Masters of the Air: How factually correct is the series?

And what about those sprawling air battles? In those first two eps, we see exploding debris, orange tracer ammunition lighting up the sky, planes smothered in smoke. Such collisions would have been commonplace – among both Nazi Luftwaffe's and allied planes alike. According to Charlies, plenty of these fighter pilots were relatively inexperienced, meaning that “when they’re forming up, there’s a risk of drifting into each other.” This is a factor corroborated by thousands of wartime photos, plus all the information gleaned in Donald Miller’s Masters of the Air, formed from the many reports by surviving airmen.

And, obviously, post-collision, planes would be damaged beyond belief. That’s where Heath and the design team stepped in. “We made damaged parts, we would replace a wing flap with a flak damaged wing flap, there were damaged nose cones, rear wings, ailerons, sperry balls, rotor blades etc that we could swap out. We also made damaged panels that could be riveted on the fuselage to look like flak damage.”

Among the war historians, there are some reservations about the missions becoming sterling entertainment. Charles notes the risk of Masters giving the impression that the bomber crews won the war, which she credits more to the faster, nimbler fighting crews (which the show will presumably later depict with the Tuskegee Airmen).

While we’re glued to our seats watching American airmen exchange deadly fire with Nazis, it’s worth considering Hearn’s words on the psychological reality of the conflict. “There's a kind of helplessness,” she says. “There’s an emotional element of not being in control of your destiny, going through the horrors and coming back knowing you had to do it again the next day.”