"Masters of the Air" Topic

So, who is watching it and what do you think? I am enjoying it very much. It is just stunning to see the high loss of life that occurred.

+1

Very well done. A lot of the aspects of the daylight bombing campaign are being covered not just the aerial battles. POWs, escapees, life on base and on leave in the UK.

I understand that some folks in the UK are not thrilled with the stereotypical portrayal of the RAF officers in the show. I am sure they thought the daylight raids without fighter escort was suicide though.

I am thoroughly enjoying the series. I think it is extremely well done. Striking about the carnage and the casualties. Definitely on par with "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific". highly recommended.

A friend checked the 100th Bomber Group. 60% mortality rate.

I can't say I'm enjoying it as much as Band of Brothers or The Pacific but it's good.

When it wraps up, I'll binge it on a free 7 day Apple trial, along with Greyhound.

I'll binge it with a short Apple subscription later on. I really enjoyed Memphis Belle, so I'm looking forward to this one.

And yes, the RAF did think escorted daylight raids were not very sensible. After a number of daylight missions with loss rates up to 100%, that was why they switched to night bombing. The losses were still horrific, but not quite as horrific as by day.

I will be following the same approach as Mister Tibbles and Martin Rapier…sign up for Apple and binge watch this and Greyhound then unsubscribe.

I recently rewatched Band of Brothers (probably for the 20th or so time) and Pacific (first time since it originally aired). A couple of things stood out to me:
1) BoB is just as good as it was when I first saw it. Stands the test of time and I hope to watch it in its entirety another 20 or so times.

2) I was unfairly unimpressed with the Pacific when I first watched it. I didn't think it was that good because I compared it to BoB. On second viewing, it is very good it's just that nothing has come close to BoB. Pacific doesn't follow a specific unit and I think it suffers from the fact that you don't get the same character development that boot camp and Currahee provided for BoB. It is still very good and now I want to paint up some 10mm Japanese and USMC!

I've watched this and it was OK overall. 6/10?

Many silly mistakes and a dollop of schmaltz that is to be expected really…

I'm glad it was made and many will know more than they did before due to having seen it. Some of these may make an effort to research and find out the mistakes made.

As a short 9 episode show I understand they can't cover it all but they missed…

1 Big week
2 Operation Frantic
3 Crossbow missions
4 The transportation plan
5 The oil plan
6 The chin turrets on B-17Gs..
7 PFF blind bombing
8 The serious consideration given to going over to night bombing [which I think did predate the 100th time]

The over-egging of the capabilities of the P-51 was also regrettable but you could say it is what the aircrew thought. The P-51 was exactly what was needed at the time and available in the numbers needed to put the final nail in the Luftwaffe's coffin… So more nuance would have been nice – but I am really asking for the moon there..

So – overall – they covered a lot in the 9 episodes. And as the perfect is the enemy of the good I'm glad it was made and enjoyed watching it.

I really enjoyed the series. It is really hard to cover the whole air campaign of the 8th in such a few episodes but I believe it shows a good broad approach of the air war.