Originally entitled Master’s of the Air, HBO’s latest mini series, The Mighty Eighth, pays homage to the men and machines of the US Army Air Force’s 8th Air Force during WWII. Once again the magical movie pair up of film director, Steven Spielberg, and award-winning actor, Tom Hanks, looks at the exploits of the bombardment squadrons tasked with bringing the Third Reich to its knees, largely through precision daylight bombing raids flying deep into Nazi-occupied Europe and back. The series follows in the footsteps of Band of Brothers and The Pacific, two previously released mini series held in high regard by historians, military buffs and film goers alike. While Band of Brothers focused on the exploits of a paratrooper company in the ETO and The Pacific cobbled together the stories of several real-life veterans of the war against Japan, The Mighty Eighth attempts to encapsulate the story of the bombing campaign by avoiding the use of composite characters, focusing instead on the real stories of the actual figures who flew with Eighth Air Force, and in particular the “Bloody Hundredth” bomb group, one of the hardest hitting — and hardest hit– which alone lost 229 airplanes and suffered nearly 1,900 men killed or taken prisoner between June 1943 and April 1945.