YESSS, FINALLY!!! - Masters of the Air - The 8th Air Force, Spielberg, Hanks, Goetzman (Crew behind Band of Brothers, Pacific)

[HouTex 1866]

22 minutes ago, Parliament said:

A mission lasts a long time and you can’t smoke up there.  A habitual smoker would be in the need of a heck of a fix halfway through.  Might be more fun to go cold turkey.

That or this show done went woke.

It didn’t stop Churchill.  He flew in a B-24 (also not pressurized like the B-17) during the war and had his oxygen mask modified so that he could smoke his cigars during his long flights.  

[bschoolprof 6251]

4 minutes ago, HouTex said:

It didn’t stop Churchill.  He flew in a B-24 (also not pressurized like the B-17) during the war and had his oxygen mask modified so that he could smoke his cigars during his long flights.  

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the b-17 was not pressurized, what with the open gunner doors and the O2 masks and all.

[HouTex 1866]

Just now, bschoolprof said:

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the b-17 was not pressurized, what with the open gunner doors and the O2 masks and all.

That’s right.  Neither were pressurized.  That’s what I was trying to say.  

[Gil Bang 25907]

On 11/12/2023 at 11:25 AM, atomheartbevo said:

 

This movie:

 

 

 

necro-bump for a fun fact:  that motorcycle that McQueen is riding later found new life as Fonzie's motorcycle on Happy Days.

Edited January 27 by Gil Bang

[RPM 26315]

2 hours ago, F250 said:

Does it seem odd that people don't smoke cigarettes in this series? Seems weird to make the WWII bombers non-smokers considering the stress of the job and the fact that everyone smoked cigarettes at the time.

How you gonna smoke a Lucky at 20,000 feet wearing an oxygen mask?

[atomheartbevo 89618]

For those who are curious, so far the the actual real-life WWII vets we’ve seen

Maj. Gale Cleven (Austin Butler), Maj. John Egan (Callum Turner), Lt. Curtis Biddick (Barry Keoghan), Lt. Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), Maj. Robert Rosenthal (Nate Mann) and Lt. Roy Claytor (Sawyer Spielberg).

And yea the Lt. Dye is fictional and was a nod to Dale Dye.

Some spoilers for those who have read the book - comments by the author

Spoiler

Miller says “Masters” scenes accurately depicted Egan, Cleven and other captured bomber group members building homemade radios and scheming to escape camps run by German Air Force personnel.

“Sure, a lot of Jewish (American) soldiers were worried about being hauled out of the barracks and shot, but it only happened if you tried to escape," he says. "By and large you were left alone under your commanders to organize your day. Mostly they tried to mess with the goons, as they called them, making plans to get out like you saw in ‘The Great Escape’ or ‘Hogan’s Heroes.’ But as the war neared its end, it was tense. If the SS (Nazi secret police) took over the camps as they feared, there was no telling what would happen.”

What stories of the 100th Bomber Group were left out?

“Well the series is over nine hours long, but with a story this complex you still have to leave things out to move the story along,” he says. “But I did want to include something about the little-discussed treatment of the airmen by the Swiss.”

Miller says a number of Swiss officials had ties to the Nazis, and when Allied airmen wound up in Switzerland, which was neutral in the war, they were shipped off to high mountain camps. “We were hoping to tell the story of airmen who suffered in these Swiss camps. The guys really felt helpless, it was a horrible and unknown part of the war, but we couldn’t work it in.”

 

[SubliminalHorn 6780]

Looks like next episode is showing more of the enlisted POV. Looking forward to that. 

[F250 28761]

1 hour ago, RPM said:

How you gonna smoke a Lucky at 20,000 feet wearing an oxygen mask?

I'm not talking about the flights. Nobody smokes, not even the ground crew or civilians. Nobody was smoking in any of the bar scenes either. It just seems odd to omit the practice in a period piece when smoking was so prevalent.

Here is an article on WWII pilots and smoking.

