Anthony Boyle is describing the sensation of sitting inside a cramped B-17 bomber flying over hostile, Nazi-occupied territory and spying a trigger-happy enemy fighter approaching fast. “You could see it small in the distance,” he says. “Then bigger and bigger and bigger – until it was right on top of you. And then the plane would shake when you were getting hit with bullets. You were really thrown about.”
Boyle is not a war veteran, though. He’s an actor talking about the experience of making Masters of the Air, possibly the most staggeringly epic and eye-wateringly expensive war series ever made (it’s rumoured to have cost $250 million). Watching the aerial action sequences, with scores of planes shooting, diving and exploding all over the sky, it is impossible to distinguish what’s computer generated and what’s real – and the actors often felt the same way.
