Fourth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: The Ethics of Aerial Bombing in Apple TV’s ‘Masters of the Air’

[Matthew Parish is a PhD candidate in Law at the University of Cambridge, where he is the recipient of a W.M. Tapp Studentship and an AHRC Studentship. He holds an LLB (Law) and an LLM (Public International Law) from the University of Bristol.]

January 2024 saw the long-awaited release of Apple TV’s ‘Masters of the Air’. The series constitutes the final instalment in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s Second World War trilogy, following on from ‘Band of Brothers’ (2001) and ‘The Pacific’ (2010). Based on the true story documented by Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name, Masters of the Air follows the US Eighth Air Force’s strategic bombing campaign over Nazi Germany. Much praise has – quite rightly – been levelled at the series by critics, with Masters of the Air picturing in gruesome detail the horrors of aerial combat and the extraordinary bravery of the airmen involved.

Yet, little to no attention has been paid to the series’ unfortunate presentation of the ethics of the Allied aerial bombing campaign. Despite the immense controversy of the bombing of Germany in post-war discourse, Masters of the Air presents a regrettably simplistic ethical account. It is argued that Masters of the Air perpetuates two main problematic narratives. Such narratives are not only ethically significant in their own right but also run disappointingly counter to the norms declared foundational to the international legal order by the Geneva Conventions and surrounding academic consensuses.

Narrative 1 – the Infallibility of ‘Precision’ Weapons and Tactics

The first problematic narrative of Masters of the Air is its presentation of ‘precision’ weapons and tactics as infallible. At the beginning of episode 2, the show provides the viewers with some helpful historical exposition:

“The British Royal Airforce and the American Army Airforce had two very different approaches to the bombing campaign against Germany. The Americans pursued daylight precision bombing – an effort to destroy specific military or economic targets. The British, who had been at war with the Nazis for nearly 4 years, practiced nighttime area bombing – it was indiscriminate and deadly…There was only one reason the Americans could attempt something as difficult and dangerous as precision bombing – the Norden bombsight”.

Placed in the nose of the Eighth Air Force’s Boeing B-17 bombers, the Norden bombsight was a major technological breakthrough (p. 39). Following testing over the Californian desert, bombardiers claimed that the gyroscope-stabilized instrument allowed them to drop a bomb into pickle-barrel from 20,000 feet (p. 6, 39). 

In Masters of the Air, we follow the crews of B-17 bombers through numerous daylight raids, looking alongside bombardiers through the lenses of Norden bombsights to the targets below. In episode 2, we spectate the raid on the submarine pens in Trondheim, where we see the crosshairs of the Norden bombsight over the target, followed by a cut to shots of the bombs hitting the target. In episode 3, we witness the Schweinfurt–Regensburg raid, where once again we see the crosshairs over the target, followed by an airman proclaiming the success of the bombing: “Sir, that factory is gone”. In episode 5, we observe the raid on the railroad marshalling yards in Munster, with one of the airmen exclaiming “right on target” as the bombs make impact. In episode 7, we watch the raid on the Erkner ball-bearing plant in Berlin, with the camera cutting to shots of the bombs hitting the target. In sum, nowhere in Masters of the Air is the viewer given reason to think that the Americans ever missed their target, nor given cause for concern about bombs hitting civilian rather than military installations.

Yet, this presentation of the flawless accuracy of American ‘precision’ bombing is – to put it mildly – misleading. As Miller’s book documents, in practice, the average wartime bombing accuracy with the Norden bombsight (expressed as a ‘circular error probable’ – the smallest radius around the target in which at least 50% of bombs fall) was as large as three-quarters of a mile (p. 69)! In his TED talk on the Norden bombsight, Malcolm Gladwell recounts the bombing raids on a 757-acre chemical plant in Germany, where, over the course of 22 missions, 85,000 bombs were dropped using the Norden bombsight with only 10% landing within the 757-acre area. The reasons for the inaccuracy of the Norden bombsight in practice were ranging and cumulative: manufacturing and maintenance errors, the inadequate training of aircrews, the human error of bombardiers, and chronic bad weather in the skies over Europe (p. 68). Yet, in Masters of the Air’s presentation of American bombing, none of this is shown, or even alluded to, despite being made plain in Miller’s book – the series’ own source material.

Inevitably then, the humanitarian implications stemming from the true accuracy of American bombing are also largely bypassed by the series. Yet, the devastating humanitarian impact of the inaccurate bombing of strategic targets located within high-population urban cities has been widely documented in the postwar literature, including in Miller’s book. In this respect, episode 6 provides what is perhaps the most remarkable line of dialogue in the entire series. In this episode, we follow Major John Egan as he is carted across Germany as a prisoner of war. Here – for the first and only time in the entire series – we are shown the impact of Allied bombing on German civilians. As Egan watches flames from the town of Russelsheim light up the night sky and notices corpses protruding from the rubble, he retorts to a fellow prisoner of war: “Looks like it just happened, RAF”. For what reason – in this one and only scene of civilian harm – did the writers find it necessary to explicitly spell out, for the avoidance of any doubt, that this destruction was not committed by the Americans? The implication seems to be that American precision bombing could not possibly have caused such civilian harm.

