This Masters of the Air episode 6 recap contains spoilers. In episode 6, Major David 'Bucky' Egan witnesses the true horrors of war when he narrowly survives a gruesome mass grave and gets a glimpse of the holocaust first-hand. Yet he remains defiant and refuses to talk to a Nazi interrogator. Elsewhere, Captain Harry Crosby makes a connection when he travels to Oxford...
The show is streaming on Apple TV Plus, and we've got a guide on how to watch Masters of the Air if you need any help in watching it yourself.
After bailing out over Germany, Major David ‘Bucky’ Egan is trying to keep a low profile, but it’s not long before he’s spotted by a group of kids, who alert their parents. He jumps into a marsh for a tense game of cat-and-mouse, but in the end he’s caught. “For you the war is over,” says his pursuer without a hint of irony.
Bucky is then transported by train to a bombed out city, which has recently been badly damaged in an RAF nighttime raid. Egan and his captured comrades are very unpopular with the German civilians whose homes have been destroyed and several US airmen are killed when they’re attacked by a baying mob.
A battered and bruised Egan is presumed dead and taken off to the forest on a cart stacked with his fallen comrades, yet manages to escape while the Germans are digging a mass grave. He’s badly injured and all alone deep inside enemy territory, so his chances of escape are remote and he’s soon recaptured. However he has escaped certain death in that woodland death pit.
He soon finds himself in an interrogation room, with a Nazi official who knows an awful lot about him, attempting to extract even more intel. “Here’s mud in your eye,” he says as he knocks back a whisky. “The only thing you’ll get from me is name, rank and serial number.”
The Nazi dangles the results of the World Series in front of his nose, before asking him about Buck Cleven and telling him that only one plane made it back from the Münster raid. He’s also interested in why Egan doesn’t appear on any of the crew lists for that mission and how the Gestapo believe him to be a spy.
Of course, he wasn’t on the list because he tagged along at the last minute. “The Gestapo are never mistaken,” says his interrogator with thinly-veiled menace, urging him to explain how he came to be in Germany. But Egan won’t talk.
"John Egan. Major. 0399510." he replies to every question, in a show of characteristic defiance.
'I was in a rhythm!'
Back at Thorpe Abbotts, Major Harry Crosby tells us it’s been four months since the 100th arrived in England (which would make it October 1943) and that of the 35 original crews, 32 are now missing. The costly mission to Münster has hit everyone hard.
Crosby is still struggling following the death of his childhood pal Bubbles and he’s being sent off to Oxford for a conference with the other Allied nations. While there he finds he’s sharing a room with an inexplicably attractive and vivacious British ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) subaltern, Alessandra Westgate, who catches him practising his Spencer Tracy impression in the mirror. What an ice-breaker!
Later on Crosby meets an arrogant English airman* who lectures him about the English class system and the ‘moral discipline’ of his American colleagues. Westgate steps in to prick his pomposity as Crosby explains that each day could be his comrades’ last chance to “live it up”.
That evening he and Westgate share a whisky and he opens up about his pain over Bubbles and how he blames himself for his death after replacing him as group navigator. “If he’d been there to plan the missions then maybe all those planes wouldn’t have gone down,” he sighs. She tells him that’s nonsense and it’s clear there’s a vibe between them.
The next day the pair take a stroll together and crash a party, before Westgate receives an urgent message that means she must leave on urgent business. “The next time you’re in London, ring me. We’ll go dancing and if you’re lucky I might teach you to punt.” She says, euphemistically.
Meanwhile Rosenthal and his crew are also sent for a week of R & R at Coombe House, a place called ‘The Flak House’ by the US airmen. However Rosenthal clearly feels that relaxing while the war is still going on is a dereliction of duty. “I don’t think this environment is helpful for me,” Rosenthal tells the doctor. “I’d like to return to base.” But his request is refused.
However he does build a bond with the doctor and later on they bond over jazz records while musing on war and the effects it can have on men. “You don’t go talking about it, you don’t go crying about it, you get back in the seat and you finish the damn job,” he says. “I was in a rhythm.”
'What took you so long?'
Yet Rosie slowly learns to relax a little and on the last day, his crewmates retell the story of how he hummed Artie Shaw when they were all alone and facing half the Luftwaffe. “Hearing your voice on the radio made me realise I wasn’t alone,” says his comrade. As we watch the stories begin to flow, Crosby muses over the things that all of the airmen needed something to help them climb back into the plane for each mission. For him, we sense it might be subaltern Westgate.
Meanwhile, back in Germany Major Egan is herded onto a cattle truck with hundreds of other POWs. Across the tracks he sees another train crammed with desperate people on their way to the concentration camps. It’s a devastating scene that will surely stay with Egan for the rest of his days.
Yet when he arrives at Stalag Luft III POW camp, he recognises some of his old friends from the 100th, before noticing his best pal Buck leaning on the fence. “What took you so long?” says his old pal as he cracks a smile through the fence.
*We know the Nazis are the baddies of this whole caper, but the pilots of the RAF certainly push them a close second, with their snobby ways and plummy accents.
