The Mighty Eighth: New miniseries from Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is making a new miniseries called The Mighty Eighth. To see the trailer for the movie, along with my list of TOP TEN flyer flicks, read Wartime Wednesdays by clicking on the link here. http://elinorflorence.com/blog/118430.

 

Any list which features The Dam Busters, BofB and Twelve O'Clock High has to be alright by me.......

 

The trailer shows promise.

 

Wasn't this supposed to be a ten part HBO miniseries?

 

Yes, Spielberg and Hanks are to be teaming up to make a new World War II themed HBO mini-series called "The Mighty Eighth".

However, this "teaser trailer" has NOTHING to do with the Spielberg/Hanks production - which helps explain the "plastic model" look of several of the B-17s, especially the two that crash together. The trailer is for a completely different project, which is a film that is in development.
Links: http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/exclusive-check-out-this-awesome-teaser-footage-for-wwii-epic-the-mighty-eighth
http://www.redseamediainc.com/the-mighty-eighth.aspx

 

The Spielberg mini-series is based on the 2007 book "Masters of the Air" by Donald Miller. The mini-series I believe is titled the same.

http://hbowatch.com/writing-of-masters-of-the-air-for-hbo-in-progress/

 

not to derail the thread, but are there any Air Corp Units that were just as distinguished as the mighty eighth?

 

Thanks for the correction on the movie - apparently The Mighty Eighth is one thing, and the miniseries by Steven Spielberg is another.

To make matters even more confusing, there's a Facebook page called "The Mighty Eighth" which is about the Speilberg miniseries!

So hopefully we will get to see TWO new aviation movies sometime in the next couple of years.

 

Speaking as a 'foreigner', I'd say that anyone who served with the 5th, 9th, 15th etc AFs would defend their Force as the most distinguished. But the Eighth will always have that special 'cachet'. They were thrown into some of the most challenging aerial combat situations of WWII and suffered some terrible losses to prove it.......

 

Just saw this comment on Facebook made me giggle.

 

I know the 5th AF were in the pacific, but do you think any Air Force units (cactus or marine leathernecks?) in the pacific that had any comparison to the mighty eighth?

 

Maybe not in terms of successes achieved or losses suffered......my point was more that I'm always rather careful that veterans should not take offence ; just about anyone who serves anywhere quite reasonably reckons their unit to be the 'best', 'most distinguished', etc.

 

Comparison in what way? For instance it's hard for me to even consider how to compare Marine air units to the 8th AF as the latter flew mostly single engine combat AC.

 

Any Bomber commands? Similar planes to 8th AF?

 

Poke around on this page and the ones linked to it and you may find some of the answers you are looking for, or at least enough info to refine your question:
http://www.usaaf.net/digest/t140.htm
Here's the main page:
http://www.usaaf.net/digest/

 

OK<, "When , when is this Tv series going to happen"""""

I love the B 17 even though my father was a belly gunner on the Dora D"....I would really love to see this REAL SOOOOOOON!!!!!!!

 

Something like that takes a long time. I can hardly wait myself, but having read the book, I cannot imagine the difficulties in adapting it as a script. Hopefully it will be structured more like "From The Earth To The Moon" than "Band of Brothers".

There is so much important background to cover. Invention of the Norden bomb sight, evolution of knowledge of flight "medecine", emergence of the notion of "strategic daylight bombing" without long range fighter escorts. Getting war production up and running and the lack of sufficient supplies and crews through 1942-1943... Then there is the absence of an important central character, a Winters, Leckie or Sledge.

 

I couldn’t agree more. The sheer volume of the source material alone, let alone its grand scale, makes a cohesive, 10-12 episode arc a la Band of Brothers very difficult.

I very much liked your point regarding structuring this series in a manner similar to ‘From the Earth to the Moon.’ It is not outside the realm of possibility to see an episode covering the making of the Norden Bombsight, or likely more sexily, the development of the North American P-51 as an analogy to the FtEttM episode “Spider,” which covers Grumman’s development of the LEM.

This not to say you wouldn’t see some of the same characters appear in multiple episodes, but the story of the 8th Air Force is not character driven.

 

It will depend on how the storyline for the miniseries is written. Given that the last "rumor" that I heard was that the focus of the miniseries is to be on the 100th Bomb Group, aka the Bloody 100th, the miniseries will likely be character driven, with the development of this or that having a very minor, if any, part in the series.
http://mightyeighth.org/wp-content/uploads/10-15-2013-100th-Bomb-Group-Press-Release.pdf
After all, we saw hardly any of this in "Band of Brothers" or "The Pacific" - almost an entire episode of The Pacific was devoted to the Marines having R&R in Australia, yet there was no attention paid to the development of amphibious operations or the LCI, the LST, the many "amphibs"/LVTs, etc.

Further, if the 100th rumor is true, there will be a lot of ground to cover in 10 or so episodes.
http://www.100thbg.com/mainmenus/history/historysummary_home.htm
http://www.100thbg.com/mainmenus/history/history_main.htm