“Masters of the Air” stars Anthony Boyle and Nate Mann this Emmys season

“Masters of the Air” doesn’t fly as high as it would without Anthony Boyle and Nate Mann. No military unit rests on the shoulders of two people, and the Eighth Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group was no different in World War II. Historically known as the Bloody 100th because of the enormous losses it suffered, the fearless airmen saw some of the worst action of the war and they did so thousands of feet above the front lines.

But as a cinematic story, the Apple TV+ series from the “Band of Brothers” trio Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman needs the deep warmth of Boyle’s Lt. Harry Crosby and Mann’s Major Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal to, ironically, find ground to give his darkest days.

At the top of the call sheet are Austin Butler and Callum Turner, as pilots Major Gale “Buck” Cleven and Major John “Bucky” Egan, respectively. As the war and the series continue, Buck and Bucky find themselves behind enemy lines and far from their cockpits. With these born leaders out of reach, what remains is the 100th and its battle-worn men like Crosby and Rosie.

Crosby, in particular, is the first to question his rise to leadership. An endearingly skittish navigator when the series begins, Crosby discovers his steady hand and sharp mind after being baptized by fire during early missions.

“Crosby was a nerve-wracking man and he didn’t expect the adulation,” says Boyle, who also narrates the series. “But that’s the point of courage: being afraid and doing it anyway. That’s the definition of Crosby’s story. He still went back up in those cans. He was a real hero.”

Rosie arrives in episode 4 with his own crew after a deadly mission requires replenishing the ranks of the 100th. “He is both generous and a calm badass, two things I strive for,” Mann says.

Unlike Crosby, Rosie more easily gathers a leader’s trust, but the war will test that fortitude.

Some of his first missions with the 100th change everything Rosie knows about what it takes to keep getting back in the air.

“There’s a physical resistance to doing something like that for all these men,” Mann says. “That’s what I tried to find in him. You may go through the motions to get back into that plane, but the body is a little wiser to resist it after such an experience. Once he finds that strength in the second half, we see him doing it for his men.

For all the men watching them in the 100th, not to mention the audience, Crosby and Rosie become a lifeline as the war rages on. Familiar faces are lost in no time, only to be replaced by new, increasingly younger faces.

It means that by the end of the series the 100th is almost unrecognizable, and you realize how tightly you’re clinging to the stabilizing forces of Boyle and Mann. Understanding the responsibility, the actors worked with writer John Orloff to bring forth things they learned about their real-life counterparts from memoirs and archival footage to ensure that the humanity at stake in war is not lost in its scope .

They also deliberately infused some of Crosby and Rosie’s later moments with something that has helped many soldiers through the darkness: gallows humor.

“These men used humor to counteract the severity of the loss and pain,” Boyle says. “So Nate and I thought it would be good if we could make each other laugh and make it feel as lived in as possible.”