Aboard World War II Airplanes, It Was Strictly Smoking Allowed.

 

[HouTex 1866]

52 minutes ago, F250 said:

I'm not talking about the flights. Nobody smokes, not even the ground crew or civilians. Nobody was smoking in any of the bar scenes either. It just seems odd to omit the practice in a period piece when smoking was so prevalent.

Here is an article on WWII pilots and smoking.

Aboard World War II Airplanes, It Was Strictly Smoking Allowed.

 

Yep, most of them smoked.  My parents were Korean War era and they and their friends all smoked.  My mother didn’t quit until the late 60’s when it was becoming widely accepted that it was terrible for you.  

[Pato del Muerto 52484]

I saw smoking. Saw a guy burn one during a flight brief. Saw the new CO light a cigar with a zippo in about 5 seconds.  Maybe that was cgi too. 

[HouTex 1866]

And, of course, LeMay, has his cigar.  Please don’t make a CR comment about LeMay . . .

[atomheartbevo 89618]

2 hours ago, F250 said:

It just seems odd to omit the practice in a period piece when smoking was so prevalent.

I am pretty sure I saw people smoking in other scenes like the bar/pub and briefings, but I honestly didn’t think about it until you mentioned it.  Doesn’t bother me though - historically, there are much bigger and important issues - I’m irked they are rushing through a lot and not letting the show “breathe”, because the upcoming episodes are going to be jam packed.

 

[atomheartbevo 89618]

For anybody curious, a brief guide to episodes

Spoiler

4 -the start of most of the cast we know being killed or being in POW camps.  There will only be 11 out of original 30 or 35 bomber crews out of the 100th still around, and the characters still alive and not capture are being promoted and doing a lot more. The Army ups the requirements to go home to 30 missions annd then 35 even though few are making it past their 11th/12th mission.

7 - Black Monday, the biggest and worst day in the 8th Air Force’s history - almost 1,800 aircraft on the raid, and they lost 700 men, and it took so long to get to Berlin and back because of the massive amount of aircraft , that some Luftwaffe pilots were able to land and rearm five times during the flight.   15 out of 16 bombers from the 100th were shot down, so that probably ends the flying portion of the 100th, and they shift solely to the POW stuff for them  

8 - We see the Tuskegee Airmen and other groups (sounds like they cover some of the 15th AF raids deep into Germany).  More POW stuff, possibly the follow up raids on Berlin based on the footage we’ve seen in the promos where POWs see bomber raids in the skies  

9 - wrap things up

Interesting write-up about Black Monday

spoilers

https://web.mst.edu/rogersda/american&military_history/Doolittle-Black Monday-Need for Innovation-1944.pdf

And a video done by a pretty cool YouTuber. 

 

Edited January 28 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89618]

15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

For anybody curious, a brief guide to episodes

From another site,

Spoiler

Sounds like the 8th episode covers the “Big Week”, which Black Monday kicked off, where the 8th AF and 15 AF flew a combined 15+ raids on Berlin, etc. from England and Italy, and lost over 400 bombers and fighters in total during that one week.  If true, this episode could be pretty massive/wild.  Hopefully we see a decent amount of B-24s and P-47s/P-51s.

 

[Pato del Muerto 52484]

Was it the 38 or the 51 that was not competitive in the air until we stuffed the Merlins in them?

[atomheartbevo 89618]

Prepare for full history nerd

 

[GreenspointTexas 9598]

27 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Was it the 38 or the 51 that was not competitive in the air until we stuffed the Merlins in them?

51

[atomheartbevo 89618]

Spoilers about the lead characters

 

[atomheartbevo 89618]

14 hours ago, HouTex said:

Also hard to believe the puking navigator has lasted this long.  He’s a disaster waiting to happen.  

You can read his book if you want, he’s pretty honest and the book was a major source for the Masters of the Air series. It was a navigator problem. 

