‘Masters of the Air’ Episode 4 Recap: Damn Bremen

In the battle for air supremacy over wartime Europe, when life greets death in an instant and every new daylight bombing mission is fueled with raw, uncut peril, completing any of them even in single digits counts as a major victory. Through Harry “Cros” Crosby’s narration that’s suddenly returned to Masters of the Air, we learn that racking up 25 missions grants a bomber pilot hero status. The brass sends you home, where they build a tour around you to sell more war bonds. And in August 1943, with Majors Egan and Cleven returned safely to England along with the rest of the crews who made the North Africa run after Schweinfurt-Regensburg, a pilot named Dye (George Webster) has defied the odds. With all of the boys in their flight leathers gathered on the hardstand, Dye buzzes the control tower in his B-17, and everybody whoops it up like they just won the war.      

Egan and Cleven have also returned to the airbase as celebrities. Of the original 35 USAAF crews who flew into England from Greenland, just 12 have survived intact. And while they’ve always been the 108th BG’s morale leaders in the clubhouse, with 41 completed missions between them, Buck and Bucky are a star attraction for the latest crop of greenhorn B-17 pilots to arrive from the US. At a dance held to honor Dye’s accomplishment – one grousy airman questions why it’s a celebration that one crew doesn’t have to go home in a pine box – the majors meet fawning newbies like Major Robert Rosenthal (Nate Mann) and Lieutenant Nash (Laurie Davidson), but they take the attention in stride. Maybe they’ll beat the average, Egan tells the new pilots, which is 11 missions. Then again, maybe they won’t complete even one. “All these new faces,” Bucky says later. “When we go down, they won’t remember us, either. Like we never existed, Buck.”     

In war, that brand of fatalism is almost better than bullets. The raid we witnessed in Epiosde 3 of Masters, Cros tells us, was the 108th’s most costly yet. “We didn’t know who was killed and who was captured” – we’ll miss you, Barry Keoghan as pilot Curtis Biddick – and they definitely don’t know that Quinn, the radio man who bailed out of his burning B-17 over Belgium, not only survived but has been laying low on a farm in Flanders for a month. In a different world, maybe he’d stay there, marry the farm girl. But the Résistance belge has other ideas. Quinn and Sgt. Bailey (Bailey Brook), another fallen airman, survive a trial by trivia that proves they’re Americans. (Another guy is sniffed out as a Nazi spy and executed right in front of them.) They then meet Michou (Leonie Lojkine) and Manon (Anne Vanderelst), two young women who will be their guides through German occupied France and onward to Spain, where they can escape back to England. But none of this is guaranteed, as we see during an especially tense scene at a Paris train station. The ruse nearly folds when Quinn is confronted with uniformed German officers. This kid would’ve been cooked like Babyface in his jammed gunner pod, if not for the bravery and quick thinking of Manon and Michou.

20 completed missions gets you some leave time, and John Egan makes the most of it in London, where he meets the lovely Paulina (Joanna Kulig) over shots of Polish vodka. They spend the night together, drinking and dancing in a makeshift basement club, and make love in her flat by the light of a German bombing raid. (Bucky: “I’ve never been on the business end of a bomb before.”) It’s a fleeting respite from the horrors they’ve both witnessed, and Egan wonders aloud about the destruction his own actions have caused. “The Germans deserve every last one of your bombs,” Paulina corrects him. “Some believe there is a difference between war and senseless murder. But they do not.” There is no balance in a world turned upside down. But they have each other’s bodies, at least for one night. “The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel…”

Back at base, it’s the morning of a day that ends in ‘Y,’ and that means another bombing mission. “Our first attempt to bomb Bremen was a disaster,” Cros tells us in voiceover. “But that seemed like a lifetime ago now.” This mission will be a trial by fire for new guys like Rosenthal and Nash, while for Gale Cleven, it’s another chance at redemption. But for the Bloody Hundredth, it just ends up being another daylight fucking disaster. We don’t see the mission this time around, but after-action reports detail flak as thick as bricks and aircraft going down largely free of escaping chutes. 8 forts lost. 80 men gone. Including Nash, who didn’t even get to complete one mission, let alone 11 or 25. Even worse, the list of the missing includes Cros and Bucky. (Col. Harding: “Damn Bremen.”) While Crosby’s past tense narration in Masters makes clear his eventual survival, the same cannot be said for Major Cleven. Have the odds finally come for Austin Butler’s gallant bomber pilot? In the tense, exhausted atmosphere after the raid, there’s another question on the minds of the air crews. “Who’s gonna tell Egan?”

In London, amid fresh destruction from the previous night’s German bombing raid, Bucky reads the newspaper headline. Nazi Uboat Base Destroyed; 30 Bombers Lost. He immediately telephones command. “How’d the game go yesterday? Was Buck in the lineup? Did he have a good game?” And the sad answer, still in code, is that Cleven went down swinging. In this war, life greets death in an instant. At least for now, it seems like it will be Bucky’s fate to remember Buck existed at all.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.