Masters of the Air Episode 6 recap: A fateful reunion

Bucky meets some sour Krauts

Episode 6 opens with Bucky stealing cabbage from a German farm; he’s mucky, starving, and alone. As he walks through the woods, he’s spotted by some local children. Bucky immediately pulls out his gun – but he doesn’t shoot them, instead hoping the threat of a bullet will be enough for them to let him pass. As he lowers his gun, he silently asks them to keep quiet, and the eldest child seems to agree – but as Bucky turns his back, they all shout, “Amerikaner!”

As he sprints away and leaps into a river, the kids alert two grown-ups, who chase after him with shotguns. Bucky quietly moves through the water, trying to avoid their line of sight “We don’t want to kill you,” they claim, while shooting into the sky. Just as he thinks he’s gotten away with it, he backs into the barrel of a rifle. “For you, the war’s over,” the man tells him.

Back at base, Crosby narrates: “When a crew went down, they disappeared. No more than four months at Thorpe Abbotts until 32 of the original 35 crews were among the missing. We did not talk about such crews. Those of us who continued to fly mission after mission had to tiptoe around their ghosts. Some of the men were coming undone. They’d seen too many planes blow up in front of them and too many friends killed. Some people drank, some people fought, some people slept around. If you got a chance to forget, you took it.”

He’s sent to Oxford University in the wake of Bubbles’ death, with Col. Harding thinking “it’d be good for [him] to represent the 100th at a conference between the allied nations.”

He arrives at Balliol College, but he’s warned by an officer that he may not have time to enjoy the city, given all the lectures and events he’ll have to attend. He’s shown to his room, where he finds a letter from his wife, because she “couldn’t stand the idea” of going a week without writing to one another.

His roommate and subaltern, A.M. Westgate, has yet to arrive, so he makes himself at home – but his wife’s letter has a brutal endnote: “Say ‘hi’ to Bubbles for me!”

Rosie tries (and fails) to enjoy some R&R

“Munster was only Rosie’s third mission, but it was so horrific that Col. Harding ordered Lieutenant Rosenthal and his crew to spend a week of R&R at a place we called the flak house,” Crosby explains, as we see Rosie and the men arrive at the estate, populated with horses, people riding bikes, and men playing football. “You ride horses, Rosie?” one of them asks, and he jokes: “Jews from Brooklyn don’t ride horses.”

They’re soon welcomed to Coombe House, where they can enjoy “all the sports and activities they could ask for… there’s tennis, bicycles, volleyball, croquet, riding with hounds. And if it rains, because this is England, there’s billiards, cards, chess, and badminton in the ballroom.”

They’re urged to relax, but while the rest of the men can’t hide the delight on their faces, Rosie doesn’t even want to sit down. “How long do I have to be here?” he asks, but he’s told he’ll need to talk to Doctor Huston – and he’s also encouraged to “take advantage” while he can and enjoy a hot bath.

The scene harshly cuts to Bucky aboard a train in Germany with other prisoners. He tries to plot an escape, but the Nazi soldiers swiftly tell them to shut up. They step out into the fallout of an RAF bombing raid in Rüsselsheim. “Sh*t, the Brits actually hit something for once,” one of them says, as they march towards flames, rubble, and screams of agony (both physical and emotional). Bucky was cold-hearted about necessary violence in the previous episode, but his eyes are quickly opened to the devastation just one bomb can cause on the ground.

The surrounding German residents are apoplectic with rage, so they attack the Americans and slit one of their throats. Bucky is knocked to the ground as others are executed behind him, saved only by a soldier running out of bullets. Instead, he’s knocked unconscious.

Back at Coombe House, Rosie meets the doctor. He’s asked how he slept, as it can be a “strange adjustment” from the barracks, but Rosie doesn’t think “this environment is helpful” for him and he wishes to return to base. It’s obvious why he’s there: he flew three missions in his first three days, one of which saw 120 men die in a single afternoon. He repeatedly asserts that he’s “fine”, but the doctor just smiles. Rosie is stuck there for five days, whether he likes it or not.

Bucky tries to escape the Nazis

Bucky wakes up on a carriage, soaked in blood (his own and from the corpses beside him). “Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven,” one of them mumbles on the brink of death. Bucky tells him to shush, but it’s too late: “FInish him off,” the Nazis say, before slamming his head with a shovel, splashing blood across Bucky’s face.

The Germans start digging a hole for the bodies, so Bucky seizes his chance to run away. “Let him go, he won’t get far,” they say as he legs it through the trees.

In Oxford, Crosby listens to a lecture about the Magna Carta – with some customary mocking of the “Yanks taking 500 years to produce” similar legislation. “Maybe if we weren’t under the tyranny of your king for 500 years we could have popped it out sooner,” he whispers, earning cheeky smiles around the room.