Quote

Crosby himself, who later worked as a professor of English composition and rhetoric, admitted as much in his memoir, A Wing and a Prayer, recalling, “Although I had … nearly a thousand hours in the air, I still got violently airsick, especially at low altitude, where flying was particularly turbulent. For the millionth time since I had joined the Air Corps, I regretted not having joined the infantry.”

Quote

Nor was he the only one. A comic used to train new navigators instructs them to use their compass cover or, as a last resort, a hat as a receptacle. An accompanying caption reads, “Airsickness was common among new navigators, who frequently had to look at the ground through drift sights and make calculations while maneuvering.”

 

Spoiler

Harry H. Crosby—depicted in the miniseries Masters of the Air developed by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg—arrived with the very first crews, and left with the very last. After dealing with his fear and gaining in skill and confidence, he was promoted to Group Navigator, surviving hairbreadth escapes and eluding death while leading thirty-seven missions, some of them involving two thousand aircraft. Now, in a breathtaking and often humorous account, he takes us into the hearts and minds of these intrepid airmen to experience both the triumph and the white-knuckle terror of the war in the skies.

 

[Captainant 27619]

On 1/26/2024 at 8:58 PM, slorch said:

I had no idea the war was so boring.

Wife likes it.  i fell asleep twice.

 

23 hours ago, HouTex said:

I’m liking it so far.  But the bombing missions seem to be monotonous compared to ground combat.  I’m wondering how they will keep it interesting.  And Bucky seems to be more of an asshole each minute.  And his best friend really is nicknamed Buck?  Also hard to believe the puking navigator has lasted this long.  He’s a disaster waiting to happen.  

When you think about it, much of strategic bombing is just taking a 6hr round trip flight. There's not that much exciting going on, and if there is, it's terrifying and dangerous. There's maybe 15 or 20 minutes of "action" as the bombers approach, bomb, and depart their target during a loooooong mission. 

I'd bet next week's episode with the raids through Germany and landing in Africa will be much more eventful. Timeline wise, the luftwaffe was at its height of strength, and those formations flew through a shitton of flak and fighter screens for HOURS. 

It's fucking incredible what they did with only paper charts, steam gauges, and magnetic headings. All analog

Edited January 28 by Captainant

[HouTex 1866]

It’s already apparent how dangerous the daytime missions were, but in the coming episodes I’m guessing it will be even worse.  Until we were able to deploy long range fighter escorts, some missions in 1943 lost 1/4 of the B17s.  I find a lot of conflicting data online and one site said that without fighter escorts it was virtually impossible for one crew to survive the allotted 25 missions.  I like how they addressed early on the two philosophies of the RAF and the US on night vs daytime bombing.  

[BearSchlong 8082]

Reading Crosby’s book now.

My stepmom’s dad flew 35 missions in a B-17. I need to find his logbook to see if I can match up dates/missions.

First time I read it I was amazed how it shifted from bombing raids to flying civilian aircraft in Texas without fanfare.

[1978horn 892]

Loving this show because it feels like it connects me with my grandfather. He flew the B-24, but I’ll take what I can get. One of my biggest regrets in life is not talking to him more when he was alive. He died when I was 19.

Here is his mission list and a piece of flak that hit him in the chest. Flak jacket saved his life.

[bschoolprof 6251]

1 hour ago, HouTex said:

It’s already apparent how dangerous the daytime missions were, but in the coming episodes I’m guessing it will be even worse.  Until we were able to deploy long range fighter escorts, some missions in 1943 lost 1/4 of the B17s.  I find a lot of conflicting data online and one site said that without fighter escorts it was virtually impossible for one crew to survive the allotted 25 missions.  I like how they addressed early on the two philosophies of the RAF and the US on night vs daytime bombing.  

I think the show could drop in a line or two of dialogue to inform rubes like me that the extant fighters don't have enough range to go with them.  I'm sure lots of viewers are not aware of that fact.  In the 1st episode, I was wondering why they had no fighter escorts with them.  I am not a ww2 history buff though.   

