‘Masters of the Air’ Episode 5 Spotlights Real-Life Jewish-American Hero Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal

Masters of the Air continues to put viewers through hell as it viscerally dramatizes the harrowing missions of the 100th Bomb Group during World War II. Masters of the Air Episode 5 “Part Five” on Apple TV+ follows the Bloody Hundredth on their most terrifying mission yet over Munster. For the first time ever, they’ve been tasked with bombing a Nazi target crawling with civilians. The bulk of the episode, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan K. Fleck, is devoted to the massacre the American bombers faced in the skies. Exploding flack, hundreds of German dogfighters, and simple mechanical errors wind up taking down all of American planes — except one.

The only pilot to successfully bring his men back to base was Major Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal (Nate Mann). While the other planes went down over occupied Europe, leaving surviving soldiers to fend for themselves behind enemy lines, Rosenthal managed to keep his panicking crew calm ahead of a harrowing dog fight by humming Artie Shaw’s “The Chant.” Masters of the Air Episode 5 “Part Five” depicts this as a terrifying, yet heroic moment, highlighting the bravery of real-life Jewish-American hero Robert Rosenthal.

Masters of the Air is a nine-part Apple TV+ limited series that looks at the lives of the real-life pilots, navigators, and bombers who made up the Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group during World War II. It’s in part based on Donald L. Miller’s Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany and Harry Crosby’s memoir,A Wing and a Prayer: The “Bloody 100th” Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War II. While earlier episodes have lionized the 100th’s earliest leaders, Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler) and John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner), the series has now caught up to the point in history where Buck and Bucky were stuck in Europe as POWs and Major Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal takes their place as the 100th’s big hero.

Masters of the Air first introduced Rosenthal in last week’s episode. He was part of a new wave of recruits joining the “Bloody Hundredth” at a pivotal moment for the unit. This week’s episode shows us the insane true story of Rosenthal’s third mission. On October 10, 1943, Rosenthal flew the Royal Flush on a bombing raid over Munster. As we see in Masters of the Air, his was the only plane to make it back to base, albeit with two dead engines, a non-functional intercom and oxygen system, and a huge hole in the wing.

Spoilers for future episodes of Masters of the Air — and history — but Rosenthal would go on to have an incredibly storied military career during World War II. He would be decorated with sixteen awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Cross, a Purple Heart, and a Croix de Guerre. After the war, he would return to Germany to assist with the Nuremburg trials, during which he interrogated Hermann Göring. Not only that, but Rosenthal is attributed with flying the plane that bombed the notorious Nazi “People’s Court,” killing the “hanging judge,” Roland Freisler.

Needless to say, as cool as Buck and Bucky are, no one in Masters of the Air has a war story quite so impressive or illustrious than Robert Rosenthal. To Masters of the Air‘s credit, they’ve already managed to introduce Rosenthal not as a larger-than-life figure, but an incredibly human young man. Sure, he pulls off the seemingly impossible, but by showing us how he did so — with the help and support of his crew and an assist from the music of Artie Shaw — we’re able to see how ordinary people became World War II heroes. Not because they were super soldiers, but empathetic to their fellow man.

One of the most valuable things about a series like Masters of the Air is its ability to bring history to life in a way text on a page simply can’t. By depicting the real life people who fought in World War II, Masters of the Air is helping us understand how truly extraordinary the Greatest Generation was. They had all the same anxieties, fears, and foibles of other generations; they simply managed to push through them to defeat evil. Sometimes humming Artie Shaw helped.