In his room, he poses half-naked in the mirror with his military hat, imitating Spencer Tracy. “It’s nice to have a little fire… it gets cold up there,” he says, but he’s interrupted by Sandra Wingate, his roommate. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen men in much less, Captain,” she tells him as he hides his lower half behind a chest of drawers. She knows he expected a man, and explains that the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) encourages them to conceal their femininity.

Crosby says they should report it to the bursar, but Sandra isn’t bothered. “I can see that you’re married… hopefully your wife trained you to leave the toilet seat down,” she quips.

At the “flak house”, Rosie wanders the grounds. He sees his crew playing croquet, but he just wants to walk and take in the fresh air. He finds another man sitting alone, crying, clearly afflicted by PTSD. Rosie walks away; does he recognize the merit of a place like this, or does he still think it’s a distraction?

Crosby gets to know the Brits

Nazis find Bucky collapses on the ground and take him to Dulag Luft, a POW transit camp in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, Crosby listens in as British soldiers laugh about Americans being “oversexed, overpaid, and over here.”

Sandra ushers him into the conversation, joking that they’re “undersexed, underpaid, and under Eisenhower.” One of the men tells Crosby that Americans are “zestier” with women; they’re apparently so horny and ignorant that they’d invite a duchess to bed before taking her to dinner. “It’s beyond how you treat our women. It’s your spitting in the streets, getting sloshed, brawling in our pubs. Perhaps if you simply taught your chaps a little moral discipline, they wouldn’t always act as if they’re away from home for the first time, living it up,” he says

“With respect, sir, each day could be their last chance to live it up. So, I won’t be giving them a lecture before they go on their weekend pass,” Crosby tells him.

Crosby and Sandra go for a walk. She astutely observes he’s “not cocky enough to be a pilot”, and he reveals he’s a navigator. When he asks what she does, she says she’s been a “punter” since studying at Cambridge; they even see a man fall into the water. “It’s all in the wrists, lad,” she jokes, before admitting she’s been lying the whole time.

Rosie talks to the doctor

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That night, Rosie is unable to sleep. He wanders downstairs and finds the doctor listening to music. “You got some good stuff here,” he says as he peruses the records, before choosing one of his own. The doctor then reveals he was a flight surgeon with the 96th, and he flew on the Bremen raid with the Bloody Hundredth. “This war… human beings weren’t made to behave this way,” he says.

Rosie responds with a notable silence. He says he doesn’t disagree, but “you see people being persecuted, subjugated, persecuted, you have to do something right? They can’t fight for themselves, can they? So what do we do?”

“This right here, this is exactly what you don’t do,” he continues. “Croquet, riding with hounds… you don’t go fox-hunting? You don’t go talking about it, you don’t go crying about it, you get back in the seat and you finish the damn job.”

Rosie doesn’t like the fact he’s been taken out of his “rhythm… it’s like Gene Krupa. You don’t stop Gene Krupa in the middle of a drum solo, do you? But two weeks later, ask him to dip right back in where he left off without missing a beat, do you?”

The doctor says it’s about “more than keeping his own rhythm… he’s gotta keep the rhythm of his own band.”

Crosby tells Sandra about Bubbles

Over in Oxford, Crosby and Sandra sit down and enjoy a whisky together. She talks about her family in Scotland and how she never sees them, despite them being so close. “I’m terrible at writing letters,” she admits, and Crosby says it’s difficult – after all, there’s so much they can’t tell them. Even if they did, how would they understand?

Crosby then recalls the last time he got drunk: he was in London with Bubbles, and he “ended up with no quarters and no boots”, and all he remembers is spewing in the bathroom. She asks if Bubbles was a “lady of the night”, but he tells her that he’s his best friend. “He went down last week,” he reveals, explaining that’s why he was sent there in the first place, to “get a little time away.”

“It was my fault. I replaced Bubbles as Group Navigator. If he had been there to plan the missions, then maybe all those planes wouldn’t have went down,” he says, but Sandra immediately tries to convince him otherwise. “No, your friend was on that plane for one reason and one reason only: because Adolf Hitler and his gang of thugs decided they should rule the world. That’s it. That’s the only reason anybody dies in this war,” she tells him.

As she finishes her whisky and goes to bed, she gives him an affectionate pat on the shoulder.

Bucky’s interrogation

Bucky meets his interrogator: Lieutenant Haussman. He’s allowed to sit, enjoy a whisky, and gaze at the portrait of Hitler on the wall. Bucky tells him about the events in Rüsselsheim, to which he offers to take their names and rank so he can contact the US. “Look, I appreciate the drink and would really appreciate a thicker blanker. But as far as what you’re gonna get from me, it’s name, rank, and serial number,” he tells Haussman, details that he already knows.

He also knows where he was born, that he’s “definitely not” married, and his assignment to the 100th. “Are you a baseball fan, Major?” he asks Bucky, before offering him a cigarette (not as good as Lucky Strike, but they’ll do. “Baseball is still a bit of a mystery to me, with all the sticks and bases, running in circles,” he says, but he still knows it was the World Series the week prior (the Yankees vs the Cardinals).