[Pato del Muerto 52484]

2 hours ago, HouTex said:

like how they addressed early on the two philosophies of the RAF and the US on night vs daytime bombing.

I appreciated how they didn’t spell it out for us why the brits didn’t worry about indiscriminate bombing.  Gave some credit to the audience. 
 

it does feel like they might be exaggerating the number of planes that return with immense damage.  I know some did so, but it’s tough to believe that so many could have returned in such bad condition every mission and the ground crew could have enough time and materials to get them patched up.  Perhaps I am underestimating that side of the war, and how many resources were assigned to it. 

Edited January 28 by Pato del Muerto

[HouTex 1866]

47 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

I think the show could drop in a line or two of dialogue to inform rubes like me that the extant fighters don't have enough range to go with them.  I'm sure lots of viewers are not aware of that fact.  In the 1st episode, I was wondering why they had no fighter escorts with them.  I am not a ww2 history buff though.   

It could be an entire new thread, but it shows just how important it was for France and Great Britain to never let Germany invade the Low Countries and then France. Those extra few hundred miles mattered in a number of ways—especially when the V1 and V2’s came along.  They killed a lot of civilians.  The colossal failures of France and Great Britain during the mid 30’s came home to roost—again.  They shouldn’t have ignored or rejected my avatar’s warnings.  Thank goodness there was the channel.  

[HouTex 1866]

5 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I appreciated how they didn’t spell it out for us why the brits didn’t worry about indiscriminate bombing.  Gave some credit to the audience. 

Yep.  The terror bombing by both sides was covered extensively in Manchester’s Last Lion biography of Churchill.  It’s suggested that early in the Blitz Hitler was against indiscriminate bombing of English cities (he knew the Brits could return the favor) and some of the early attacks were against unintended targets.  The Brits retaliated and then the gloves came off.  

[Parliament 14227]

2 hours ago, 1978horn said:

Loving this show because it feels like it connects me with my grandfather. He flew the B-24, but I’ll take what I can get. One of my biggest regrets in life is not talking to him more when he was alive. He died when I was 19.

Here is his mission list and a piece of flak that hit him in the chest. Flak jacket saved his life.

Four missions in five days.  Holy shit.

[Knoxtnhorn 5971]

Loving this so far.  Question.  How frequent were the bombing missions to the individual pilot?  For example, in EP 1, most flew their first mission.  What would be the normal time to Mission #2?

[HornOnTheBayou 8904]

1 hour ago, Knoxtnhorn said:

Loving this so far.  Question.  How frequent were the bombing missions to the individual pilot?  For example, in EP 1, most flew their first mission.  What would be the normal time to Mission #2?

I assume 1 or 2 episodes. Gotta keep the audience engaged.

[atomheartbevo 89618]

4 hours ago, HouTex said:

 I find a lot of conflicting data online and one site said that without fighter escorts it was virtually impossible for one crew to survive the allotted 25 missions.  

I’ve seen a few places that said only 14% of the original 100th BG’s members made it to 25.  The rest were shot down and captured, wounded, or killed.

2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

It does feel like they might be exaggerating the number of planes that return with immense damage.  I know some did so, but it’s tough to believe that so many could have returned in such bad condition every mission and the ground crew could have enough time and materials to get them patched up.  Perhaps I am underestimating that side of the war, and how many resources were assigned to it. 

The B-17 was amazing.  I need to scan some albums my dad has of photos of B-17s and B-24s my grandpa took - it was crazy the condition some of them came back in.  Once they dropped their bomb loads, they could limp back on a couple of engines with lots of pieces missing.

