Nutz_the_Squirrel Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 From the producers of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Decent start although it will take me a while to get a grasp on all the characters. Took me a few watches of The Pacific to get into it due to the cast size. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmy boo Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 On 30/01/2024 at 15:09, Nutz_the_Squirrel said: From the producers of Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Decent start although it will take me a while to get a grasp on all the characters. Took me a few watches of The Pacific to get into it due to the cast size. Quite enjoying this but not quite as much as i'd hoped. Haven't seen The Pacific but will do so when this finishes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houston_bud Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 On 13/02/2024 at 01:47, jimmy boo said: Quite enjoying this but not quite as much as i'd hoped. Haven't seen The Pacific but will do so when this finishes. I think I enjoyed the Pacific more than Band of Brothers, possibly because I hadn't seen as much TV/film about that part of the war. I thought Masters of the Air started quite slowly but the last two episodes have been good. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newbornbairn Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Pretty disappointing really. Certainly not a patch on Band of Brothers. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottsdad Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Not bad...but not great. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelmen Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 It’s unfair to compare anything to band of brothers, best world war program ever imho. i enjoyed the series but what was missing was the interviews with the real pilots. It took them so long to make it that had all passed away. I’d still rate it above the pacific, I just couldn’t get into that. I thought the concentration camp part was unnecessary and just chucked in for effect. Whereas, why we fight, will go down as one of the best, most harrowing episodes of TV I have ever saw. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boo Khaki Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) Would have been much more enjoyable if the characters weren't laughable national stereotypes. All the Yanks - cool beyond measure, free-spirits, invariably heroic All the Brits - Massive sticks up their arses, plummy, incompetent All the Germans - Diehard Nazis, irredeemably evil, all dialogue cut and pasted from old "Commando" comics form the 70's. Oh, except for the token "decent" camp guard. Seriously. I burst out laughing at the "for you the war is over" line. All that was missing were a few "Gott und Himmel!" and a Japanese shrieking "Aaaaiiiieeeee!" as he's shot. What was the bairn with the floppy hair all about? Wouldn't happen in 1943 England. Then there's the fact a fair few of the US airmen were sporting completely non-regulation cuts themselves. Unsurprisingly, the series completely glossed over the fact the Norden bombsight was a piece of utterly useless garbage. They'd have been as well using a typewriter. Also completely ignored the fact that despite bombing in broad daylight it was a miracle when the 8th managed to bomb the correct city once in a while, never mind the specific objective. Edited March 18 by Boo Khaki 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boo Khaki Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) On 16/03/2024 at 22:25, steelmen said: I thought the concentration camp part was unnecessary and just chucked in for effect. Whereas, why we fight, will go down as one of the best, most harrowing episodes of TV I have ever saw. The producers were absolutely adamant that this actually happened to Robert Rosenthal. He was a really interesting character. Part of the US prosecution team at the Nuremberg trials post-war. Whether the death camp thing did actually happen though I don't know. He was shot down over Berlin in 1945 and repatriated by the Soviets, that much is true, but I don't know if the whole Zabikowo scene is artistic licence or not. His life is pretty well documented, and I can't recall any mention of it prior to the episode being shown. Edited March 18 by Boo Khaki 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmy boo Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 Finished it today and certainly worth a watch. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottsdad Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 I remember watching The World at War, and one bomber saying that only 3 bombs in every 100 landed within 5 miles of the target. