The Story of America’s Bomber Boys

In Masters of the Air, Apple TV+ takes viewers on a harrowing journey through the fire-filled skies over Europe during World War II. The docuseries, based on Donald Miller’s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, brings to the screen the story of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, the US Army Air Forces unit that played a critical role in the air campaign against Nazi Germany.

The National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force and Visit Savannah are proud to honor the brave airmen whose stories were vividly portrayed in the series. Their courage and dedication continue to inspire us every day. Watch the video below as we reflect on the impact of this series.

Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman, the producers of the acclaimed WWII miniseries Band of Brothers and The Pacific, are teaming up once again to bring audiences a new series about the brave airmen of the 100th Bomb Group. The Mighty Eighth will take viewers on a journey through the highs and lows of WWII as these men risked their lives during some of the most dangerous missions of the war. This series promises to be another powerful exploration of the brotherhood forged by courage, loss, and triumph that is so often seen in times of war. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting project.


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Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured U.S. air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers. In 1943, an American bomber crewman stood only a one-in-five chance of surviving his tour of duty, twenty-five missions. The Eighth Air Force lost more men in the war than the U.S. Marine Corps.

The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America — white America, anyway. (African-Americans could not serve in the Eighth Air Force except in a support capacity.) The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men.

The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.

Masters of the Air is a story, as well, of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.