My grandfather had a little college (technical college), and started as an enlisted pilot candidate, but he and a bunch of others in his class got moved out of pilot training and into other slots as requirements changed rapidly and they shut the class down (I mapped it out and it corresponded with real vs projected attrition rates and them closing a bunch of pilot classes) to the point where some from his class ended up as bombardiers/navigators or even enlisted flight engineers/radio operators/gunners. He even made it through aerial gunnery school and did fantastic outside of being a little airsick in the tail (wasn’t going to DQ him from becoming a flight engineer) and was headed to flight engineer school (he was promised this after his pilot class was shut down, but he suspected they needed more gunners as he and others went to gunnery school before other aircrew schools) but then they decided they needed a bunch of mechanics and he had extensive civilian work on large engines/machinery and could be pushed through a compressed course, so he got robbed.  He didn’t seem too bitter though, because a shitload of people he knew were killed. I read through his official paper trail from Texas and Arizona through a few other places and then North Africa and Italy and then England. If he had been in just 3-4 months earlier he would have been far enough along in pilot training that he might have finished.

edit at the point he was in, they were rapidly expanding but also shuffling people like crazy around, and doing it all by hand and no computers.

And this is how crazy things were compressed - Cleven and Egan started their flight training in March of 1940 and three years later were majors.

Edited January 28 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89618]

3 hours ago, bschoolprof said:

I think the show could drop in a line or two of dialogue to inform rubes like me that the extant fighters don't have enough range to go with them.  I'm sure lots of viewers are not aware of that fact.  In the 1st episode, I was wondering why they had no fighter escorts with them.  I am not a ww2 history buff though.   

This is a good primer. The Imperial War Museum puts out some awesome videos   

 

[Knoxtnhorn 5971]

30 minutes ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

I assume 1 or 2 episodes. Gotta keep the audience engaged.

Dammit.

[kevwun 15757]

I believe there were actually more B-24's in service than the B-17, but the 17 was more famous and gets more attention.  Also, there was a B-17 that had the entire top tail section shot off once that managed to fly back to it's base and land.

[TwiceHorn 31434]

8 minutes ago, kevwun said:

I believe there were actually more B-24's in service than the B-17, but the 17 was more famous and gets more attention.  Also, there was a B-17 that had the entire top tail section shot off once that managed to fly back to it's base and land.

My grandparents had a bunch of national geographics from the WWII era.  They were chock full of patriotic type ads from munitions suppliers, including Boeing.  Many of them showed photos of damaged B-17s.  Some examples can be seen here. https://worldwar2collection.com/virtual-museum/media/aircraft-ads/

Among them was a B-17 with the rear fuselage skin and structure completely destroyed and separated (by the wing of an errant Bf-109) with the forward and tail sections being held together only by the catwalk aft of the bomb bay.  Several others that I can't describe/remember as vividly.  Here's a story about the 17  https://theaviationgeekclub.com/story-american-b-17-made-home-sliced-wing-109/

The B-17 was a prewar design, first flying in 1935 and introduced in 1938.  And we know how much aircraft advanced during the war.  The E variant was the first one finally deemed combat-suitable over Europe.  The B-24 and -19 were our only other heavy bombers.

The B-17 was good to fly, the B-24 supposedly was a pig.  Until the B-29, our bombers had miniscule bomb loads compared with the contemporary Lancaster, Halifax and Stirling (~5000 compared to ~12000 lbs).  But we built more than 2x as many of them, and the B-17 is estimated to have dropped 42% of the bombs over Europe.

[kevwun 15757]

The show doesn't have the chin turrets on any of the planes, so there's at least one more version of the B-17 before the war ends.

[Parliament 14227]

2 hours ago, kevwun said:

I believe there were actually more B-24's in service than the B-17, but the 17 was more famous and gets more attention.  Also, there was a B-17 that had the entire top tail section shot off once that managed to fly back to it's base and land.

That's because the B24 was a shitbox.

[atomheartbevo 89618]

8 minutes ago, Parliament said:

That's because the B24 was a shitbox.

