Father Jack
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Those train scenes are always hard to watch
Streaming Masters of the Air
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BlakeyNoFlakey
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True. Those POWs wouldn't have understood what was happening to those other people (the Jews) in the carriage that passed at that stage. But they would have sensed it was something awful. Knowledge of the extermination concentration camps came later in the war.
BlakeyNoFlakey
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I liked the reference to the great escape. Now they have the new long-range fighter planes, the losses should improve.
Father Jack
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The good news is we have some great new fighters that can blow the Luftwaffe out of the air
The bad news is you're going to be bait so that we can blow the Luftwaffe out of the air
The bad news is you're going to be bait so that we can blow the Luftwaffe out of the air
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Bombers being used as bait for the Luftwaffe was new information for me.
yeah, a little homage to the announcement of the escape to the POWs
I don't remember that either, specifically. I knew as the US got more and more escorts up that they wanted the Luftwaffe to come up and engage. There were still plenty of important strategic target to bomb as well. If not officially recorded somewhere, it could have been just hyperbole like the airman saying "they want to kill us all!".
A bit like in the PTO, the Germans couldn't effectively replace lost pilots, especially when it was good ones. They couldn't afford rotation quotas. So more and more, their ability to put up a fight against the bomber streams was decreased. One of Hitler's many mistakes was obsessing over the Me262 as a fighter bomber instead of putting them fully into the intercept role. They could have wreaked havoc on the buffs earlier.
BlakeyNoFlakey
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I think saying they were going to use the bombers as bait was just something to add drama to the show. I do think that they definitely would have wanted to take out as many German planes as possible, and in that sense, they were bait, but the bombing of important targets would have still been the priority. I think it was one of those moments when the commanding officer was just reading between the lines of the orders he had been given, rather than command saying that directly.
Agreed
maybe a spoiler for some, but when those fighters got turned loose on the countryside after the bombers had left their area with pretty much carte blanche to strafe anything that moved, it had a massive impact. They started destroying what was left of the luftwaffe on the ground, not to mention all the different mode of transportation the Germans were using, the infrastructure that wasn't hit by bombers, and generally tearing stuff up everywhere. I think the series is about to hit that tipping point.
For those who have only imagined it...
Pretty brutal
The 190s and 110s had good cannons. You can see the damage they could do. The 109s were usually there to strip away any escorts so big guns could go after the bombers.
Pretty brutal
The 190s and 110s had good cannons. You can see the damage they could do. The 109s were usually there to strip away any escorts so big guns could go after the bombers.
Yeah, though towards the end of the war it really was a turkey shoot at times.
If interested there is a massively underappreciated chapter of the airwar and overlooked documentary on it....
Video from the Past [13] - No. 75 Squadron's Defence of Port Moresby
Happy to admit my error here and to say you were 100% correct in your predictive assessment.
It's turning into an excellent series with care taken to develop complex themes.
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Binged ep 4-5-6 in one sitting yesterday and it felt like 30 minutes. Extraordinary
Father Jack
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Again, the final credits seemed to roll as soon as the intro finished.
Although I must say that even though I haven't had a problem with the CGI up to this point, parts of the Tuskegee raid looked a bit dicey to me, especially the first bit, but that is a very minor complaint
Although I must say that even though I haven't had a problem with the CGI up to this point, parts of the Tuskegee raid looked a bit dicey to me, especially the first bit, but that is a very minor complaint
Well... the closing credits do run for just under 6 minutes, and the 2.5 min long opening credits finish as late as 10 min into some episodes (after the introduction). That's a LOT of the show's running time taken up just by the credits.
Quality finish to a series that built along the way. Excellent stuff.
BlakeyNoFlakey
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Great final episode. This has been a magnificent series.
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Bittersweet, the ending montages of actors vs real life heroes and info about their lives is always a bit of a stir in emotion.
I thought it was excellent - probably wanted to have a bit more on the Tuskagee but that is a minor complaint.
Its quite unfair to compare it to BoB (given BoB is a solid 10/10) - but I found the comradeship angle to be much stronger in this series. The Buck/Bucky side was really well done, as was the Crosby emotional side watching his friends dwindle.
Its quite unfair to compare it to BoB (given BoB is a solid 10/10) - but I found the comradeship angle to be much stronger in this series. The Buck/Bucky side was really well done, as was the Crosby emotional side watching his friends dwindle.
Great finale - probably an 8 or 9 out of 10 overall for the series for me.
Amazing how many of the guys lived to be 100+ given how short the odds were they'd survive at all.
I'm reading Donald Miller's book, and it builds a bit more context for the strategic shift, but it's pretty much exactly how it played out in real life.
Essentially, the advocates for 'strategic bombing' (what the 100th and larger Eighth Air Force were tasked with) believed and argued that they could win the war with bombing alone, without an invasion of Europe, and that the fortresses could effectively defend themselves against the Luftwaffe (which is why the development of the Mustangs as a long-distance fighter escort took so long.)
