Right around the release of Masters of the Air, I saw a number of moderately critical reviews of the show. None of them were harsh pans, but there was a thread of dissatisfaction that wound through their titles. I didn’t want spoilers, so I limited myself to browsing and skimming. I concluded that these reviews were mostly fluff pieces composed of many words saying little, building a 500+ word post from two rumors, an impression, and a handful of vibes—what I think of as publishing-padding, intended to fill post slots on a website.

For the most part, these reviews changed in tone as the show ran its course. 

What I gleaned from these negative reviews was that the reviewers, or whomever they were sourcing their impressions from, had mismatched expectations. They were frustrated, I guess. They were watching Masters of the Air and expecting Band of Brothers.

I can understand why those viewers might have expected that: both series are historically-grounded WW2 shows from the same production group. If I were consuming one author’s fiction series and the various entries all varied wildly in content and tone, I’d be frustrated too. But as far as I could tell, this audience had built their expectations on the narratives of previous war shows without understanding the histories underpinning those narratives.

This isn’t a review. Maybe I’ll have something larger later. Right now, I’m just trying to give you some context.

Here are some tidbits, casually sourced from Wikipedia and the USAF national museum: 

RAF’s Bomber Command lost roughly 59% of its flight crew over the course of the war, with approximately 44.4% dead, 6.7% wounded, and 7.9% captured. While the Eighth Air Force’s total numbers look far better over the course of the entire war, with roughly 14% killed or captured, they are even worse when you drill into specifics for the bomber crews. According to the USAF national museum site, during 1943 approximately 25% of crews survived their allotted limit of 25 missions. The other roughly 75% were killed, severely wounded, or captured. Allied bomber crews suffered greatly during the war.

Meanwhile E Company of the 506^th Parachute Infantry of the 101st Airborne, which Band of Brothers focused on, suffered approximately 13% killed over the course of the war (49 out of a total of 366 who started with E Company or were brought in as replacements). That’s comparable to the overall numbers for the Eighth Air Force. But nearly half of those killed in the course of the war were lost on D-Day (22 according to Wikipedia), when roughly 16% of the company died and another 31% were wounded. A little more than half the company survived without injury. While more total soldiers would be wounded in other later battles, according to Wikipedia no other battle saw as many soldiers from E Company killed.

E Company did suffer many more casualties due to injuries (perhaps 45% of the total 366 being wounded at some point, by my fuzzy estimate). But not all of those injuries were sufficient to end a soldier’s war, and there were always more injured than killed. In short, you had a far better chance of surviving a paradrop into Normandy in 1944 than you had of surviving a flight in a B-17 during 1943. Yet the bomber crews were expected to get back into their planes time and again, without their chances of survival improving until long range fighter escorts were introduced on the 5th of December 1943, while E Company’s chances of survival improved rapidly as they continued fighting over several weeks.

It’s hardly surprising, in my mind, that Masters of the Air is different from Band of Brothers. If you’re going to watch the show, be ready for that. You can watch through Band of Brothers and get to know a lot of the people involved, and rely on most of them making it through. Masters of the Air is a different story.