Band of brothers in the sky
Barry Keoghan stars in Tom Hanks’ and Steven Spielberg’s epic new series Masters of the Air, which tells the stories of brave WWII bomber crews
Some of them weren’t old enough to drink, hadn’t been in a plane before and had yet to leave their home towns. But fate had decreed that they were old enough to be injured in battle, imprisoned in war camps and, in many cases, killed. As these young men took to the skies in 1943 with the primary aim of gaining air supremacy over the German Luftwaffe before D-Day, they knew many of them wouldn’t be returning home.
But within the US Army’s Eighth Air Force, the 100th Bomb Group went on to become one of the Second World War’s most legendary units.
Unlike Britain’s RAF bombers, which generally flew at night – safer but with diminished bombing accuracy – the 100th flew during the day; ‘suicide missions’,
SERIES CAPTURES THE COURAGE OF THESE MEN ON THEIR DAYTIME SUICIDE MISSIONS
according to many. Of the 36 crews based at Thorpe Abbotts airfield in Norfolk, eastern England, 34 had been shot down within four months.
The courage of these men to clamber into their B-17 bombers day after day knowing each one might well be their last is captured in Masters of the Air, the highly anticipated ninepart series just released on Apple TV+.
Executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the team behind its award-winning WWII precursors Band of Brothers and The Pacific, the series has been 12 years in the making.
The cast features some of the hottest young actors around, including Austin
Butler, Oscar-nominated for Elvis, and Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan. The Dublin actor plays Lieutenant Curtis Biddick, who joins the ‘Flying Fortress’ plane after his own plane crash lands during a skirmish.
Fellow Dubliner Fionn O’Shea (Dating Amber and Normal People) plays Sergeant Steve Bosser, while Callum Turner (The Boys in the Boat), Belfast actor Anthony Boyle (The Lost City of Z) and new Doctor Who lead Ncuti Gatwa also star.
Masters of the Air cost an estimated $300m to make but, as Tom Hanks says, no one involved wanted to make it ‘unless it could be as good as Band of Brothers’.
Thirty sources, including memoirs and historian Donald L Miller’s eponymous book, were used to collate the storylines because, says the show’s creator John Orloff, ‘Steven, Tom and Gary were insistent everything on screen be true’.
Tom explains the crews’ mission: ‘It was the battle between good and evil, because that’s what the Second World War was. But Don’s book incorporated the human element along with the madness. The division between “I’m safe” or “I could get killed in the blink of an eye” is about as specific as you can get.’
WHAT THESE MEN DID DURING WORLD WAR II WAS PROFOUND …BUT THEY HAD A LOT TO PROVE
So alongside the stunning aerial sequences are the personal stories, which form the heart of the series, notably the friendship between Majors Gale Cleven and John Egan (Austin and Callum).
Although poles apart emotionally – Cleven is the strong, silent type; Egan is more sociable – the men bond through their shared responsibility for their crews.
‘It’s a very powerful thing to take responsibility for other men’s lives,’ says Austin. ‘It was a true honour to be able to walk in Cleven’s shoes.’
Cleven and Egan both took part in the costly raid on Regensburg, when nine B-17s were lost. ‘We were under fighter attack for three and a half hours yet no one turned back, although some of us thought we were as good as dead,’ Egan said.
And both were shot down in later missions and were held prisoner in Stalag Luft III, the camp in The Great Escape.
‘Egan was adventurous, a bit naughty, daring,’ says Callum. ‘I suspect he volunteered because he needed to channel all that appetite for life that wasn’t being fulfilled in the Wisconsin town he grew up in.’
Ncuti Gatwa plays 2nd lieutenant
Robert Daniels, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, the US’s African-American crew.
‘What these men did during the war was profound,’ he says.
‘The US government didn’t want them fighting in the war. They didn’t think they had the intellect or passion, so this was a special challenge for them, because they had a lot to prove.’
Steven Spielberg has explained why he returns to the war as subject matter. ‘It’s important we create a library where young people can understand what it took to keep our country free,’ he says.
‘We need to carry the sacrifice and contributions of that generation into future generations.’
Masters of the Air episodes one and two are available now on Apple TV+ with new episodes streaming on Fridays.
When they first started appearing, the letters were somewhat risqué for 1920s England – but not outrageous. The first to receive one was a woman named Edith Swan, who was called a ‘cow’ in a note that arrived unsolicited through her letterbox.
But then they got worse. Edith was labelled a ‘bloody whore’, her family were insulted and her soldier fiancé Bert, stationed in Iraq, got one saying Edith had become pregnant by a neighbour. It nearly ended their relationship.
Then there were letters to the boss of one of her brothers accusing him of stealing, and to friends and neighbours of the family in their working-class community in West Sussex, southern England. As the letters targeted local Littlehampton families they became increasingly rude, employing the full gamut of fourletter words.
Unsurprisingly, Edith’s family called the police. The immediate suspect was her ‘wild’ next-door neighbour Rose Gooding, who lived a rackety life with her husband, her sister and five children. She swore frequently and had fallen out with Edith’s family after they criticised her for her overflowing bins. Rose was duly
ROSE’S OWN HANDWRITING WAS MESSY… UNLIKE THE LETTER-WRITER
arrested, and although she pleaded her innocence it seemed like an open-and-shut case. Except for one important fact: Rose was not well-educated enough to have produced the neat handwriting that spewed such hatred. Her own was messy and full of errors, but amazingly no one looked at this at first.
Now this real-life story that scandalised 1920s society and was pored over by newspapers – the Daily Mail dubbed it ‘The Seaside Mystery’ – has been brought to the big screen in the new film Wicked Little Letters. Like the real story, the film is by turns farcical and tragic, shining a light on what life was like for women of the time and how anonymous trolling existed long before our social media age.
Olivia Colman co-produced the film with her screenwriter husband Ed Sinclair and stars as prim Edith. Her father Edward, played by Timothy Spall, is controlling and vicious, and takes much of his anger out on his daughter.
‘Edith lives with her mum and dad and the Swans can hear all the goings-on in Rose’s house next door,’ says Olivia. ‘Weirdly, she sleeps at the end of her parents’ bed. Edith’s a very pious Christian and there’s a lot of Bible reading.’