Masters of the Air Episode 5 recap: The 100th’s Top Gun

❘ Updated: 2024-03-14T16:31:59

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Masters of the Air Episode 5 sends the Bloody Hundredth back to Germany – and Bucky’s quest to avenge his fallen brother leaves him in enemy territory.

Episode 4 picked up with the 100th in Africa, basking in the dusty, inescapable sun as they waited for the ice-cold beers they were promised – and more importantly, a ride back to England.

They make it back, but despite the festivities around a pilot’s 25th mission (meaning he can go home), everyone’s relief was strained; there’s always the threat of another operation, and the trauma of the Regensburg and Schweinfurt bombing run seemed to leave Bucky a little “flak-happy.”

He was given a weekend pass to go drink, dance, and sleep with a Polish woman in London. However, the next day brought the worst news imaginable: Buck was downed on his mission to Bremen. The episode ended with Bucky phoning his colonel and demanding to “pitch”; in other words, he wants revenge.

Crosby makes it home

We open on Bucky alone at dawn, smoking a cigarette in his cockpit. Ken tells him Col. Harding is looking for him, and that everyone’s gonna miss Buck. He even offers him a ride, but Bucky swats the comfort away. “Don’t worry, Kenny – I don’t even feel it,” he says.

Let’s not forget, Bucky wasn’t the only 100th pilot MIA after Bremen: Harry Crosby, James Douglass, and others were all downed, presumed dead or left to fight for their lives as POWs. Amazingly, they survived.

“Bremen was the toughest mission of the war for me. It was the heaviest flak I’d ever experienced. A shell fragment the size of a football crashed through the nose of our fort, nearly decapitating me and Douglass. Our left wing caught fire and we lost all electrical power, but somehow Blakely got us back to England,” Crosby narrates, adding that he saw Major Cleven’s plane “take a direct hit and go down… we thought he was invincible. If Gale Cleven couldn’t make it, who could?”

As the men arrive back at Thorpe Abbotts, replacements have already gotten comfy in their bunks. They’re angry at first, but they calm down when they realize there was no ill intent; there were empty beds and positions to fill while they were gone. The recruits are quickly ushered out, and Douglass is relieved to find out his locker hasn’t been shipped back to his parents. “I got more f**king rubbers than I can count, and I sure as hell don’t need my mom to count them,” he jokes as they head off for a well-earned drink.

They’re met with hugs and astonishment as they explain their “hell of a hairy belly landing” (and Crosby remains too humble for his own good, despite being hailed as the greatest navigator in the 8th Air Force). Crosby then reunites with Bubbles, who reveals he’d already written his wife a letter to tell her about his death – thankfully, he didn’t send it. Bubbles warns that operations are starting to shake things up and his position could be on the chopping block, but Crosby assures him he’ll be fine.

Moments later, Bucky arrives to tell Crosby that Harding wants to see him, meaning he’s being given Bubble’s job. As everyone stands in awkward silence around Bucky, he says: “No use wondering, gentlemen. You can all do the math as to why I came back early.” Their happy homecoming is officially cut short: they men are already being sent on another mission.

Elsewhere on the base, Rosie and other men are laughing their heads off at a movie. Meanwhile, Crosby is taken to the “monkey house” to assume his duties as Group Navigator; his feet may be tied to the ground, but the stakes are higher than ever.

Back to Germany

Red briefs the 100th on their next mention: they’re going to Munster, instructed to bomb the railroad marshaling yards. “The target is just east of the city center,” he says, spurring shocked murmurings among the men. Red insists that “accuracy is paramount” to avoid civilian casualties, and “intelligence reports that most of the housing in the adjacent neighborhoods are railroad workers, so if they’re hit, we’ll be hitting the men who keep the German railroads running.”

Harding says it’s a short flight, but after the recent losses, they’ll only have an armada of 17 bombers. With no hesitation in their voices (but plenty in their eyes), they all say, “Yes, sir!” and get ready to fly. Some of the men think they should be swapping the squadrons rather than making them fly three days in a row, but as Rosie points out: “Who else they got?”

Others are anxious about the MPI (mean point of impact) being so close to a Cathedral on a Sunday. “We’re hitting it right when everyone’s coming out of mass,” one says, but Bucky doesn’t have any time for such worries. “For Christ sake, it’s a war. We’re here to drop bombs,” he snaps, even dismissing concerns of killing innocent women and children.

“This won’t end ’til we hit them where it hurts. Better now before every f**king guy we’ve ever shared a bunk with is either dead or MIA,” he adds, before Cruikshank says: “None of the people we’re gonna bomb today shot down Buck.”

