written by Glenn Flickinger

As history, Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air ranks right up there among the very best true-to-life portrayals of war. It’s equal to HBO’s Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010) in its grim, often gruesome depiction of combat and its psychological impact.

As cinematic storytelling, Masters deserves a lower grade than its predecessors. The storylines and depth of character portrayal just aren’t as compelling. For people without an inherent interest in World War II, Masters of the Air probably isn’t essential viewing.

But for those, like me, obsessed with WWII, Masters is a revelation. With the help of computer-generated imagery (CGI), the series brings the viewer as close as possible to the ineffable experiences of aerial warfare in 1943-1945.

In terms of sheer verisimilitude, even the best war movies from the past—The Longest Day (1962), Patton (1970), Memphis Belle (1990)—can’t compare with Masters of the Air or any of the films in the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks Greatest Generation catalog: Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), or Greyhound (2020).

All of these more recent productions represent war as trauma, as well as heroic struggle. What we call PTSD or Traumatic Stress Reaction plays a key role in Masters of the Air, especially the scenes at the “Flak House”—a convalescent home for traumatized airmen. The series’ explicit depictions of aerial combat at 25,000 feet and -40 degrees below zero can be hard to watch.

Masters also addresses head-on the less-than-flattering performance of the US Army Air Forces in 1942 and 1943 as the so-called “Bomber Mafia” foolishly persisted in sending bombers out unescorted by fighters against deadly accurate flak and Luftwaffe countermeasures.

Of course, Masters, like Band of Brothers and The Pacific, takes artistic license to tell its story. It doesn’t make things up whole cloth, but it collapses a lot of historical truth into a few characters and switches up time sequences to build suspense and deliver dramatic payoff.

In Band of Brothers, which follows the experiences of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, the producers put the soldiers in places they never were, like liberating a Nazi concentration camp.

Such sleights of hand are understandable–even necessary–because they convey some important truths and also the genuine experiences of others who served in the infantry in Europe. Borrowing these moments from others’ lives helps shed light on the larger meaning of the war.

Similar made-up vignettes, time shifts, and composite characterization punctuate Masters of the Air. One character, Sgt. William Hinton, called “Babyface” in the series, dies after getting trapped inside a ball turret. Hinton existed, and he did die on the August 17, 1943 mission. But he escaped the ball turret, and he wasn’t nicknamed “Babyface.”

In the series, POW Buck Cleven escapes in April 1945, four months later than in reality. And, also in the series, Captain Joseph “Bubbles” Payne dies in October 1943. In truth, he lived six more months.

A few sequences are shown out of order and some key moments in the history of the 100^th Bomb Group are passed over entirely. All these departures from history are for dramatic effect and effective storytelling. From my perspective, they are all justified.

Masters of the Air had a tougher story to tell than Band of Brothers, which focused squarely on one small group of soldiers, Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101^st Airborne.

The Pacific, likewise, was based on three Marines: Bob Leckie, Eugene Sledge, and John Basilone.

Masters of the Air grapples with a more sprawling series of intertwined stories based on dozens of books, including Donald L. Miller’s history, which covers the entire air war.

The scope of the story requires more characters than Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and more skill in weaving the storylines together without losing track of what makes each character distinct.

Keeping tabs of who-is-who in Masters is made more difficult by the historically accurate face masks worn by the characters at altitude. The masks may have allowed the men to breathe, but they sometimes block us from recognizing their faces.

The narrative complexity of Masters of the Air means the supporting cast is twice the size of Band of Brothers. And the story mosaic is far more difficult to follow.

In the first episode, it looks like Bucky Egan and Buck Cleven will be the Dick Winters and Lewis Nixon of Masters of the Air—that is, the dynamic duo who will pull the viewer through all nine episodes.

But Egan and Cleven fall away after a few episodes, replaced, in turn, by other characters, such as Rosie Rosenthal and Harry Crosby. I, for one, preferred the Rosenthal-Crosby storylines to the Egan-Cleven ones. The former had better acting, more depth of character, and more substance to them than Buck and Bucky.

All three productions have must-see action scenes that convey the intensity of combat in a way that is indelible. In Band of Brothers, it’s the parachute airdrop on D-Day. In The Pacific, it’s the amphibious invasion of Peleliu and the battle for the beach. In Masters of the Air, it’s the aerial combat of the Regensburg mission (Episode 3).

Each of these scenes is difficult to watch. But they give as good a glimpse into the combat experience as anything ever produced for screen.

Taken together, all three series by Spielberg/Hanks are a gift to our collective memory of World War II. Because of them, more Americans understand better the stakes of this great war and why so many sacrificed so much to win it..

Might there be room for one more series? Perhaps the Navy in the Pacific? I imagine CGI scenes of carrier fleets facing off in the vast blue, deciding the fate of the island-hopping campaign toward Japan.