Apple TV series Masters of the Air is giving audiences a look into the lives of the American airmen who took part in attacks on Nazi-controlled Europe during World War II.
The show centers on the Eighth Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group and highlights grim conditions, including tiny planes, risky flying formations and frigid temperatures.
There was also an extremely high risk of enemy attacks, with a near-zero chance of surviving a tour of 25 missions. The overall risk of injury or death for men in the Eighth Air Force was 73 percent. This figure is particularly poignant as the average age of fighter pilots was 21 or 22.
Steven Spielberg is executive producer of the series, which conveys the risk and fear involved in missions to France, Germany Holland and Norway. “If you weren’t scared there was something wrong,” says Paul Starks, a volunteer at Halesworth Airfield Memorial Museum, which honors Americans who were stationed at Suffolk, England, to help carry out the Anglo-American aerial attacks on Europe.
