Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have once again done a public service.

Like “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” before it, the new series “Masters of the Air” is a profound act of devotion to the memory of the men who won World War II, this time focused on the air war in Europe.

Telling the story of a nation’s history will always depend on popularizers more than academic historians (especially when the latter don’t like their country’s history very much), and Spielberg and Hanks are better popularizers than anyone has cause to expect.

“Masters” tells the story of the 100th Bomber Group of the 8th Air Force, known as the “Bloody 100th,” not for the destruction it wrought, but the punishment it took in some of the most hazardous duty of the war.

No one has ever reproduced the story, the machines, the conditions and the missions of this aspect of the war as accurately and carefully before, and we can assume, no one ever will again.

Ten years in the making with a $250 million budget, this is a production at the very highest level of technical proficiency. The B-17s — the long-range bombers known as Flying Fortresses, or “Forts” for short — steal the show. They are lovingly reproduced and often look like something out of a painting.

Which doesn’t obscure their deadly purpose, or the deadly business of flying one over hostile territory.

If nothing else, “Masters” brings home the experience of flying in a tin can breathing through primitive air masks in below-zero temperatures, while getting shot at by German anti-aircraft guns and trying to fend off ferocious assaults from much faster German fighters.

It is as terrifying as it sounds.

Relying on Air Force records, the show’s makers have obsessively reproduced the exact position of each plane and its precise fate during missions. As the screenwriter John Orloff has explained, they felt a factual rendering was mandatory; this wasn’t “Star Wars” — a made-up conflict involving fictional people — but real battles in which Americans gave their last full measure of devotion.

There’s been a long-running debate about the morality and efficacy of the allied bombing campaign. There’s no doubt that was a real moral cost to the campaign and its wanton destruction. Unfortunately, though, there was no easy way to take down a totalitarian power.

“By 1945,” military historian Cathal Nolan writes, “the bombers would destroy Germany’s transportation systems and demolish most vital war industries, especially oil supply and refining, and effectively end fighter production.”

He continues, “Neither Germany nor Japan could by the end of their respective wars move military supplies, complete production or deploy weapons and divisions as they wanted, even inside their homelands.”

Young American men gave their all in harrowing conditions to make this contribution to victory. “Masters” is their story as it deserves to be told.

(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)
(c) 2024 by King Features Syndicate