He knows he’s stepped out of line; they’re all so close that it’s easy to forget Bucky is their superior. “You flying today or not?” Bucky asks. “Yeah,” Cruikshank sheepishly responds, before Bucky coldly corrects him: “Yes… sir.”

The 100th take flight

Harry Crosby and the other characters in Masters of the Air Episode 5

Crosby meets Bubbles outside as he’s about to leave and gives him back his lucky snowglobe. “Well, I’d prefer unconditional surrender from the Krauts, but this’ll do,” he jokes, before congratulating him on his promotion (and nicking his job). Bucky hops on a truck with a clenched jaw, not even greeting the other men – but he suddenly asks to get off so he can swap his sheepskin with Jack Kidd’s leather coat, because “Buck always hated that jacket.”

Rosie’s plane is still being repaired after the last mission, so he’s been given a new aircraft for him and his crew: the Royal Flush. The men are rightly apprehensive, more so than normal; these planes seem rougher around the edges and might not even get them to their target, never mind flying home.

Nevertheless, they take to the skies. “The hardest part of any mission was the anticipation, the waiting. No matter how well I plotted the routes or how thoroughly I briefed the other navigators, after wheels up, there was nothing I could do,” Crosby narrates as he eats back at base, wondering if his best friend will make it back.

Maddeningly, it’s not enemy gunfire and flak that’s the problem this time: the ships aren’t fit to fly, and four are forced to abort the mission, leaving just 13 bombers in the formation. That aside, it’s quite serene; the men go about their motions and wait to fire their weapons (one even takes a leak in a condom and throws it into the sea).

Soon, their escorts run out of fuel and have to fly home, and they find themselves cruising over a lot of flak. Their fleet is quickly reduced to 11 (one man’s face is even blown off in one of the most graphic images of the series so far). Bucky’s plane takes critical damage as a Perfect Storm wave of fighters swoops in, leaving them increasingly vulnerable as flak and bullets tear the fleet apart.

Bucky is forced to order his men to “salvo” the bombs, destroy the bomb sight, and bail before they reach the target; one of the men desperately tries to strap his dead friend into a parachute so he can be buried, but he’s dragged off the plane. “You sons of b*tches,” Bucky screams as the Luftwaffe fly past his parachute, before landing firmly in enemy territory in Westphalia, Germany.

Rosie becomes the 100th’s Top Gun

The Royal Flush stays in the air, and Rosie’s men successfully hit the target. One of them is hit by a frak fragment, but he manages to tourniquet his leg. Soon, it’s the only bomber left in the sky, left to fly through the wreckage of the 100th’s aircraft as they plummet to the ground.

They only get a minute to breathe before other bogeys target them. Rosie instructs everyone to hold on before delivering some of the most extraordinary flying the skies have ever seen (in one brilliant, breathtaking moment, the shot slows to show Rosie and the enemy pilot locking eyes). It may be a bomber, but with Rosie in control, it has the maneuverability of a spitfire.

We cut to Thorpe Abbotts, with Chick, Red, and Jack nervously waiting on their men returning home. One plane lands, but it’s from the 390th. “Where are our boys, Chick?” Jack asks as he contacts the pilot over the radio. “He says none of ’em made it,” he reveals.

Then comes a minor miracle: Rosie and his men arrive home. Ken and the base’s medics speed over to help them off the plane, dazed and vomiting from the trauma and pain of the mission. Ken wants to know if anyone else survived, but Rosie says he needs to wait until after interrogation. As they drive back, one of Rosie’s crew says it’s “the last f**king time” he’s going up.

Interrogation goes about as well as you’d expect: Red questions them about what happened to the rest of the fleet, but there’s “no record” across the board. “It was really bad up there, sir. We didn’t have much time for logs,” Rosie explains. Red clearly understands, but he continues his interrogation as a formality.

Crosby learns that Bubbles’ plane “blew up”, so he goes to clear out his drawers and collect his things. He finds the letter Bubbles wrote for his wife – and it breaks his heart.

It reads: “You know this already but your husband was the best friend I ever had. He was also the best navigator I ever met, even though he was too humble to admit it to himself. It takes a special kind of courage for a man to stay modest surrounded by blustering blowhards in every direction, but that was Croz. I wish more than anything it was him sitting here and not me, and then no one would have to write this letter.”

He allows himself to cry – but only briefly. The war won’t stop for tears, and he has a job to do.

Masters of the Air Episodes 1-5 are streaming on Apple TV+, which you can sign up for here. You can also check out our other coverage below: