Danny and Derek welcome writer and co-executive producer John Orloff to the pod to discuss Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air miniseries. They go into John’s background, his work on HBO’s seminal Band of Brothers, the distinct horror of WWII aerial warfare, how
Great interview. Depictions of the air war are super interesting to me because it's really the last moment before the US had uncontested air superiority for the rest of the century. I think that's the reason pop culture hasn't moved beyond it: the most enduring images of air combat are basically just WWII transposed to other settings, like Star Wars (the climactic trench run is cribbed shot-for-shot from The Dam Busters) or Top Gun (a fighter duel fantasy with 80s hardware). Hollywood can't reckon with America's actual post-war relationship to air power because it'd just be the door gunner from Full Metal Jacket, on a trillion-dollar scale.
The only recent film/show that comes close to depicting the experience of American air power from the ground is a small scene from Andor, when a TIE fighter streaks overhead and you really feel the terror a single one of those provokes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ZScaSW2Ww
My grandfather was a flight engineer/top turret gunner flying from Thorpe Abbotts. Until this show, the relentlessness of the air war wasn’t as vivid in my mind. One day his entire barracks was wiped out. He was damaged by the war.
The episode where Egan gets to stalag luft 3 freaked me out because my great uncle had been in that camp (and the rest of the luftwaffe camps) since 1940 after a disastrous raid on Trondheim. He even was tangentially involved in the escape that inspired the great escape itself. Always wild to think about how close we are to history like this. His family thought he was dead for the whole war and suddenly arrived back home in rural Canada essentially without explanation.
I never understood why the allies didn't go with just mass producing something like the mosquito. It had the same bomb payload as the b17 and was faster than any German fighter. I guess the plywood construction might have made it hard to mass produce but I'm sure it would have had better survival rates than b17s and Lancaster's.
Great interview. Depictions of the air war are super interesting to me because it's really the last moment before the US had uncontested air superiority for the rest of the century. I think that's the reason pop culture hasn't moved beyond it: the most enduring images of air combat are basically just WWII transposed to other settings, like Star Wars (the climactic trench run is cribbed shot-for-shot from The Dam Busters) or Top Gun (a fighter duel fantasy with 80s hardware). Hollywood can't reckon with America's actual post-war relationship to air power because it'd just be the door gunner from Full Metal Jacket, on a trillion-dollar scale.
The only recent film/show that comes close to depicting the experience of American air power from the ground is a small scene from Andor, when a TIE fighter streaks overhead and you really feel the terror a single one of those provokes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ZScaSW2Ww
My grandfather was a flight engineer/top turret gunner flying from Thorpe Abbotts. Until this show, the relentlessness of the air war wasn’t as vivid in my mind. One day his entire barracks was wiped out. He was damaged by the war.
The episode where Egan gets to stalag luft 3 freaked me out because my great uncle had been in that camp (and the rest of the luftwaffe camps) since 1940 after a disastrous raid on Trondheim. He even was tangentially involved in the escape that inspired the great escape itself. Always wild to think about how close we are to history like this. His family thought he was dead for the whole war and suddenly arrived back home in rural Canada essentially without explanation.
Shoulda called it bland of brothers. Production value is great. Shoulda had the camera man on.
I never understood why the allies didn't go with just mass producing something like the mosquito. It had the same bomb payload as the b17 and was faster than any German fighter. I guess the plywood construction might have made it hard to mass produce but I'm sure it would have had better survival rates than b17s and Lancaster's.
What's more it was a fairly competent dogfighter as well!
I’m pretty sure the concentration camps weren’t “why we fought”
Shoulda asked him if he thought it was weird how BoB aired 2 days before 9/11