NatGeo - The incredible details 'Masters of the Air' gets right about WWII
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The actors and creators of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s AppleTV+ miniseries discuss what went into recreating the war in the skies of Europe.
BY KATIE SANDERS AND MARA STOREY
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 2, 2024
They were nicknamed the “Bloody Hundredth”—and for good reason. During World War II, the Mighty Eighth Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group carried out perilous daylight bombing missions, flown in formation at 25,000 feet, to blow up Nazi targets in support of the full-scale Allied invasion. Full of colorful personalities, the unit sustained such heavy casualties on particular raids that it gained a reputation as unlucky.
Their stories are the focus of Masters of the Air, a nine-episode miniseries executive-produced by Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg that premiered on AppleTV+ on January 26. Adapting real-life accounts from Donald L. Miller’s book Masters of the Air was no small feat, says writer and co-executive producer John Orloff—even compared to his first paid Hollywood writing gig for Band of Brothers, considered a companion to Masters of the Air and The Pacific.
“The amount of things we had to get right in this show was vastly more complicated,” Orloff says, citing the sheer scale of the war in the skies of Europe, the lack of firsthand witnesses alive today, and the focus of Miller’s book on the history of the air war more broadly, not the specific airmen and ground crew the series ultimately follows.
Tasked with developing a historically accurate script, Orloff spent a year compiling a show bible—a process that included reading 30-plus books, magazines, and diaries; perusing archives and oral histories; and visiting bases, airfields, and museums on both sides of the ocean. The results, Orloff says, are “a much more ambitious show on every level” that rarely deviates from the record.
Orloff—along with co-stars Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, and Callum Turner—spoke with National Geographic about some of their favorite details that went into the series, whose production budget is estimated to have ranged from $250 to 300 million.
On airplanes, aerial combat, and military aviation
Depicting an air war requires warbirds. And nailing the details of both the interior and exterior of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was, according to co-executive producer David Coatsworth, the most vital part of the production. Orloff considers the B-17 its own character.
Fewer than a handful of the roughly 12,000 B-17s produced during WWII remain airworthy today, none of which appear on Masters of the Air, so re-creating an armada of four-engine bombers required some creativity, along with CGI technology.
Two replica B-17s were built from scratch for the production. Both were moveable; one taxied on its own, and the other could be towed. They didn’t need to fly (that was handled through special effects), but they had to stay in one piece during the rigors of filming.
Making the B-17’s sprawling hundred-foot wingspan structurally sound was a challenge. At one point, Orloff says, the replicas were off-balance, and “normal set tricks” and “movie magic” weren’t helping. To get the planes to stay horizontal and allow the wings to flex without breaking, they had to follow Boeing’s original building guidelines.
The production also built a replica of just the B-17’s nose and flight deck for interior shots, rigging it on a special sound stage where 360-degree screens surrounded the actors in the cockpit. As the replica moved on hydraulics to simulate flying, so did the screens.
For actor Anthony Boyle, who plays perpetually nauseous navigator Maj. Harry Crosby, the on-set virtual production and CGI, combined with the meticulous detail of the two model cockpits, down to the tiniest switches and the altimeter on the instrument panel, was remarkable. “It made it completely immersive on our end,” he says. The level of detail also reminded the actors of the stakes of the missions, thereby paying tribute to the unit’s real-life airmen—77 percent of whom were killed, injured, missing, or taken prisoner during the war.
“They put themselves into the most hostile situations known to mankind, and 23 percent of them survived it,” says Callum Turner, who plays swashbuckling pilot Maj. John C. “Bucky” Egan.
“You watch them come down and deal with the traumas of losing their friends over and over and over again, and then having to somehow find the gusto and the bravery to pull themselves together and go back up.”
(75 years after the Nazis surrendered, all sides agree: War is hell.)
Staying true to history also sparked some debates. Orloff says he spent four days arguing with a technical advisor about a scene in which Maj. Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal, played by Nate Mann, dives and climbs to evade attacking fighters. The adviser argued that those maneuvers were impossible in a B-17—to which Orloff responded that maybe any B-17 pilot couldn’t do that, but Rosenthal, who flew 52 combat missions, could. The maneuvers stayed in.
On the characters and costumes
With none of the main characters depicted in Masters of the Air alive today, it wasn’t possible to film the on-camera interviews that had helped open and contextualize Band of Brothers.
Still, Orloff says, “These men are just as real. …We handled these true stories as delicately, as honorably, and as truthfully.”
Turner found the two-week bootcamp he went through with the cast to be particularly powerful. Each day, he would show up in uniform and, alongside co-star Austin Butler, get lectured, trained, and grilled by military technical advisor Dale Dye, a retired U.S. Marine who also worked on Saving Private Ryan. Dye would test the airmen, asking, for example, “What happens if engine three goes out?” “Everything was about precision and getting it right,” Turner says. “You had 40 people all trying not to be the worst. There was a real competitiveness to it.”
The process of outfitting the cast was similarly painstaking. When Orloff asked the show’s costume designer, Oscar-winner Colleen Atwood, how many wardrobe fittings her team had done, she told him, “We stopped counting at 3,000.”
Atwood’s team did extensive research, from studying old flight suits to experimenting with prototypes, before landing on the most accurate flak helmets, goggles, and sheepskins.
Small considerations, from the changes to the Mighty Eighth’s uniforms over the course of the war to the varying finishes of individual airmen’s wristwatches, were taken into account. Actors preparing for a bombing mission could be spotted on set wearing sheepskin coveralls and a heated “bunny suit” like the ones the airmen wore to protect from frostbite in the below-zero temperatures of their missions.
For Boyle, the minor details—be it the helmet he was puking into or the wrinkles worked into his somewhat frazzled character’s shirt—helped him remember who he was depicting.
Turner, who is 6’2” and broad-shouldered, says that the physical discomfort of squeezing into the cramped B-17 while wearing coveralls, flak gear, and a life jacket was palpable—but so was the feeling that his discomfort was absolutely nothing compared to what his character endured.
On the sets
One of the many sets reproduced for the show was the wartime base at Thorpe Abbotts, which served as the 100th’s airfield.
Production spent more than three months building 16 sets in England to recreate the bomber boys’ surroundings as accurately as possible—including its headquarters, hospital, chapel, officers’ club, mess hall, and control tower. They also tracked down and rented the only cryptography code machine left in continental Europe to appear in the background of a couple shots, Orloff says. When he walked onto the set, he felt like he’d been transported back in time. Several locals who had been children there during the war toured the set and were moved to tears, he recalls.
On set, researchers consulted with the actors, set decorators, and costumers on details ranging from the nose art on individual planes to the insignias on individual uniforms.
In the recreated officers’ club, the bar shelves were lined with Coca-Cola bottles and vintage barware. Cigarette lighters used by the actors were not only correct to the period, but also would've been available for airmen to purchase in Norwich, the closest town to Thorpe Abbotts, says Mann.
Real wartime documents and photographs were also integrated into the production. In the first episode’s pre-mission briefing scene, a projector flashes aerial reconnaissance photos of the target and flak batteries on the continent—the same images airmen would’ve seen in 1943.
While Masters of the Air brings the bomber boys’ story to light with Hollywood heavyweights, special effects, and budget, Orloff maintains that there are few areas where Hollywood liberties were applied.
“When the third plane from the left gets hit by a rocket on engine number four … that's because that's what happened to that particular plane on that particular mission,” he says. “We took that very, very seriously.” The show, he adds, is not just inspired by true events: “These are true events.”
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