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Author David McCullough (“John Adams”) gave historian Donald Miller some advice when news came that Miller’s epic tome about the 100th Bomber Group, “Masters of the Air,” would be turned into a series of Apple TV+ with nine episodes and valued at $250 million. Friday).
“He said, ‘Don, you have to be careful, make sure they don’t make it Hollywood!’” Miller says, laughing. But he had worked before with producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, on the 2010 HBO adaptation of his book “The Pacific,” “so he had great confidence.”
Miller’s book tells the story of the young bomber group who helped turn the tide of World War II with their high-risk missions over Germany. The series, also based on Air Force records and interviews with veterans of the 100th, sticks largely to facts about the lives of its American protagonists, with the occasional composite character to keep the story moving.
But Miller provides some additional background on some of the themes and issues in “Masters of the Air.”
Are the characters in ‘Masters of the Air’ real people?
Miller says that all of the lead actors in the series were actual World War II veterans, particularly the lead roles which included Major Gale Cleven (Austin Butler), Major John Egan (Callum Turner), Lieutenant Curtis Biddick (Barry Keoghan), Lieutenant Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), Major Robert Rosenthal (Nate Mann) and Lieutenant Roy Claytor (Sawyer Spielberg).
“The big difference between doing this and ‘The Pacific’ is that back then, a lot of those veterans were still alive and the actors could call them, or we would have them on set and they would tell us what really happened. ”says Molinero. “With this, I was practically the only one who had met or interviewed many of these real veterinarians. “Then the actors would come to me and I would help them as best I could.”
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Did British and American soldiers really have antagonistic relations?
Miller says that many of the veterans he has interviewed “had excellent relationships with the RAF (Royal Air Force) pilots, whom they met while on leave in London.” But the tensions that often arose between members of the Allied forces were real.
“It was mainly due to the fact that the British thought American airmen were spoiled,” he says. “The Americans were much better paid, they wore smart uniforms, they looked a little better looking, and in the competition for women they seemed to have the advantage. Money in their pockets, Sinatra records, the latest popular culture, foreign accents, these handsome Americans, their exoticism.”
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How dangerous and deadly were those B-17 bomber missions?
“I don’t think anywhere else in history there was combat as intense as these dogfights,” Miller says. “You’re in an aluminum tube so thin that a guy with a screwdriver could put a hole in it. “The German (fighter pilots) targeted the pilot and co-pilot, and many pilots were decapitated by gunfire.”
Even if his plane didn’t succumb to anti-aircraft fire or enemy fire, experiencing a bombing raid once, let alone dozens of times, was nerve-wracking, he says. “The noise is horrible, there are no seats, there are things flying everywhere. And it already reeked of cigarette smoke, cordite and the smell of human blood. And evasive measures could not be taken; There are no trenches in heaven.”
Were American prisoners of war really left to fend for themselves in German camps?
Miller says the “Masters” scenes accurately showed Egan, Cleven and other members of the captured bomber group building homemade radios and planning to escape from camps run by German Air Force personnel.
“Of course, many (American) Jewish soldiers were worried about being taken out of the barracks and shot, but that only happened if they tried to escape,” he says. “Generally, their commanders left them alone to organize.” your day. They were mainly trying to mess with the bullies, as they were called, making plans to get out as seen in ‘The Great Escape’ or ‘Hogan’s Heroes’. But as the war neared its end, everything became tense. If the SS (Nazi secret police) took control of the camps as they feared, there was no telling what would happen.”
What stories from the 100th Bomb Group were left out?
“Well, the series is over nine hours long, but with such a complex story you still have to leave things out to move the story forward,” he says. “But I did want to include something about the little-discussed treatment the Swiss give to aviators.”
Miller says several Swiss officials had ties to the Nazis, and when the Allied airmen ended up in Switzerland, which was neutral in the war, they were sent to camps in the high mountains. “We hoped to tell the story of the airmen who suffered in these Swiss fields. “The boys felt really helpless, it was a horrible, unknown part of the war, but we couldn’t solve it.”