B-24 was better suited to the Pacific where it’s extra payload and speed, but lower ceiling, helped it, while the B-17 did better in Europe where it’s higher ceiling helped with flak.  B-17 was also easier on the crews to fly, and could handle emergency landings better.  B-24s wore out pilots.

https://www.486th.org/Aircraft/B24/Compare.htm

[Buzzrock 14901]

My grandparents had a bunch of national geographics from the WWII era.  They were chock full of patriotic type ads from munitions suppliers, including Boeing.  Many of them showed photos of damaged B-17s.  Some examples can be seen here. https://worldwar2collection.com/virtual-museum/media/aircraft-ads/
Among them was a B-17 with the rear fuselage skin and structure completely destroyed and separated (by the wing of an errant Bf-109) with the forward and tail sections being held together only by the catwalk aft of the bomb bay.  Several others that I can't describe/remember as vividly.  Here's a story about the 17  https://theaviationgeekclub.com/story-american-b-17-made-home-sliced-wing-109/
The B-17 was a prewar design, first flying in 1935 and introduced in 1938.  And we know how much aircraft advanced during the war.  The E variant was the first one finally deemed combat-suitable over Europe.  The B-24 and -19 were our only other heavy bombers.
The B-17 was good to fly, the B-24 supposedly was a pig.  Until the B-29, our bombers had miniscule bomb loads compared with the contemporary Lancaster, Halifax and Stirling (~5000 compared to ~12000 lbs).  But we built more than 2x as many of them, and the B-17 is estimated to have dropped 42% of the bombs over Europe.

This one?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Damaged_tail_of_B-17.jpg

[Chad Fuck 17658]

14 hours ago, kevwun said:

The show doesn't have the chin turrets on any of the planes, so there's at least one more version of the B-17 before the war ends.

The G model had the chin turret and wasn't introduced until late 1943.  So the show timeline hasn't arrived there yet.

I just watched the first two episodes last night.  So forgive me if these thoughts have already been expressed upthread but I just thought I'd lay them out here. 

First, I'm very happy that this is being made so all my thoughts should be in that context.

1. The dialogue goes between being decent, then having some weird Star Wars-esque awkwardness.  I even noticed a few more modern slang phrases thrown in that in my decades of watching 40s period films - both war documentary and those produced for entertainment - never made appearances back then.  That threw me a bit.

2. The Gen Z actors don't appear to be able to replicate the attitudes of the Greatest Generation in this film.  Of course, that may be in large part because they never knew any.  Most of that generation are gone and any Gen Z interaction with them at all probably took place when the Greatest Gen person was a shadow of their former selves and the Gen Z'er wasn't old enough to appreciate the nuances of their personalities.  At the least, it feels like they could've watched a few more period movies and at least caught the zeitgeist of the times.   Like the smoking comment upthread, I get the feeling that there wasn't enough background studying done to get into the times and the attitudes and perspectives those times produced. 

3.  I'm a little disappointed in the CGI.  I understand there are not fleets of B-17s to work with.  But there are 1000s of hours of footage both in the period and up to the current time to mimic for flight behavior of airplanes in general and B-17s specifically.  Hell, I've seen video games that damn near nail it.  As a warbird nerd (as I'm sure many in this thread are) and having personally seen many B-17s fly I have a least a little feel for how that should sound, and what it should like like.  But I was thoroughly displeased with the take-off/landing sequences and in flight brake up scenes.  They didn't ring true and this was disappointing given how much source material there is to refer to to make it right.

4.  Some of the accent feel a little wonky.  

Otherwise, really enjoyed.  I also which they'd shown some more stateside training like they did in BoB, but I understand budget limitations, etc.

 

[atomheartbevo 89618]

4 hours ago, Chad Fuck said:

I also which they'd shown some more stateside training like they did in BoB, but I understand budget limitations, etc.

At the very least it would have made it easier to track characters from the start, but they would have all been training at dozens of different places, and only coming together a month or so before shipping off to England.   As I said earlier, I hope this does well enough that we get one more series in this vein, preferably a US Navy ship going through the serious shit in the Pacific.

