On October 10, 1943, 18 aircraft of the 100th Bomb Group – an American Air Force squadron – were sent from their East Anglia base to strike targets in the Western German city of Münster. War was raging in Europe: Hitler’s Nazi party had successfully conquered most of the continent – from Greece in the East to France in the West.
Such was the chaos in the skies that five aircraft aborted the mission long before they reached their destination. All of the 13 planes that pressed on were eventually hit: 12 were shot down; only one badly damaged plane, commanded by 26-year-old New Yorker Robert Rosenthal, managed to return home.
It was just a regular day on the job for the 100th Bomb Group, soon to be depicted in Apple TV+’s upcoming blockbuster war series, Masters of the Air, the star-studded companion to Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010).
The 100th is not, as the Imperial War Museum put it, particularly “statistically noteworthy”. While the unit won awards, lost men, dropped an unfathomable number of bombs and fought bravely in a series of terrifying air battles, in terms of straight numbers other groups did more, won more and lost more men.
But the unit, which became known as the Bloody Hundredth, have emerged as legends because of the high number of casualties they suffered in a relatively small number of brutal missions. The excellent 100th crews, which were brought in to help America’s depleted Eighth Air Force in June 1943, would often fly at the back of formations or lower to the ground than other planes, making them easy targets.
Their raids were dangerous, intense and high stakes: in October 1943, the 100th lost around 100 men in just three bloody missions; according to the American Air Museum only three of the squadron’s initial 140 officers “were still operational” just four months after their arrival at the rural Thorpe Abbotts Air Force base in Norfolk.
Over the years, the 100th has also been celebrated for the awe-inspiring gumption of some of its men (Rosenthal, for example, was shot down twice, the first time falling into the hands of the Free French, the second the Red Army. Both times he returned to duty after making his way back to England). Some of these extraordinary characters will be depicted in the new nine part series which, like Band of Brothers, is executive produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
Being an air force crewman in 1943 wasn't exactly a recipe for a long life: on average, they tended to survive for just 11 missions. The 100th, which initially consisted of 350 men (to man 35 planes), were required to complete 25 missions: their primary targets included transport links, communications lines, oil storage facilities, power plants, industrial cities, missile sites, arms factories and military facilities across Europe.
As the war ground on, and the allies started to dominate Europe’s skies with thousands of planes, carpet bombing cities became another, and now controversial, practice. Towards the end of the war the 100th supported the allies on D-Day, dropped food for the hungry populace in the Netherlands, and transported French prisoners of war.
The squadron, which worked alongside a number of British and American support units, were on duty from their arrival in June 1943 (after seven months of training) until April 20, 1945. Their high concentration of casualties meant that all members of the unit – and new recruits sent to fill in for the men killed – needed to be in operational mode at all times.
If soldiers did manage to survive falling out of the sky, they nearly always landed straight into the hands of the Nazis and their allies, and so would spend the rest of the war in prisoner of war camps. This was the case for Major Gale Cleven and Major John Egan, played respectively by Austin Butler and Callum Turner in the new series.
It’s not yet known whether the series will depict the two soldiers’ capture, but the true story is a remarkable one: the best friends, who both signed up as flying cadets in Texas in 1940, were shot down two days apart in 1943, only to bump into each other at Stalag Luft III, a German prisoner of war camp.
In winter 1945, as the allies and the red army advanced, the camp’s approximately 10,000 prisoners were marched towards the Eastern city of Spremberg. Hundreds died during the miles-long walk due to starvation, disease, and from the cold. Both Cleven and Egan, somehow unsurprisingly, survived.
Writer and producer John Shiban (The X-Files) and screenwriter John Orloff (Band of Brothers) have stepped up to create the show, which is based on the 2007 book by historian Donald L Miller. Despite being described as fictional, Miller’s story draws on interviews, oral histories, and archives.
The 100th spent their down time in England, in clean barracks and in relative peace. The series, then, which boasts an all-star cast including Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), Nate Mann (Licorice Pizza), Rafferty Law (Twist) and Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education), will drill down into the strange contrast between their lives in the sky and their lives on the ground, focusing on their bravery and brotherhood.
