Masters Of The Air - General Discussion

[Raja]

2 hours ago, aghst said:

How did men end up in non combat support roles?

If they had specialized skills like they were doctors, they could avoid combat?

So mechanics, maybe people who had logistics knowledge and experience and some others?

 

 

They were assigned there. Pre war you could enlist in say an infantry regiment. Or later volunteer units like submarines or Airborne/Ranger like units. Aside from the late 44 into 1945 Black men service troops  who asked to replace combat casualties 

Edit.  At this point in history most soldiers were in support roles shooting at the enemy was not their primary mission 

Edited February 21 by Raja

[aghst]

Episode 7 - P51 Mustangs are a game changer.

But while the bomber squadron were celebrating 14 of 15 forts returning, practically untouched, there must have been some attrition of the fighter squadron that protected the bombers?

Not a surprise Rosie re-upped.  But they changed the mission, now to destroy the Luftwaffe fighters for the invasion of Europe.

Makes sense but a big sacrifice for the bomber crews, to bait the fighters up.  Why wouldn’t they just destroy the bases where the fighters were?  The tactic now is to destroy runways so enemy fighters can’t even take off or land.

Also not a surprise that Crosby’s coping mechanism to deal with all the squadron’s losses is to have an affair with subaltern Sandra Westgate.

[Raja]

6 hours ago, aghst said:

Episode 7 - P51 Mustangs are a game changer.

But while the bomber squadron were celebrating 14 of 15 forts returning, practically untouched, there must have been some attrition of the fighter squadron that protected the bombers?

Not a surprise Rosie re-upped.  But they changed the mission, now to destroy the Luftwaffe fighters for the invasion of Europe.

Makes sense but a big sacrifice for the bomber crews, to bait the fighters up.  Why wouldn’t they just destroy the bases where the fighters were?  The tactic now is to destroy runways so enemy fighters can’t even take off or land.

Also not a surprise that Crosby’s coping mechanism to deal with all the squadron’s losses is to have an affair with subaltern Sandra Westgate.

As we move from hundreds of bomber raids to near 1000 bomber raids it was well into 1944 by the time Allied air forces both in Europe and the Pacific carrier task forces were large enough to keep the pressure on air bases to the point where German and Japanese ground crews could not repair damage and get back in operation.  Other friendly commanders wanted your aircraft to do something else to get ready for D-Day. Weather and attrition made keeping the pressure up on specific enemy bases impossible.

In the German case they could move their fighter bases east making tactical strikes against them more difficult even with Soviet pressure coming. While limiting the time in combat they were mostly in a hit and run as they would shot their ammunition dry sooner than running out of gas by patrolling  if they did that rather than going directly to an intercept point.

[pasdetrois]

"Rosie" Rosenthal was a storied B-17 pilot, known for his bravery and skill. I met his grandson and great-grandson at a 100th Bomb Group reunion.

They've mentioned Doolittle in the episodes. My dad said Doolittle tried to convince crews who were "lucky bastarding" out of the 100th ("Lucky Bastard" referred to surviving the minimum number of required missions) to continue on bomber crews in the Pacific campaign. After surviving more than 25 missions at Thorpe Abbotts, my dad told him no thanks.

How thrilling it must have been for B-17 crews to receive the support of the American fighters.

[Raja]

49 minutes ago, pasdetrois said:

They've mentioned Doolittle in the episodes. My dad said Doolittle tried to convince crews who were "lucky bastarding" out of the 100th ("Lucky Bastard" referred to surviving the minimum number of required missions) to continue on bomber crews in the Pacific campaign. After surviving more than 25 missions at Thorpe Abbotts, my dad told him no thanks.

It sounds like the end of the Band of Brothers when Major Winters was volunteering to go to the Pacific while others without the points were told to get ready to redeploy as part of the division rather than be transferred to other duties.  A lot of those B-29 commanders including the most famous two Colonel Tibbets of Hiroshima mission and General LeMay the Air Force commander were the lucky survivors of those 1942 and 1943 missions.

[Raja]

10 hours ago, aghst said:

there must have been some attrition of the fighter squadron that protected the bombers?

As they are about to enter the story and were so closely monitored and written about the Tuskegee Airmen lost 84 flying officers killed (68 in combat) and had 32 taken prisoner out of the 355 who were deployed to North Africa and Europe 

[IvySpice]

I've been limping along with my husband, watching the show for the battle sequences but not loving it, until Episode 6. This is what I was waiting for! Characters I can keep track of. Watching relationships develop. Writing that shows some respect for the audience.

Bel Powley is fantastic. This became a different show when she was on screen. I thought they were going to hint that she's a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, but now they're hinting that she's a Nazi spy? Did I read the teaser right?

