Masters of the Air Great Escape reference: is Apple series set in same POW camp as classic Steve McQueen film?

Masters of the Air Part Seven is set in prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III, and observant viewers will have noticed several references to The Great Escape, a mass camp breakout which inspired the classic 1963 film of the same name. 

The Apple series follows the American experience of the Second World War through the eyes of the ‘Bloody 100th’ US Air Force unit, flying raids over Germany and occupied countries.

Masters of the Air is a successor to HBO war dramas Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and features many historic episodes of the Second World War, from the 100th’s first raid over Bremen, to the liberation of concentration camps, the fate of the Tuskegee Airmen, and in the latest episode, the British escape from Stalag Luft III.

Does Masters of the Air reference The Great Escape?

Yes, the latest episode of Masters of the Air, Part Seven, makes several big references to the true events featured in The Great Escape film with Steve McQueen.

The US pilots Buck and Bucky reunite at the prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III. This is the very same camp in which 76 British POWs escaped the camp in an elaborate scheme which involved three secret tunnels to be dug beneath the camp.

In the event, 73 of the escapees were eventually captured, and 50 of them were executed by the Germans. The 1963 film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough, and Donald Pleasance, is a highly fictionalised version of the mass escape.

In Masters of the Air, the American POWs also consider an escape attempt. In this episode an alarm is sounded during the night at the camp and the German guards are seen rushing about as searchlights scan the area, whilst the Americans are left none the wiser. The following morning one American POW tells the others: “The Brits in north compound built three tunnels”

He adds: “They’ve been digging them for over a year. 30 feet deep so the goons’ seismographs wouldn’t detect them. 70 maybe 80 men made it out. Nothing like this has ever happened, the colonel believes there will be severe reprisals as more senior officers in the SS and Gestapo become aware of the magnitude of the escape.”

In a later scene the POWs are told by a senior German camp official that most of the escapees have been captured and that 50 of the recaptured men were executed. The Americans are deeply shocked by the news of the executions which was a clear case of a war crime.