As a military-fascinated kid growing up, I remember there was an illustrated book about World War Two that was kept in pride-of-place on my Grandma’s coffee table. It had been published shortly after the war, and if you think the public was spared graphic images from that conflict, you would be mistaken. I’d imagine it was there because the war had an enormous impact on my family. Many fought, their lives altered for good.

Some pictures I remember were of B-17’s, horribly mangled in aerial combat, who had made it back to England and were thus photographed. As a child, I thought, “How did these airplanes still fly?” I didn’t know then, and I still don’t. Those lucky birds should have disintegrated, their crews tossed into the slipstream. Unfortunately, that also happened, and seventy-three percent of the aircrewmen of the 8th Air Force became casualties, dead or wounded.

It is a testament to the crews, builders, designers, and maintainers that any of these birds made it back to their home stations in England after missions over the continent.

With this in mind, I decided to risk watching the initial episodes of the new Apple TV series, “Masters of the Air.”

You can see the trailer here.

I’m glad I overcame my inner resistance to seeing this; the first two episodes were very good. If you’d like, you could give it a try.

I had a number of reservations, and there were things I watched out for while viewing the programming. The first two series of Spielberg’s WW2 trilogy were outstanding. Those were “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” While Band of Brothers was very good, I preferred “The Pacific.” The latter series, I thought, did a better job of showing some of the effects of combat on ordinary people; this is an infrequently told tale. In my opinion, it’s the most important part of the story.

How do you live with yourself, when you thought you would die, but then you did not? When later you must face what you did? This is an important question.

With trepidation, I watched. I was alert for jingoism, platitudes, and cliches. I’m allergic to those things.

Fortunately, these flaws were low-key so far, except for a general reverence for our ancestors, who suffered so much.

While I don’t know what it’s like to be in a bomber that is falling apart, I do know something about fear. These men, the real 8th AF guys who flew and the actors who played them, were frightened, and the show does a good job with this. It shows regular people who are caught up in horror. It shows the price of clean sheets and good food. It shows how normal people will do stupid things and behave badly under duress, both in combat and in the terrible pauses between missions.

Any combat veteran will tell you the anticipation and the waiting are the worst. The rest is just doing your job.

Regarding the show itself, the best scene, carefully crafted and an experience to behold, is a crash-landing in Scotland. I’m curious if others who see this think the same.

Go ahead. Give it a watch, and thank your lucky stars that you didn’t fly with the Mighty Eighth.