[anna0852]

4 minutes ago, IvySpice said:

Bel Powley is fantastic. This became a different show when she was on screen. I thought they were going to hint that she's a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, but now they're hinting that she's a Nazi spy? Did I read the teaser right?

I think they were hinting she’s SOE. A lot of female intelligence operatives were infiltrated into France before D-Day. More than a few ended up in concentration camps.

[aghst]

So black pilots fly smaller planes, don't get promoted like their white counterparts, are sent out in small groups of 4 planes where they're easily outgunned.

Then on missions where they know they're going to run out of fuel before returning so they're told to blend in with the local people.  That's around Italy and France.

So of course the German interrogator is going to talk about how they're being mistreated by America.  

At first, the black POWs keep to themselves and the white POWs don't even engage with them.

Then for their escape plan, they realize they need them so Buck makes an overture.

 

[SeanBug]

1 hour ago, aghst said:

So black pilots fly smaller planes, don't get promoted like their white counterparts, are sent out in small groups of 4 planes where they're easily outgunned.

Then on missions where they know they're going to run out of fuel before returning so they're told to blend in with the local people.  That's around Italy and France.

So of course the German interrogator is going to talk about how they're being mistreated by America.  

At first, the black POWs keep to themselves and the white POWs don't even engage with them.

Then for their escape plan, they realize they need them so Buck makes an overture.

 

There was still a lot of racism in the military in those days.  They couldn't even be sent to all white bombardier schools. 

Flying bomber escort was extremely important. The bombardier group pilots and crews really admired and appreciated the Red Tail pilots, they saved their asses on more than one occasion.  My father was in the Army Air Force during the war and he said they were the best fighter pilots. 

The Germans wanted to use the racism to cause problems between the white and Black prisoners. Note the SS officer asking one of the Tuskegee pilots "why do you fight for a country that treats you so poorly". 

I loved the pilot's answer, that the country was slowly becoming what it should be. I only wish he would have added "Can you say the same thing about Germany?"   

[Raja]

3 hours ago, aghst said:

So black pilots fly smaller planes, don't get promoted like their white counterparts, are sent out in small groups of 4 planes where they're easily outgunned.

Then on missions where they know they're going to run out of fuel before returning so they're told to blend in with the local people.  That's around Italy and France.

So of course the German interrogator is going to talk about how they're being mistreated by America.  

At first, the black POWs keep to themselves and the white POWs don't even engage with them.

Then for their escape plan, they realize they need them so Buck makes an overture.

 

You can say that what happened in Italy minus enemy fire was half as bad as what happened during their training in Tuskegee Alabama.  The Nazis being among the nations least able globally to exploit that.

2 hours ago, SeanBug said:

There was still a lot of racism in the military in those days.  They couldn't even be sent to all white bombardier schools.

There was the 477th  Bomber Group in training getting ready to fly B-25s against Japan when Hiroshima got destroyed. The first Black 4 star General Chappie James USAF was among that group after serving as a flight instructor.

[paigow]

5 hours ago, aghst said:

So black pilots fly smaller planes, don't get promoted like their white counterparts, are sent out in small groups of 4 planes where they're easily outgunned.

Maverick owns a P-51...  not a B-17

That was a stupid mission ... maybe eliminate ground fire before attacking the communication towers.

[Raja]

53 minutes ago, paigow said:

That was a stupid mission ... maybe eliminate ground fire before attacking the communication towers.

That was beyond the capabilities of the day. The hard calculus of one of many units sent that was too small and properly equipped to give a better chance of bringing everyone back.  But then we have been watching the 100th Bomb Group do the same thing for the many months that they had been deployed.

[SeanBug]

On 3/8/2024 at 7:03 PM, Raja said:

That was beyond the capabilities of the day. The hard calculus of one of many units sent that was too small and properly equipped to give a better chance of bringing everyone back.  But then we have been watching the 100th Bomb Group do the same thing for the many months that they had been deployed.

People forget how limited the US military was at the start of WW2.  That's why it was so important to get the defense contractors' factories up and running so quickly, and why women played such an important role. 

It's a miracle D Day was pulled off with the success it had. And look how long it took to get it planned and executed, seeing as how we were fighting in various areas of Europe and Africa prior to it, but not to the magnitude of the ground invasion of D Day. 

Go back and watch Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan and see how those men complained about the insanity of the missions they were sent on. 

[Raja]

14 minutes ago, SeanBug said:

People forget how limited the US military was at the start of WW2.  That's why it was so important to get the defense contractors' factories up and running so quickly, and why women played such an important role.

The 99th fighter Squadron, which was rolled into the 332nd Fighter Group in combat  flew  3 different types of planes in those few months before getting the P-51s. In fact the mission showed, if it was real which I'm not sure of since one killed in action pilot named lived until 2016, one of the interim planes  which was flown for about a month the P-47 which was sometimes equipped with rockets and generally thought of as the best USAAF type for that type of mission.