In reality, the cost of lives and planes meant that argument was effectively bunk, so the strategic priority (driven by Eisenhower) shifted from knocking out German industry to eliminating the Luftwaffe as a credible threat over Western Europe prior to D-Day. Which essentially meant putting the bombers on repeated, predictable raids over places like Berlin (like the mission Rosey was on when he got shot down) for the sole purpose of forcing the Germans to put up as many fighters as possible.
I think people underrate how much of a lightning in a bottle story Band of Brothers was in terms of how it landed versus this and the Pacific.
With BoB, you had a single unit with a record of astonishing heroism, and almost all the key players still alive and able to be interviewed - the little interview snippets at the start of each episode added heaps to the stories. The source material is also a lot less reflective of the brutal, traumatic aspects of fighting and focused on the brotherhood and camaraderie.
Whereas with The Pacific, both Sledge and Leckie's memoirs are a lot sadder and more introspective in tone (and the combat was, in a way, a lot more brutal than in Europe) which was always going to change the nature of the show. Plus Basilone's story is just a massive gut punch to experience. Jumping between characters also meant you didn't get the through-line you got with BoB.
Amazing how many of the guys lived to be 100+ given how short the odds were they'd survive at all.
I'm reading Donald Miller's book, and it builds a bit more context for the strategic shift, but it's pretty much exactly how it played out in real life.
Essentially, the advocates for 'strategic bombing' (what the 100th and larger Eighth Air Force were tasked with) believed and argued that they could win the war with bombing alone, without an invasion of Europe, and that the fortresses could effectively defend themselves against the Luftwaffe (which is why the development of the Mustangs as a long-distance fighter escort took so long.)
In reality, the cost of lives and planes meant that argument was effectively bunk, so the strategic priority (driven by Eisenhower) shifted from knocking out German industry to eliminating the Luftwaffe as a credible threat over Western Europe prior to D-Day. Which essentially meant putting the bombers on repeated, predictable raids over places like Berlin (like the mission Rosey was on when he got shot down) for the sole purpose of forcing the Germans to put up as many fighters as possible.
I think people underrate how much of a lightning in a bottle story Band of Brothers was in terms of how it landed versus this and the Pacific.
With BoB, you had a single unit with a record of astonishing heroism, and almost all the key players still alive and able to be interviewed - the little interview snippets at the start of each episode added heaps to the stories. The source material is also a lot less reflective of the brutal, traumatic aspects of fighting and focused on the brotherhood and camaraderie.
Whereas with The Pacific, both Sledge and Leckie's memoirs are a lot sadder and more introspective in tone (and the combat was, in a way, a lot more brutal than in Europe) which was always going to change the nature of the show. Plus Basilone's story is just a massive gut punch to experience. Jumping between characters also meant you didn't get the through-line you got with BoB.
Much prefer the voice over monologue of how they did it in BoB with Damien Lewis, was better. In fact it’s one of my favorite scenes pf the entire BoB series.
Could have had Nate Mann (Rosie) or Austin Bulter do it
BlakeyNoFlakey
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Watched the doco and didn't realize most of the story was based on real people and true events. Makes the series even better.
I've gotta say, it was a very well-made show, but it got nowhere near Band Of Brothers or even The Pacific for me. There were two major downsides with picking the 100th as the unit to follow through the series - 1/ So many of them died that they weren't able to flesh out many of the characters, and 2/ Having them in masks the whole way through the air battles (which obviously they had to) made it too difficult to tell people apart.
The other main issue for me was that they tried to cram far too much into the series - it was about the air battles, it was about the resistance smuggling the Americans back to England, it was about the Prisoner Of War camps, it was about the conflicting feelings of African Americans fighting in the war. It just felt like they only scratched the surface on a lot of those storylines and at points felt like just ticking boxes. The scene of Rosie finding the concentration camp was horrific, but then they just moved on and that was all forgotten about.
Although the battles with the Luftwaffe were incredibly shot and tense in their own way, the most intense scenes were ones when they were on the ground trying to escape the enemy. Which is why it never grabbed me quite as much as the previous two series.
It's an unfair comparison though, because Band Of Brother is a genuine 10 out of 10 series and The Pacific is probably a 9 out of 10 too.
The other main issue for me was that they tried to cram far too much into the series - it was about the air battles, it was about the resistance smuggling the Americans back to England, it was about the Prisoner Of War camps, it was about the conflicting feelings of African Americans fighting in the war. It just felt like they only scratched the surface on a lot of those storylines and at points felt like just ticking boxes. The scene of Rosie finding the concentration camp was horrific, but then they just moved on and that was all forgotten about.
Although the battles with the Luftwaffe were incredibly shot and tense in their own way, the most intense scenes were ones when they were on the ground trying to escape the enemy. Which is why it never grabbed me quite as much as the previous two series.
It's an unfair comparison though, because Band Of Brother is a genuine 10 out of 10 series and The Pacific is probably a 9 out of 10 too.
