Iowa’s ‘Masters of the Air’

The Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg streaming series “Masters of the Air” debuted on Apple + the last week of January and continues through February. The nine-part drama is the final installment in the series of World War II movies produced by Hanks and Spielberg, starting with “Band of Brothers” in 2001 and continuing with “The Pacific” in 2010.

The current installment, which cost $250 million and converted a massive swath of English countryside into an active air base set for a year, incorporated some of the few remaining B-17 bombers restored to fly after the war along with full scale reproductions mounted inside a cavernous warehouse studio to reenact the flying scenes of the epic’s heroes.

Those heroes were based on the lives of actual pilots and crew of the 100th Bomb Group, collectively known as “The Bloody 100th.” The title was appropriate as between the spring of 1943 and the spring of 1945, the unit lost 177 bomber aircraft to enemy fire or foul weather, completing 306 mission with a crew of 10 men per-plane. Nearly three-quarters of its airmen not return home after a flight.

At least 42 Iowans served in varying capacities in the Bloody 100th, including Cedar Rapids resident, Tom Gallagher. He enlisted in the Army Air Force in June of 1943 and was trained as a turret gunner, who was responsible for aiming his fifty caliber gun at enemy fighter planes attacking their bomber at 400 miles per hour.

Gallagher survived 14 missions defending his B-17, and repelled attacks by the most formidable planes in the German Luftwaffe, including the first fighter jet, the Me-262, which could achieve speeds of nearly 550 miles per hour.

Gallagher scored three aerial victories downing enemy planes until his own was hit, knocking out two of the four engines and tearing off a quarter of the plane’s wing. He, himself, was struck by shrapnel, but the pilot was able to wrestle the plane into nearby Poland and crash land safely.

Gallagher and his crew and were spirited into Russia, where another B-17 picked them up and brought them to Italy and then England. It took more than 60 days to return to Britain. He called it his two month secret mission.

Bomb groups were divided into bomb squadrons. In the Hanks/Spielberg production, the action is based predominantly on two units, the 350th and the 418th. The 350th was commanded by Gale Cleven, portrayed by actor Austin Butler.

Cleven was considered one of the top pilots of the group and became good friends with another pilot, John Egan (Callum Turner, in the movie series). Both trained at Sioux City Army Air Base. Each pick up their B-17s in Kearney, Neb. and ferried them across the Atlantic, where, two weeks after settling in, they flew their first missions.

Cleven was shot down the first week of October 1943 after a strike on Bremen. Enraged, Egan leads a daring sortie to drop bombs on German emplacements at Munster, and himself (and his crew) is shot down. Both Cleven and Egan meet again, having been brought to the infamous prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III. This is the POW compound from which 76 captured airmen slipped away and was made into the 1963 motion picture, “The Great Escape.”

Following the incident, the Germans decided to move all internees to other camps. It was during this “death march” that Cleven managed to escape and return to his unit. Egan, however, was not so fortunate and spent much of the rest of the war behind barbed wire.

The stories are graphically told, and one of the ways the production company was able to make them so realistic was because of the journals and letters of an Iowan who lived the same experiences in the air and ultimately wrote one of the most comprehensive accounts ever published of the bomber crews of World War II.

Harry Crosby was born in North Dakota in 1919. His family moved to Oskaloosa, Iowa when he was a child. He played the clarinet and formed his own band in high school. After graduation, Crosby enrolled in the literature program at the University of Iowa, but following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, joined the Army Air Corps. Having spent many nights gazing at the star filled skies of south central Iowa, he became a navigator. He was then assigned to the 418th Bomb Squadron of the 100th Bomb Group, the same unit which featured John Egan as a commander.

As Navigators are critical to getting the bombers to their target, Crosby, who had gained a reputation as one of the best celestial navigators in the Army Air Force, was so crucial to the missions of the 100th, that he was chosen to be prominently portrayed in the series as well.

Played by actor Anthony Boyle, much of the thrilling sequences are based on the journals and letters he wrote during the war. Vivid and descriptive, he outlines harrowing fights that he and his crew endured in his full two years of combat service.

Crosby survived all flights, including over Bremen, but other Iowans weren’t so lucky. Stanley Carson, of Woodburn, about 50 miles west of Oskaloosa, enlisted in the Army Air Force and served as a turret gunner in a position similar to that of Gallagher. While Gallagher was shot down, and survived, on Dec. 31, 1944, the 100th was called upon to destroy an enemy emplacement at Hamburg, Germany and Carson was killed in action. His remains were found and he was buried with honors at the American Cemetery in Ardennes, Belgium.

Crosby returned to the United States and re-enrolled at the University of Iowa, where he graduated with an MA in literature in 1947. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford and then came back to assume the position of writing supervisor for the rhetoric program at Iowa until 1958. From there, he moved to Massachusetts and served as a professor of literature at Boston University until 1984.

Never fully retired, Crosby continued authoring short stories and became the director of the Writing Center of Harvard University. In 1993, looking back on his letters and journals from World War II, he released his autobiography, “A Wing and a Prayer: The Bloody 100th Bomb Group,” which was seen as a tribute to the pilots, navigators, gunners, radiomen, and ground crews that made it home, and, more importantly, those that did not.

Crosby died of natural causes in July 2010. As Iowans who appreciate the principles of liberty and watch “Masters of the Air,” may we remember, with gratitude, those who served in these valorous units and view, with pride, these masters of freedom.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.