Tail End Charlie
The biggest premiere for this year, full of new kits of all scales, manufacturers and types of aircraft as well as other related items, awaits us in a different, yet closely related field within our modeling world – in film. On January 26th, Apple TV+ will launch the first two episodes of Masters of the Air. A series about the men of the 100th Bombardment Group of the 8th AF, as the series promotion says, ‘a brotherhood forged by courage, loss, and triumph’.
MASTERS OF THE AIR, EPISODE 0: THE WAIT Jan Zdiarský
The biggest premiere for this year, full of new
kits of all scales, manufacturers and types of
aircraft as well as other related items, awaits
us in a different, yet closely related field within
our modeling world – in film. On January 26th,
Apple TV+ will launch the first two episodes of
Masters of the Air. A series about the men of the
100th Bombardment Group of the 8th AF, as the
series promotion says, ‘a brotherhood forged by
courage, loss, and triumph’.
Of course, such a wait is accompanied by a lot
of anticipation. After watching the first trailers
and a sneak peek into the tightly guarded back-
stage, a lot of discussion has arisen stemming
from the observed snippets of scenes regarding
possible transgressions of the creators against
historical accuracy, the laws of air combat and
tactics, as well commentaries about the faithful-
ness to accuracy as a whole. And the fervor of
these debates, above all, points to one thing – the
level of interest in the series and its subject mat-
ter is great, and so is the level of anticipation.
Despite the stellar combination of the origi-
nal events, the book and the series, I have no
doubt that after watching the first episodes, de-
spite all the efforts of the creators, there will be
a lot of know-it-alls, intolerant of possible omis-
sions and necessary compromises, as well as
their sighs over perceived ‘missed opportunities’
(something we know all too well from the world
of plastic modeling). I myself assume that I will
find some details in the series that the creators
considered an acceptable compromise, but they
will only slightly annoy me. But I don’t think that
these will cross the line out of the tolerable and
into something else. All the more so because
I now know that the filmmakers went farther in
their pursuit of fidelity of detail than anyone be-
fore them in aerial combat cinematography has
ever done. Of course, I know, for example, about
the problematic involvement of the black Tuske-
gee airmen in the story of the men of the 8th Air
Force. However, I want to wait with my judgments
until I see how the filmmakers have actually in-
tegrated them into the main story.
The series, which was originally developed over
more than ten years under the banner of HBO
and will be launched on the Apple TV+ platform,
comes from the same production team as its
iconic predecessors “Band Of Brothers” and “The
Pacific”, i.e. the creative trio of Steven Spielberg,
Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman.
John Orloff’s screenplay was based on the book
of the same name by American historian Donald
L. Miller from 2007. It reflects the real life sto-
ries of the men from the US 8th Air Force, es-
pecially the 100th Bomb Group (100th BG), known
as ‘The Bloody Hundred’. This brings me to why
that expectation touches me so deeply and
I take it almost personally. For more than a quar-
ter of a century, since 1997, my activities and
my heart have been closely connected to the
100th BG. I have had the honor of knowing a num-
ber of the airmen who will now come to life again
on television screens personally, even if as older
gentlemen and veterans, and I have had great
relationships with them and their families, even
with those who left before I joined the 100th BG
Association, later Foundation.
At several of the last (I think three or four)100th
BG reunions, we’ve been meeting various person-
alities from the Masters of the Air creative staff.
Representatives of the production and creators
informed us about the progress of preparations,
filming, post-production... No different was the
case at the last 100th BG reunion in Savannah, GA
at the end of May and beginning of June, 2023,
when, among other things, the anticipated com-
pletion date of early 2024 was already openly
discussed. During these meetings, members of
the 100th BG Foundation were assured of the dil-
igence of the filmmakers’ approach. The team of
the series tried to follow up on the precise work
of the author of the book template in such a way
as not to embarrass the book or the actual histo-
ry. The pursuit of historical and technical fidelity
went to unusual lengths - not only in the con-
struction of facilities at two former airfields in
East England and the reconstruction of faithful
replicas of the B-17, the equipment used, repli-
cating the realities and post-production effects,
but also in capturing the character of the indi-
vidual personalities whose stories are recalled.
The people associated in one way or another
with the ‘Hundred’ have a term that they use….
the ‘100th BG Family’. This very close-knit family
consists of four entities - primarily the veteran
organization of the 100th BG Foundation itself,
the unique 100th Bomb Group Memorial Muse-
um in Thorpe Abbotts, England, the Museum of
Air Battle over the Ore Mountains on September
11th, 1944 in the Czech Republic and the 100th Air
Refueling USAF Wing based at Mildenhall.
INFO Eduard128
January 2024