Ben Radcliffe, Anthony Boyle, Raff Law, Callum Turner and Austin Butler and many more appear in the spectacular new Apple TV+ drama about the men who flew in the US Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group.
The Second World War is fast becoming history for all but a handful of survivors. Those who experienced the horror of that war are now so few as to be celebrated as rarities, witnesses to a conflict that has almost slipped out of living memory.
In this issue we talk to one such witness. John “Lucky” Luckadoo is now 101 and lives in Dallas. But in the summer of 1943, fresh out of Tennessee, he arrived at Thorpe Abbotts air base in Norfolk, straight from pilot training and with orders to fly a B-17 bomber on daytime missions over Germany.
In our interview in the new issue of Radio Times magazine, he talks of the overwhelming sense of fear that consumed the American crews every time they took off. How he and his band of “citizen soldiers” found themselves in the heat of battle, flying at altitudes so high the temperature inside the unpressurised cockpit fell to -40°C, pitted against a war-hardened enemy.
Lucky lived up to his name, flying the 25 missions he needed to complete before he could go home. Others weren’t so fortunate. Every time a B-17 took off the crew pushed at the edges of life expectancy. He tells us of a comrade who died on his 24th mission. In all, the American Eighth Air Force lost 18,800 aircrew in the run-up to D-Day.
Now a version of Lucky’s story – or at least the story of the men who flew with him in the Bloody 100th – is coming to television in Masters of the Air, a nine-part series on Apple TV+, adapted and executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. It is the latest and possibly final chapter in Spielberg’s trilogy that includes Band of Brothers and The Pacific. This is America’s war as fought in the air. “In air war, when a crew goes down, there is no memorial,” Lucky tells us. In that single respect, he is wrong. Television has just provided one.
Also in this week’s Radio Times:
- Johnny Vegas on the pleasure and pain of running a campsite – and how he deals with his ADHD diagnosis
- When not foiling bad cops and terrorists, Vicky McClure chats about being on a one-woman mission to show working-class lives on TV
- Speaking to The Radio Times Podcast: Tamsin Greig made her name in comedy, but says she has the perfect face for a villain
Masters of the Air is coming to Apple TV+ on Friday 26th January 2024. Subscribe to Apple TV+ here. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on.
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