farm in Westphalia, Germany. (Now we get a title card.)
Aboard Royal Flush, Rosie’s crew is eager to drop their bombs and head home, but Rosie won’t give the bombardier the go-ahead until he sees that the aircraft that moved into the lead position to replace Brady’s ship has dropped its bombs. One of Rosie’s gunners howls as he pulls a golf-ball-size fragment of shrapnel out of his thigh, then applies a makeshift tourniquet.
The bombs are now dropped, but the fighters have no intention of letting the Yanks get away. Firing 250-pound air-to-air missiles, German Junkers 88s immolate She’s Gonna, Bubbles’s ship, and another. There’s an eerie moment 34 minutes into the episode as Rosie guides Royal Flush through a field of debris that just seconds earlier was two airplanes carrying 20 airmen. Rosie asks his gunners if any of them can see any other aircraft from the 100th. But they’re the lone survivors, and after a few seconds’ respite, another phalanx of German fighters dives in to finish them off. Rosie pulls some fancy maneuvers to give his gunners a better angle on their pursuers. “I’m gonna put these two on your back doorstep,†he tells his tail gunner, priming us to expect a heroic turnabout.
Boden and Fleck have other ideas. Before the battle over Münster has been concluded, they cut back to Thorpe Abbots, where Lemmons is letting a couple of the British moppets we’ve seen him making nice with sit in the cockpit of one of the grounded B-17s he’s repairing. At the control tower, Colonel Harding, Major Bowman, and newly appointed Captain Crosby are waiting anxiously for their bombers to return. The first one that appears on the horizon is from the 390th Bomb Group, evidently unable to make it to its home base. Harding radios the pilot. We hear only Harding’s side of the conversation as he’s told that not one of the 100th’s ships has survived.
That pilot is mistaken: Royal Flush is a moment behind him, Rosie calling for an ambulance to treat his wounded gunners as soon as he’s put the banged-up fort down. He’s in better shape than most of his crew, physically anyway, as he watches in disbelief as the gunner with a tourniquet on his leg spits up whatever’s still in his stomach. Lemmons wants to know what happened to Bubbles, Bucky, and Crank, but Rosie knows he’s not to discuss the mission until after interrogation. “Later, Ken,†he tells the 19-year-old sergeant. “All of them?†a disbelieving Lemmons asks.
In the thinly populated interrogation hut, Bowman runs down the list of missing ships, asking Rosie’s crew about them one at a time. A handful are confirmed dead, but “no record†and “no chutes†are the most common responses. There’s a slow, mournful pan across the empty racks for crew gear before we cut to Crosby collecting Bubbles’s personal effects. He discovers the unsent letter his best friend wrote to his wife when he’d believed Crosby dead after the Bremen raid.
Bubbles reads in voice-over as Crosby sits on his bunk scanning the letter. It’s a maudlin scene, and it got me, nevertheless. “I wish more than anything it was him sitting here instead of me,†the dead Bubbles reflects. “Then no one would have to write this letter.†Crosby gives himself a moment to absorb his grief, then gets up and gets back to work.
The real-life Harry Crosby makes no mention of such an occurrence in his 2001 memoir, A Wing and a Prayer, wherein he mentions Bubbles many times. I felt compelled to check because so many scenes and lines of dialogue that have struck me as mawkish in prior episodes have turned out to have been taken straight from Miller’s book, Crosby’s memoir, or other historical accounts. If the Bubbles letter reporting Crosby’s death is a dramatic invention, it’s a good one. In his book, Crosby does recall the shock of his return to Thorpe Abbots with Blakely and Douglass after their belly-landing on the way back from Bremen, saying that the trio “learned that of the 140 pilots, copilots, navigators, and bombardiers who had flown across the Atlantic to England on May 31, just four months and ten days before, we were the only three left on flying status.†The weight of all those deaths is accumulating, and it’s about to grow heavier still.