“We were two games up when I went down,” Bucky says, and Haussman offers to tell him the outcome of the World Series – but Bucky quickly detects his sneakiness: he’s getting him to talk. “Was Buck Cleven a Yankees fan?” he asks. “I hear he was quite the flyer. I read of his exploits in the Regensburg attack. He was your friend, wasn’t he? It seems we’re shooting down all the good pilots.”

Haussman then tells him about the Munster mission, and how only one plane returned home. “But back to you, Major Egan. I regret to inform you that you are, as you say, in a bit of a pickle. We know you were originally apprehended near Ostbevern, but we don’t have you in any record as a crew member on any of the planes from the Munster attack. The Gestapo would say that makes you a spy,” he explains, with a wry smirk on his face.

“They would be mistaken,” Bucky says. “One thing I can tell you, Major, the Gestapo is never mistaken,” Haussman responds, before asking for verification of his group, squadron, and plane so he can confirm Bucky’s identity. “John Egan. Major. O-399510,” he replies.

Haussman insists that won’t do Bucky any favors, and says he’s unlike the “highly indoctrinated security forces”, and he’s actually a “flyer” and “man of honor… I’d like to talk to you about Buck Cleven, but I’d like you to talk to me as well. The number of replacement B-17s expected at Thorpe Abbotts next week, for example.”

Bucky doesn’t buckle, simply repeating those three details. “I see,” Haussman says, before he’s thrown back into a cell.

“Tear the fascists down”

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The next morning, Rosie wakes up with the end of the record scratching ad infinitum. He’s woken by Francy, who makes him a coffee. He heads outside to read his book by the river, allowing himself to smile at the men having fun. It’s a sharp contrast to Bucky’s experience, being treated like cattle as Nazis herd him and other Americans onto a filthy, freezing freight train. One man tries to escape, but he’s shot to death seconds later.

They see another train leaving the station, emblazoned with the Nazi insignia. But it’s not full of soldiers: it’s inhumanely loaded with Jews – women, children, and men – screaming for help as they slowly roll towards a concentration camp.

In Oxford, Crosby and Sandra continue to chat and bond. “Is there a reason you don’t tell me where you’re stationed or what you do?” he asks. “Yes,” she responds. “And if I wanted to think about work tonight, Captain, I would have gone to sherry hour with Professor Goodhart.”

They go to a nearby party, full of young people blissfully unaware of the terrors of war. A musician performs a cover of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Tear the World Down’ as they share a drink and toast Bubbles. As Crosby listens, the scene cuts between him, Rosie submerging himself in the bath, and Bucky arriving to a chorus of barking dogs and teeth-gnashing Nazis.

As Crosby and Sandra head home, she receives a note. She can’t explain why, but she has to leave – but she asks Crosby to phone her if he’s ever in London again. She kisses him on the cheek and steals someone’s bicycle. “Fortunes of war,” she jokes.

Rosie gets back in the air

Rosie joins his crew for a game of poker as they’re telling the story of what happened over Munster. “One by one, we see everybody go down until we’re the last bird in the sky. Sitting ducks. We know they’re coming for us any f**king second. And then we hear it,” one of them says, recounting Rosie humming Artie Shaw as they were about to get “their balls blown off.”

“I gotta say, hearing his voice over the radio, that was the first time I didn’t feel scared sh*tless. Even though he’d clearly lost his f**king marbles. I knew that I wasn’t alone,” he says, and the trauma starts flickering through his eyes. As the chatter resumes, Rosie sees that he’s quietly spiraling – and unlike his earlier beliefs of “not crying about it, not talking about it”, he rests his hand on his shoulder as a comfort.

“We told each other all kinds of stories. Some of them were true, most were not. It didn’t matter. Tall tales, music, laughter, good Irish whisky. We all needed something to help us climb back into that plane and do it all again,” Crosby narrates, as the men head back to Thorpe Abbotts and prepare for another mission. Rosie plane is now fittingly named “Rosie’s Riveters”, and despite some initial reluctance to step aboard, he overcomes his fear.

Bucky and the other men arrive at Stalag Luft III, where they see lots of men presumed dead from the 100th. “John Egan, your 2 o’clock,” a familiar voice shouts out: it’s Buck, smiling behind the fence. “What took you so long?” Bucky looks immensely relieved, even as he marches into hell.

Masters of the Air Episodes 1-6 are streaming on Apple TV+, which you can sign up for here. You can also check out our other coverage below:

Review | Premiere recap | Episode 3 recap | Episode 4 recap | Episode 5 recap | Release schedule: Dates & episodes | Cast and real-life characters | Filming locations | Is it a Band of Brothers sequel? | Soundtrack & songs | Is Barry Keoghan’s Curt dead? | Did Buck die? | What happened to Babyface?

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