On page one of Miller's book, first paragraph, he decribes how Bucky Egan was on leave in London when Buck Cleven went down. It happened exactly asshown in the series. He was then imbued with a sense of revenge. He describes how close they were up until then. Spielberg latched on to that and pushed for them to be the focus of the series. They were the Nixon and Winters of this series in his mind. John Orloff who was responsible for the majority of the scripts was very aware of the rinse and repeat nature of the bombing missions, and so tried to create variety in what the audience sees. The next episode is my favorite of the series. Nate Mann knocks it out of the ball park as Rosie Rosenthal.

“Masters of the Air” does deal with different perspectives of the war. Which is part of the reason the mission was not shown. To the people on the base, any plane that was shot down meant the crew was dead. Not to mention, the 100th was nicknamed the “Bloody Hundredth” for a reason. It is not so much that “Masters of the Air” is ballsy, but rather the historical events were already quite subversive from a storytelling standpoint.

The baseball talk was to evade possible German bugs on the phone lines

Yes, it is only 9 episodes, and I wish it'd been 10 given things that were cut/left out. But you definitely need to watch the Bloody Hundreth documentary at the end (episode 10). You get all the vet interviews and historical context.

Funny thing to note which may have tipped them off to Bob being a traitor is the bombastic way he sang the star spangled banner and especially the way he wrote the date on the paper since Americans write it Month/Day/Year and he wrote it like a European

I'm generally alone on this but I liked that there was an offscreen mission and offscreen casualties. We've already seen three missions, to just do the same thing over and over would get old by 9 episodes. So having the perspective of ground crew, watching them leave, counting the planes to see who returns, and who doesn't, I thought that was a good perspective to force on the audience to break up what could be very monotonous. The show is clean and that's a sad side effect of the cgi but unavoidable I think, good comparison when it's over (don't skip the companion documentary the bloody hundredth though) but watch memphis belle (90) they actually used real planes in the filming since there were still some flying at the time. Very different visually.

One other thing about detecting a German is that I had a friend in high school and college who was from West Germany and her handwriting was very distinctive, not similar to any of the American kids.

ELIE, the character of Rosie Rosenberg, introduced in this episode, in my opinion, very well can be the Dick Winters and the John Basilone of this series!! The dude was a fucking legend!!!

It's Crosby's ghost narrating. But seriously, missing does not mean dead.

9:43 you’re spot on - I had a similar reaction while watching the series and don’t apologize for your critique and comparisons of MoTA to The Pacific and BoB. This show is considered the weakest out of the three for the very reasons you’re describing here. As you noted before, there’s a special ingredient missing in this show; I also didn’t feel as immersed - until Ep 5. My fav guy of MoTA is Major Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal. I became totally invested with his story and while the next two episodes had leveled up - those ended up being my fav episodes of the entire series.

If you want a movie that really gets bombing combat, try Memphis Belle (1990). Great cast of familiar faces and still holds up today. Still the best representation of bombing crews of WW2.

In addition to no battle wounds, "Bob" sang the Star Spangled Banner a bit over the top; he wrote the date on the paper like a European, not like an American (e.g. Day/Month/Year instead of Month/Day/Year, and the lighter he used to light the cigarette was a German type not an American Zippo that US troops carried. There may have been other "Giveaways" but the Partisans were very thorough because of the danger of German infiltrators.

Quit comparing Band of Brothers and The Pacific!!!!! 😡😡😡

Generation Kill is going to be fun

Masters of the Air is much better than the Pacific, you’re on episode 4 😂 just wait…