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boo Khaki Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 5 hours ago, scottsdad said: I remember watching The World at War, and one bomber saying that only 3 bombs in every 100 landed within 5 miles of the target. It's just typical of the Ambrose/Spielberg/Hanks WWII stuff. Completely overplays how heroic and amazing anything US is, and totally ignores shortcomings or anything that paints them in a bad light. That's not a criticism, it's just what these things are. If you accept that before you start then it's interesting enough TV. Unfortunately I'm a bit of a nerd about these things, and I can never really relax and enjoy them without falling out of my chair at the inaccuracies and bullshit. The B-17's were almost entirely G models by early 1943, yet even in the final episode they are still flying the earlier F model with no G's in sight. It's not just anoraky, the change from F-G was significant because the G's included a chin turret which markedly reduced the vulnerability to the head-on attacks favoured by Luftwaffe fighters. The scenes regarding escorts where Rosie is piloting with Crosby narrating are also just laughably wrong, especially the bit about "P-51's". At no point would escort fighters ever have got as close to or flown through their own bomb groups, yet the series shows dozens of them passing straight through the bomber formations. Also, for the mission portrayed where every single escort fighter is a P-51, in reality only about 8-10% of them were, with the bulk of them actually being P-47's and the remainder P-38's. There was a lot of "bullshit" in the series that I tried to just ignore for the sake of entertainment, but it was far, far more egregious than either BoB or Pacific. BoB has it's moments, similar to MOTA the Brits are invariably portrayed as incompetent buffoons. The scene in the Netherlands where Miller warns the Brit tankers there's a Tiger lying in ambush and the Com just ignores him claiming "I can't shoot him if I can't bloody well see him" and then proceeds to get the entire column shot up is complete and utter nonsense, but it's typical of these US-centric shows. "Fury" could have been a really great tank movie, but it's ruined by ridiculous crap like the Tiger skipper charging up a hill at three Shermans, the fact they actually have a set piece based on the complete myth that 75 and 76 armed Shermans couldn't frontally penetrate the Tiger I, and the laughable final battle with the SS company where there isn't a single personal anti-tank weapon to hand despite that being practically the only thing the Germans had an abundance of at that point in the war. Likewise the "shooting the driver through his hatch/pulling open the Com hatch from on top of the vehicle" Tiger scene in Saving Private Ryan. Given that these shows invariably employ "technical advisors" (MOTA apparently employed 16!!!) it's astonishing how much completely implausible garbage gets left in and how many obvious continuity/accuracy errors there are that they know will get picked up by anyone with a passing interest. Must be an easy gig. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottsdad Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 On 20/03/2024 at 01:25, Boo Khaki said: It's just typical of the Ambrose/Spielberg/Hanks WWII stuff. Completely overplays how heroic and amazing anything US is, and totally ignores shortcomings or anything that paints them in a bad light. That's not a criticism, it's just what these things are. If you accept that before you start then it's interesting enough TV. Unfortunately I'm a bit of a nerd about these things, and I can never really relax and enjoy them without falling out of my chair at the inaccuracies and bullshit. The B-17's were almost entirely G models by early 1943, yet even in the final episode they are still flying the earlier F model with no G's in sight. It's not just anoraky, the change from F-G was significant because the G's included a chin turret which markedly reduced the vulnerability to the head-on attacks favoured by Luftwaffe fighters. The scenes regarding escorts where Rosie is piloting with Crosby narrating are also just laughably wrong, especially the bit about "P-51's". At no point would escort fighters ever have got as close to or flown through their own bomb groups, yet the series shows dozens of them passing straight through the bomber formations. Also, for the mission portrayed where every single escort fighter is a P-51, in reality only about 8-10% of them were, with the bulk of them actually being P-47's and the remainder P-38's. There was a lot of "bullshit" in the series that I tried to just ignore for the sake of entertainment, but it was far, far more egregious than either BoB or Pacific. BoB has it's moments, similar to MOTA the Brits are invariably portrayed as incompetent buffoons. The scene in the Netherlands where Miller warns the Brit tankers there's a Tiger lying in ambush and the Com just ignores him claiming "I can't shoot him if I can't bloody well see him" and then proceeds to get the entire column shot up is complete and utter nonsense, but it's typical of these US-centric shows. "Fury" could have been a really great tank movie, but it's ruined by ridiculous crap like the Tiger skipper charging up a hill at three Shermans, the fact they actually have a set piece based on the complete myth that 75 and 76 armed Shermans couldn't frontally penetrate the Tiger I, and the laughable final battle with the SS company where there isn't a single personal anti-tank weapon to hand despite that being practically the only thing the Germans had an abundance of at that point in the war. Likewise the "shooting the driver through his hatch/pulling open the Com hatch from on top of the vehicle" Tiger scene in Saving Private Ryan. Given that these shows invariably employ "technical advisors" (MOTA apparently employed 16!!!) it's astonishing how much completely implausible garbage gets left in and how many obvious continuity/accuracy errors there are that they know will get picked up by anyone with a passing interest. Must be an easy gig. Jeez. Best avoid "The Bloody Hundredth" , the accompanying documentary. British pilots - ineffective. American pilots - accurate, dashing heroes that won the war. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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