Masters of the Air’s narrative of the infallibility of precision weapons is deeply problematic, especially considering the ever-new precision weapons that constitute a fundamental feature of modern warfare. Firstly, narratives of infallibility risk generating hubristic attitudes towards military technology. Indeed, it is by understanding the weakness of technology such as the Norden bombsight in practice that we become alerted to the fact that contemporary weapons may also be subject to problems of human error, difficult weather/environments, and manufacturing defects. Secondly, narratives of infallibility act to legitimise war by falsely suggesting that war can be ‘sanitised’ with only the ‘deserving’ harmed. Finally, narratives of infallibility undermine broader ethical discourses around war – if weapons are so precise, what need is there to consider the killing of civilians and the destruction of war? This is a consequence of the narrative of infallibility that becomes reflected within Masters of the Air itself.

Narrative 2 – the Suspension of Ethical Obligations When Conducting War Against an Aggressive Belligerent

The second problematic narrative of Masters of the Air is the view that a state’s ethical obligations are suspended when fighting a war against an aggressive belligerent. Given the series’ presentation of precision weapons, ethical discourse around civilian collateral harm is unsurprisingly almost entirely bypassed. Thus, in the 9 one-hour-long episodes covering one of the most morally contentious issues of the 20^th century, we are provided just four brief ethical exchanges.

The first takes place in episode 4, where Egan finds himself talking to a Polish emigrant fleeing the war. Egan remarks: “I dropped a lot of those things [bombs], probably done a lot of killing”. The Polish woman, replies:

“does it weigh on your conscience? Don’t bother, the Germans deserve every last one of your bombs. Some believe there is a difference between war and senseless murder, they don’t… I believe we should be as merciless and severe as they were to my people, that would be fair”.

The second takes place in episode 5, ahead of the raid on the Munster railroads. One airman worries specifically about dropping bombs on women and children, remarking: 

“you saw how close that cathedral was to the MPI [the target], we’re hitting it right when everyone’s coming out of mass…there’ll be a lot of people in that cathedral or in their houses, and not just railroad workers either”.

Egan responds: “Jesus Christ, it’s a war, we’re here to drop bombs…this won’t end until we hit them where it hurts”. When asked if he’s flying the mission, the ethically concerned airman nods, and the episode continues.

The third takes place in episode 6, where Captain Harry Crosby blames himself for the death of his friend and fellow navigator. This is met by Subaltern Sandra Westgate responding with the broad principle that “Adolf Hitler and his gang of thugs decided they should rule the world…that’s the only reason anybody dies in this war”.

Lastly, in episode 9, Crosby expresses concern about the “tough things” that had to be done in the course of fighting the Nazis, worrying that he himself has become “a monster”.  Major Robert Rosenthal replies: “There’s no other way, the things these people [the Nazis] are capable of, no they got it coming”.

Of course, each scene in isolation does not necessarily reflect or create a ‘narrative’. Each exchange may be said to just reflect merely the view of a specific character (i.e., a Polish woman forced to leave her country, or an airman experiencing loss etc) rather than an overarching normative perspective consciously imposed by the show’s creators. However, in each instance the ethical dialogue follows the same short template: (1) an ethical concern is raised; (2) in reply, a general statement on how the moral liability of the Nazi’s alleviates the need for ethical concern is provided; (3) the reply goes unchallenged, and the scene ends.

In this respect, taking all four exchanges together indicates the existence of a clear and intentionally constructed narrative. Any ethical worries about civilian harm are always met with a statement that suggests that the moral liability of the Nazis absolves any potentially ethically concerning conduct. These statements all combine with each other to form a mutually reinforcing perspective, distinct from the view of any one character. Additionally, such statements always meet no response and constitute the final word, thus standing throughout the show as an unrefuted moral conclusion.

The narrative that a state is alleviated from moral concern because it fights against a morally egregious belligerent is highly problematic. Most stark in Subaltern Westgate’s statement that Nazi aggression is the “only reason anybody dies in this war”, such an idea leaves a ‘just’ belligerent free to commit unspeakable horrors against an enemy civilian population whilst passing off all moral liability.  Notably in this regard, nowhere in Masters of the Air is there even the recognition that a bombing raid and the infliction of civilian harm could ever be unjustified or going ‘too far’. Such a narrative clearly runs counter to the norms established by the Geneva Conventions, which imposes obligations (e.g., proportionality) on all parties to a conflict, irrespective of who caused the war or reciprocity in compliance. Even aside from international legal provisions, it has long been realised within the Just War tradition that a just belligerent is subject to ethical constraints, and may themselves become unjust through immoral conduct. It is a shame that such a reality is ignored within Masters of the Air, if not expressly denied.

Who Cares?

The moral messages presented by shows such as Masters of the Air are important. Film and TV has the unique ability to powerfully transmit ethical norms, nuance, and controversy into the homes of millions. The regrettable presentation of the ethics of aerial bombing in Masters of the Air constitutes a failed opportunity to promote the quality of popular-level discourse regarding the ethics of armed conflict. Going beyond this failed opportunity, however, we may also question – especially in light of the almost total lack of critical media response to the series’ presentation of wartime ethics – the degree to which the normative standards uncontroversial within international law are genuinely recognised beyond academia. Perhaps the key takeaway of Masters of the Air and its reception is a reminder of the importance of continuing to transmit to wider audiences the ideas that those ‘inside’ international law may already believe to be widespread.