The Tuskegee Airmen Deserved More Than What ‘Masters of the Air’ Gave Them

Something weird happens in the penultimate episode of Masters of the Air, now streaming on Apple TV+, and, no, I’m not talking about how Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle) took too many speed pills to stay awake that he wound up crashing so bad that he slept through D-Day! I’m talking about the sudden inclusion of one of the most famous air groups of World War II: the Tuskegee Airmen. After focusing on the Bloody Hundredth for weeks and weeks, Masters of the Air decides to shift focus away from the likes of Croz, Rosie (Nate Mann), and the imprisoned Buck (Austin Butler) and Bucky (Callum Turner) for just a few scenes to introduce 2nd Lt. Alexander Jefferson (Branden Cook) and friends 2nd Lt. Robert H. Daniels (Ncuti Gatwa) and 2nd Lt. Richard Macon (Josiah Cross).

By the episode’s end, the three Black pilots are POWs themselves alongside Buck and Bucky at the notorious Stalag Luft III. However the Tuskegee Airmen in general feel shoehorned into the larger narrative of Masters of the Air. It feels like too little too late in terms of representation and a total waste of incredible talents like Cook, Gatwa, and Cross.

It’s great that Masters of the Air wants to acknowledge that World War II was won thanks to the valiant efforts of Black men as well as white, but the Tuskegee Airmen’s late arrival to the show’s overarching narrative doesn’t give them the focus or respect they deserve.

As Masters of the Air narrator Harry Crosby explains, the Tuskegee Airmen were an all-Black air group stationed in Italy and North Africa during World War II. Their name came from the fact that they were all trained at the prestigious Tuskegee Institute (which was coincidentally profiled in The Gilded Age Season 2). Their legendary nickname, “Red Tails,” was thanks to the the 332nd Fighter Group’s penchant for painting the tails of their P-47s a distinctive crimson.

Although the pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen were the very first Black airmen to serve in the United States Armed Forces, they still suffered acute racism in the fact that they were, indeed, segregated from their white peers. This is why we haven’t seen a Black pilot yet in Masters of the Air; they existed, but not as part of the show’s central all-white air group, the Bloody Hundredth.

In Masters of the Air Episode 8 “Part Eight,” we meet the gallant Alexander “Alex” Jefferson. While the low stakes missions the Tuskegee Airmen run routinely over Italy seem a lot cushier than what the 100th have had to deal with, Alex yearns for real action. When that opportunity comes, Alex and his friends are thrilled. Things, of course, become more complicated when they find themselves caught behind enemy lines.

When Jefferson, Daniels, and an injured Macon arrive at the German POW camp, they are immediately met with some truly disgusting racism from their fellow American soldiers. Coincidentally, the one white guy who immediately meets them with courtesy, ensuring they’re safe in their assigned bunks is, you guessed it, Buck Cleven. (Our most heroic white boy stays perfect!)

If I’ve had one lingering issue with Masters of the Air throughout its run is that it’s trying too hard to do too many things with one season of television. It wants to depict the harrowing missions of the Bloody Hundredth while also acknowledging the psychological fallout of surviving those missions. It wants to adapt Harry Crosby’s own memoir, A Wing and a Prayer. It wants to give us romance, action, tragedy, and horror. As the show goes on, focus continually shifts. New characters are folded in when others fall in battle. It is, ultimately, spinning way too many plates, and the awkwardness of how the Tuskegee Airmen are introduced feels emblematic of this.

It is so vital that we honor the heroism of Black soldiers in World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen were especially incredible, but Masters of the Air seems to add them in as afterthoughts. It’s as if the producers were suddenly aware of how white their World War II project looked and realized they could use the experiences of Jefferson, Macon, and Daniels at Stalag Luft III as their solution. Instead, these brave men deserve a great show or film of their own. You know, like Red Tails or The Tuskegee Airmen. Because a show that is very much focused on the Bloody Hundredth doesn’t have the bandwidth to do anything more than this weaksauce nod to their stories.

The Tuskegee Airmen simply deserved way more than what Masters of the Air had the time to give them, which is a damn shame.