[Raja]

Refreshing my history the Tuskegee Airmen flew the P-47 up to 15 days before the Southern France D-Day. So it is very likely that the producers just didn't want to confuse the audience with the third aircraft type. Especially one that many argue was a better warplane just without the range to reach Berlin that the P-51 had.

[aghst]

Good ending, I guess a couple of the main characters in this limited series were basically POWs for at least 3 of the 9 episodes so they showed how they survived and returned from the war.

Were they really imprisoned with some of the black POWs or did the show take liberties?

It seems the Tuskegee Airmen were introduced so that they could be seen collaborating with the other POWs on survival in the stalags.  After they were freed, they went back to their segregated bases?  When they showed everyone celebrating the official end of the war, the black personnel were not in those scenes but right after, as they started packing up to leave, there was a brief shot of a couple of black men.

The focus of the show was on the men (and women) of the 100th, how determined they were to fulfill the the overall mission, in the face of brutal, high-casualty missions.

Crosby was philosophical about how many weren't able to return home as they were about to return.  I don't think the show truly elaborated on the scale of their losses.  We saw crewmen and pilots getting injured or killed on those planes, then this little moment at the end about how many were lost.

The food air drop mission was great, the planes flying low over windmills and fields of colorful tulips, with the just-liberated Dutch people cheering them on from rooftops.

Then the unexpected reunion of Buck and Bucky when they landed.  Rosie was the most-decorated, as he should have been.  But looks like Buck and Bucky served in a couple more wars, became lifers in the Air Force or whenever the USAF came into being.

 

 

[Raja]

20 hours ago, aghst said:

Were they really imprisoned with some of the black POWs or did the show take liberties?

It seems the Tuskegee Airmen were introduced so that they could be seen collaborating with the other POWs on survival in the stalags.  After they were freed, they went back to their segregated bases?  When they showed everyone celebrating the official end of the war, the black personnel were not in those scenes but right after, as they started packing up to leave, there was a brief shot of a couple of black men.

In the end perhaps if they used The Pacific, with its separated Marines to tell the story instead of the Band of Brothers focus on one unit. The shoehorn in of Tuskegee Airmen  in the next to last episode wouldn't have felt that way.

Yes the Luftwaffe had integrated POW camps. There were only 32 Tuskegee Airmen taken prisoner during the war. The ground forces being capture is not written about as much beyond the Black 333rd Field Artillery being among the surrendering units massacred by the Waffen SS during the Battle of the Bulge..

You could say cynically that the 332nd from the 15th USAAF was chosen to represent fighter pilots and the SOE spy were included because without their stories the artist awards, Emmy's and others would disqualify the show, even as a period piece set during Jim Crow America.

Just as there are stories of Vietnam veterans returning to be spit upon there are stories of those on the returning troop ships telling the "[racist epithet]" to go this direction to reinforce segregation.  But the second of the Black troops Double V (against the Axis  and Jim Crow) for victory campaign came in 1948 with Presidential Executive Order 9981 when the military was ordered to desegregate.

The last segregated unit in combat being a Buffalo Soldiers 24th Infantry Regiment in the early battles of Korea. Where once again Black troops were accused of being cowards and running when all of the other units except a composite Marine brigade and the 27th Infantry regiment were breaking as well when the UN army got squeezed down into the Pusan Perimeter.  Before the Invasion at Inchon cut off the North Koreans and the UN pushed back north to the Chinese border, when China entered the war in force and pushed the UN back to just about the pre war border.

20 hours ago, aghst said:

 But looks like Buck and Bucky served in a couple more wars, became lifers in the Air Force or whenever the USAF came into being.

The US Air Force became official at the same time the War Department became the the Department of Defense in 1947. It became the first among the services that Jim Crow era Blacks would volunteer for. Ironically because they held out the toughest in accepting any Black men the Marine Corps was probably second. Maybe due to if you got through Boot Camp you were a Marine as Montford Point was shut down and Black Marines went to Parris Island and San Diego

Edited March 16 by Raja

[pasdetrois]

In the early 60s, we were stationed at a USAF base, and many of the young officers had duplex housing. A decorated Black pilot and his family arrived at the base, and there was a furor because of racism. My parents were the only ones willing to share a duplex with this family. Years later my dad told me about how badly the Black officer was treated, routinely.

[MrWhyt]

19 hours ago, aghst said:

The food air drop mission was great, the planes flying low over windmills and fields of colorful tulips, with the just-liberated Dutch people cheering them on from rooftops.

my father's parents were among them, I wouldn't be here without those food missions. My father was barely 10 months old at the end of the war. My grandparent's didn't talk about the war but I do remember one time when my grandfather spoke of the big american planes dropping food.

