Masters of the Air's Nate Mann and Anthony Boyle on the 100th Bomb Group's Devastating Munster Raid in Episode 5

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Masters of the Air Episode 5. Read at your own risk!]

Prior to the fifth episode of Masters of the Air, the 100th Bomb Group had already suffered devastating losses. The death toll was too high to count, and in Episode 4, Major Gale Cleven (Austin Butler) was one of the airmen who did not return to Thorpe Abbotts. Episode 5 recounts an even deadlier mission in the 100th Bomb Group's history: the Munster raid, where only one of 13 planes — the one piloted by Rosie, or Major Robert Rosenthal (Nate Mann) — made it back to the base.

It's a jarring scene in the Apple TV+ series, as the lone B-17 lands in Thorpe Abbotts. "Where's the rest?" a boy asks: the question on everyone's minds. Moments earlier, Rosie's plane was shown in the air as the single one that survived the raid by German fighters. Most in the 100th Bomb Group had reached their target of Munster but were overwhelmed by the attack that followed. 

As he was filming the episode, actor Nate Mann imagined what it would be like to be in Rosie's position. "At a certain point, [you're] not even realizing you're the only one up there, but just doing everything you can to try and bring your plane back," the actor told TV Guide. "Coming back from something like that — I just imagined it's almost like there's no thoughts." After Rosie climbs out of the B-17, he surveys his surroundings — including wounded airmen from his crew being stretchered off — as if in a daze. 

"And then [there's] the shock afterwards, piecing together the fact that you're going to go back to an empty interrogation room, you're going to be the only ones there," Mann continued. In the episode, the usually packed interrogation room is almost silent as Rosie's crew is asked about the other B-17s. Where were they last sighted? If the plane was going down, were there chutes spotted? But the surviving airmen cannot recall anything for most of the 12 other Flying Fortresses. "There's this presence, this invisible presence of these men who didn't make it back," Mann said. 

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Also in the interrogation room is Lieutenant Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle), who hears the crushing news that the B-17 carrying his best friend, Lieutenant Joseph "Bubbles" Payne (Louis Greatorex), "blew up." 

"What was going on in his mind I think is the same as Nate says, that sort of no thoughts, you're just trying to hold it all together," Boyle told TV Guide. "When we found out the planes went down, he's holding on for a little bit of hope that maybe Bubbles survived." But Crosby doesn't get the report he was hoping for. "When he gets the confirmation that there were no chutes, I think it's just trying to suppress," Boyle explained.

The actor noted that processing emotions was not the norm in that era. "We talk a lot about mental health these days," Boyle said. "[But] it's the '40s. People weren't thinking about grief and thinking about PTSD." To him, Crosby wanted to "suppress, suppress, suppress." This was evident in one of the last moments of the episode. "When he finds the letter that Bubbles had written to his wife, I think it all just boils up," Boyle said. He reads the words that his best friend penned about him, and tears start to fall. "But even at the end of that scene, he just puts it away, tries to get on with it," Boyle said. "It's hard, really hard."

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Masters of the Air Episodes 1-5 are now streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes of the series premiere Fridays on the streamer, with the series finale set to debut on March 15.