I’ve been poking around looking at bios and documentaries of the major figures in Msters of the Air, and came across some of the Tuskegee Airmen shown in the series, and how they came to cross paths with the 100th BG.

For those who didn’t know, there was another landing in France, Operation Dragon in August of ‘44, and the Tuskegee Airmen of 15th Air Force were covering it, as was the 8th Air Force.

https://m.facebook.com/americanveteranscenter/videos/tuskegee-airman-alexander-jefferson-narrated-by-morgan-freeman/302243468420010/

Morgan Freeman is The Narrator.

 

[ChickenSandwich 9824]

Buck’s voice seems like a bad dubbing 

 

he watched Memphis Belle and tried to mimic Harry C Jr

Edited January 29 by ChickenSandwich

[Deej 76750]

7 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Buck’s voice seems like a bad dubbing 

 

he watched Memphis Belle and tried to mimic Harry K Jr

Austin Butler sounds like he can't shake the Elvis role. 

[F250 28761]

58 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Buck’s voice seems like a bad dubbing 

 

he watched Memphis Belle and tried to mimic Harry K Jr

lol I had the same thought about him trying to sound like Harry Connick Jr.

 

[Macanudo 12974]

On 1/28/2024 at 10:42 AM, 1978horn said:

Loving this show because it feels like it connects me with my grandfather. He flew the B-24, but I’ll take what I can get. One of my biggest regrets in life is not talking to him more when he was alive. He died when I was 19.

Here is his mission list and a piece of flak that hit him in the chest. Flak jacket saved his life.

Thanks for sharing.   Except for that foot.   Are you related to a certain 3 toed congresswoman from Georgia?

[1978horn 892]

4 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Thanks for sharing.   Except for that foot.   Are you related to a certain 3 toed congresswoman from Georgia?

Ha, I took that picture last summer when I inherited them.  This is the first time I have noticed it.  Thanks for ruining it!

Note to self:  Edit/Crop Flak picture

[C-Man 27183]

On 1/27/2024 at 2:17 PM, Gil Bang said:

necro-bump for a fun fact:  that motorcycle that McQueen is riding later found new life as Fonzie's motorcycle on Happy Days.

Richard Rawlings of Gas Monkey Grill fame bought this bike and displays it in his front window.

https://www.tmz.com/2021/12/13/richard-rawlings-fonz-motorbike-dad-auction/

[Gil Bang 25907]

52 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Richard Rawlings of Gas Monkey Grill fame bought this bike and displays it in his front window.

https://www.tmz.com/2021/12/13/richard-rawlings-fonz-motorbike-dad-auction/

Very cool.  Also, the 1st season, Fonzie rode a Harley, but Winkler complained that it was too big and heavy for him, so they found the Triumph. 

[Chad Fuck 17658]

Austin Butler sounds like he can't shake the Elvis role. 

This one is the most grating to me.

[Chad Fuck 17658]

16 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

At the very least it would have made it easier to track characters from the start, but they would have all been training at dozens of different places, and only coming together a month or so before shipping off to England.   As I said earlier, I hope this does well enough that we get one more series in this vein, preferably a US Navy ship going through the serious shit in the Pacific.

I’ve been poking around looking at bios and documentaries of the major figures in Msters of the Air, and came across some of the Tuskegee Airmen shown in the series, and how they came to cross paths with the 100th BG.

For those who didn’t know, there was another landing in France, Operation Dragon in August of ‘44, and the Tuskegee Airmen of 15th Air Force were covering it, as was the 8th Air Force.

https://m.facebook.com/americanveteranscenter/videos/tuskegee-airman-alexander-jefferson-narrated-by-morgan-freeman/302243468420010/

Morgan Freeman is The Narrator.

 

I think Hanks already scratched this itch for himself with "Greyhound."  But of course, I'd love to see a longer form Navy point of view.