It’s June 1943 and the Yanks are coming. They’re filling East Anglian skies with 11-man Flying Fortresses in a scene echoed today by budget airlines returning sunburned Britons to Stansted from Mediterranean fleshpots.
Welcome to Masters of the Air, the second world war drama produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, which touches down on Apple TV+ on 26 January. This eagerly awaited $200m, Covid-delayed epic is a spiritual successor to their earlier wartime shows Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010).
Based on Donald L Miller’s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, and written by John Orloff, the series is already being billed as Band of Brothers in the skies. Indeed, just as Band of Brothers followed Easy Company’s exploits across occupied Europe from the Normandy landings in 1944 to the war’s end, so Masters of the Air tracks the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) on risky daytime bombing raids over Germany and other territories under Nazi rule.
“Most of us had never travelled far from home, let alone flown an aeroplane,” says the voiceover at the start. “We came from every corner of the country with a common purpose – to bring the war to Hitler’s doorstep.”
You don’t have to be an RAF veteran to raise a sceptical eyebrow at this. “Actually,” one imagines a retired wing commander commenting, “our chaps had been sending milk crates to Hitler’s doorstep for several years before you chaps joined the show.” That said, Britain has long saluted the bravery and sacrifice of the American men and women who bombed Germany by day while the RAF conducted night raids. As Winston Churchill put it: “For our air superiority, which by the end of 1944 was to become air supremacy, full tribute must be paid to the United States eighth air force. Now we were masters of the air.”
Quite so, and today American aircrews’ heroism is celebrated not just on Apple TV+, but in Bury St Edmunds, the East Anglian market town close to wartime USAF bases, where tour guides are offering Masters of the Air walking tours to coincide with the series.
That mastery of the skies, as the narrator tells us, was essential for winning the war. Nazi U-boat bases needed to be bombed to end German successes in the Atlantic, where ships carrying materials necessary for a ground invasion were repeatedly sunk. Without these Masters of the Air, one might suppose, the drama depicted in Band of Brothers, with Allied forces sweeping from Normandy to Berlin, would not have taken place.
Like Band of Brothers, though, this drama is significant not just as a patriotic US narrative, but as something stranger. It amounts to a reverse takeover by an impressive band of British and Irish actors of an otherwise thoroughly American story.
There are some US actors in the cast. The central character is played by superbly quiffed 32-year-old Anaheim native Austin Butler, who starred as Elvis in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic, and who here, as Maj Gale Cleven, accessorises his kissably sculpted lips with an insouciant toothpick, even mid-dogfight five miles above Wilhelmshaven.
And yes, Spielberg’s son Sawyer does have a leading role, and true, the fascinating role of troubled Col Harold Huglin is taken by Paris-born Nikolai Kinski, the son of that German force of nature Klaus, who was raised in California and has dual nationality.
But many of the leading members of the 100th Bomb Group are played by non-Americans. The cast includes not just 31-year-old Dublin-born actor Barry Keoghan, star of Saltburn and The Banshees of Inisherin, and 27-year-old Fionn O’Shea as Sgt Steve Bosser, but an elite squadron of young British talent.
There’s the 33-year-old British actor Callum Turner, best known as Theseus Scamander in JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts franchise, as Maj John “Bucky” Egan. Jude Law and Sadie Frost’s 27-year-old son, Raff Law, plays ground mechanic Sergeant Ken Lemmons. And then there’s the Rwandan-Scottish star Ncuti Gatwa, 31, who as the current Doctor Who is chief custodian of one of the few homegrown franchises that can make British audiences stand up and salute, but here plays 2nd Lt Robert Daniels.
There’s even a cameo for the ex-Daily Telegraph editor and historian Max Hastings, though I’m not quite clear why, and in any case he gets in the way of the main point: when we watch Masters of the Air we’re watching the young talent who will dominate our screens in years to come; we’re looking to the heavens and seeing future stars.
In this, Masters of the Air is following the Band of Brothers playbook. Back in 2001, that drama introduced us to a clutch of new, mainly British talent. It was here that we were first saw British newbies such as Damian Lewis, James McAvoy, Dominic Cooper, Marc Warren, Dexter Fletcher and Tom Hardy, not to forget the Irish-German thespian Michael Fassbender. Yes, there were some fascinating turns by Americans – not least by David Schwimmer graduating from playing Friends’ resident goofy palaeontologist Ross to his breakthrough straight role as the reviled Cptn Sobel, and Donnie Wahlberg (Mark’s brother) as Carwood Lipton. But in Band of Brothers, British actors established a beachhead for future invasions of Hollywood.
What we’re witnessing is the realisation of what Colin Welland said in his Oscar acceptance speech in 1982. On winning the award for best original screenplay for Chariots of Fire, the late Yorkshireman quoted the US independence war hero Paul Revere to the American audience: “The British are coming!” In 2024, they’ve arrived.
• The headline of this article was amended on 22 January 2024. An earlier version referred only to “Britons” when the article itself is about British and Irish actors.