[SeanBug]

On 3/15/2024 at 2:20 AM, aghst said:

Good ending, I guess a couple of the main characters in this limited series were basically POWs for at least 3 of the 9 episodes so they showed how they survived and returned from the war.

Were they really imprisoned with some of the black POWs or did the show take liberties?

It seems the Tuskegee Airmen were introduced so that they could be seen collaborating with the other POWs on survival in the stalags.  After they were freed, they went back to their segregated bases?  When they showed everyone celebrating the official end of the war, the black personnel were not in those scenes but right after, as they started packing up to leave, there was a brief shot of a couple of black men.

The focus of the show was on the men (and women) of the 100th, how determined they were to fulfill the the overall mission, in the face of brutal, high-casualty missions.

Crosby was philosophical about how many weren't able to return home as they were about to return.  I don't think the show truly elaborated on the scale of their losses.  We saw crewmen and pilots getting injured or killed on those planes, then this little moment at the end about how many were lost.

The food air drop mission was great, the planes flying low over windmills and fields of colorful tulips, with the just-liberated Dutch people cheering them on from rooftops.

Then the unexpected reunion of Buck and Bucky when they landed.  Rosie was the most-decorated, as he should have been.  But looks like Buck and Bucky served in a couple more wars, became lifers in the Air Force or whenever the USAF came into being.

 

 

I implore everyone to watch the documentary that was just released on Apple as a supplement to MOTA.  It has amazing footage of the men of the 100th, and interviews with a lot of the men. These were filmed years ago, since I believe they've all passed away, but Rosenthal, Crosby and a few others are in them. I even saw footage of one of the men holding a dog, and wondered if that was our Meatball.  It also features the author of the book, historians, and it's narrated by Tom Hanks. 

It explains how badly the bombing raids went until the US got their Air Force up and running and how the P15 Mustangs became central to us gaining domination over the Luftwaffe. 

 

[Raja]

On 3/8/2024 at 11:04 AM, SeanBug said:

Flying bomber escort was extremely important. The bombardier group pilots and crews really admired and appreciated the Red Tail pilots, they saved their asses on more than one occasion.  My father was in the Army Air Force during the war and he said they were the best fighter pilots. 

After General Doolittle took over the 8th USAAF their fighter groups were ordered to hunt down the Luftwaffe, the bombers being "bait".  They could send some squadrons out more as free roaming hunter killer groups thus being in a better position to ambush and hit German fighters by coming at them from out of the sun.  Being further away they were not as visible to the bomber crews, however by 1944 there were many more longer ranged fighters around and some could stay close while others were patrolling further out.

The 15th USAAF which the 332nd was assigned to had fewer long range fighter groups and so their escort stayed closer to the bomber boxes since if they were at the wrong ambush spot the Germans could leak through unmolested. The pretty good HBO Movie The Tuskegee Airmen and the bad Lucas Film Red Tails both emphasized the stay close to the bombers orders when their  mission changed and  the 332nd Fighter Group moved from ground attack to escort. The Red nose and tail left no doubt of who was helping and the pilots could not be accused of cowardice when they stayed in view of the bomber crews.

[paigow]

21 hours ago, Raja said:

The pretty good HBO Movie The Tuskegee Airmen 

Morpheus + Frank Pembleton = Victory

[SeanBug]

I would suggest for anyone who watched the series to listen to the companion podcast. They interview Tom Hanks, the author of the book, Masters of the Air, Don Miller and several other historians familiar with the the bomber groups, the planes etc. It goes episode  by episode so you get much more detailed information about each event.  

Be warned, the descriptions of  what the pilots and crews went through are much more graphic than what they presented on the series.. To say it was horrific is an understatement. 

But the love these men had for each other, and the dedication to getting the job done, ie winning the war, is inspirational. 

[Raja]

On 3/2/2024 at 8:06 AM, pasdetrois said:

"Rosie" Rosenthal was a storied B-17 pilot, known for his bravery and skill. I met his grandson and great-grandson at a 100th Bomb Group reunion.

They've mentioned Doolittle in the episodes. My dad said Doolittle tried to convince crews who were "lucky bastarding" out of the 100th ("Lucky Bastard" referred to surviving the minimum number of required missions) to continue on bomber crews in the Pacific campaign. After surviving more than 25 missions at Thorpe Abbotts, my dad told him no thanks.

How thrilling it must have been for B-17 crews to receive the support of the American fighters.

I am coming back to this because I was listening to a history of the Pacific War. The commander of the first B-29 to take off from a Pacific island, Saipan to attack Japan in November 1944 was Robert K. Morgan who flew the Memphis Belle, the first aircrew to complete its 25 missions in the 8th USAAF. He did 26 more missions in the Pacific.