The 100th Bomb Group faced their deadliest mission yet in Episode 5 of Apple TV+’s series, Masters of the Air, which took place in the skies above Munster, Germany.
Masters of the Air Episode 5 recap
The episode begins with Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) returning to base, angry and out for revenge after learning of the presumed death of his best friend Major Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler).
Egan is ready to lead a revenge mission and bomb Germany to honor his fallen friend. Viewers have not yet learned whether Cleven survived his plane being shot down or not, and the rest of the 100th is in the dark as well. There is not a lot of optimism, though, as nobody could confirm that Cleven even made it out of the plane safely. Even if he did, he would be stuck deep behind enemy lines in Nazi territory.
Shocking deaths
The rate at which the show is killing off its main characters is shocking, and is reflective of the immense loss that the pilots of the Bloody 100th faced in real life during their service in World War II.
Austin Butler’s character was already shot down, and, as far as viewers know, is dead. Barry Keoghan’s character, Lieutenant Curtis Biddick, was brutally killed in an on-screen crash that left no hope of him still being alive. The confident pilot had been attempting to crash land in order to save the life of his copilot, who would not have survived parachuting out of the plane. Unfortunately, Biddick couldn’t pull off the perfect landing, and the plane went up in a burst of flames.
Now, John Egan has also been shot down, although we know that he is still alive as of the end of the fifth episode.
The op tempo is grueling, and men are being lost left and right.
Some flyers envy those who die a quick death, as others suffer gruesome injuries in their planes. We endure one horrifying scene that sees a gunner getting half of his face blown off, and another gunner shrieks in agony after shrapnel rips through his leg.
We see Pilots declare their intent never to fly again after experiencing the horrors in the sky and witnessing so many of their friends being killed in front of them, often in gruesome ways. we have a feeling that many of these flyers will end up flying again, but it shows the headspace they were in and the toll that Ariel combat is taking on their mental health.
The perils of being a ball turret gunner
After the brutal death of Babyface, who was stuck in the ball turret while his plane was going down in episode three, viewers were nearly forced to watch another flyer suffer the same fate in episode five. Luckily, this time the ball turret gunner was at least able to escape the aircraft.
While we don’t know yet if he survived, or if he was captured by German soldiers, at least this time the gunner was able to get out of the plane.
Babyface‘s death was brutal, and has to be weighing heavily on the conscience of William Quinn, who was unable to rescue him. Quinn had given up and jumped out of the plane moments before it exploded with his friend still inside. He had to look his friend in the eyes and tell him that he was abandoning him with moments left to live.
A different type of war
The Munster mission demonstrated a clear change in the 100th’s tactics. Rather than going after sites that were strictly military in nature, the lines would now be blurred between military targets and civilian targets. This decision and change of approach led to some spirited debate between the pilots as to the moral justification of what they were doing. As one pilot put it, women and kids were not the ones who had shot down their friends.
Major Egan is shown to be one of the most eager pilots to bomb anybody and anything in Germany to avenge his friend's demise, whether his intended targets had anything to do with the war or not. In an ironic twist, Egan‘s plane is shot down early in the mission, and he never even makes it to Munster to drop his bombs.
Review
The scenes were well executed, especially the aerial combat scenes. This was one of the best episodes of Masters of the Air to date. The scene that shows the loan B-17 surviving the mission and flying through a storm of debris that used to be the rest of the squadron is downright eerie.
Episode five did its best to capture the terror these young airmen faced in the skies over Nazi Germany, and there are several scenes that viewers will find difficult to get out of their minds.
Another eerie scene shows Bucky bailing out of his aircraft and floating through the chaos of the battle on his way down to earth as he waits for his parachute to deploy. The episode ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, with Bucky clutching a pistol deep inside German territory and avoiding an armed man who is searching for him.
Masters of the Air is streaming on Apple TV+ now.
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