How ‘Masters of the Air’ Created a Groundbreaking WWII Epic

“Oversexed, overpaid, and over here” was a common refrain that underscored the tension between the stationed U.S. troops and the local British during WWII. It is a phrase uttered in the Apple TV+ historical epic Masters of the Air when American Major Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle) ventures out of East Anglia to Oxford’s hallowed academic grounds as part of an allied conference. However, the interactions between the U.S. airmen and the locals in Thorpe Abbotts, Norfolk, are far from prickly, and the close bonds remain more than 80 years later.

When Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and his best friend, Major Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler), depart Thorpe Abbotts at the end of the series (and in real life), locals turned out in their Sunday best to wave farewell to the 100th Bomb Group, who had called this slice of rural East Anglia home for the last two years. Cows are shown grazing beside a burned-out wreckage of a B-17 Flying Fortress, offering a reminder of the losses that led to the “Bloody Hundredth” nickname—as well as what was here before the war came to these shores.

Lying about 100 miles north of London, Thorpe Abbotts is Masters of the Air’s beating heart, and the control tower from that historic time still stands today. In fact, if you venture to the East of England, you can still climb to the same viewing platform as Crosby and the show’s characters did in 1943.

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