Our list of the best quotes from Apple TV+ television show created by John Shiban and John Orloff, based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name. Masters of the Air follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen, and sheer terror of combat conducted in the air. It portrays the psychological and emotional price paid by these young men as they helped destroy the horror of Hitler’s Third Reich. Some were shot down and captured, some were wounded or killed. And some were lucky enough to make it home. Regardless of individual fate, a toll was exacted on them all. See more about Masters of the Air on Amazon.
Masters of the Air is available to watch on Apple TV+.
1. Part One
Peggy: So you’re Bucky, and he’s Buck?
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: It’s a long story.
Marge: Everyone needs someone to write to back home.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: I don’t know if John Egan’s the pen pal type.
Marge: Well, maybe if he met a girl worth writing to, he would be.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Well, a girl worth writing to is hard to find.
Marge: Not if you know where to look.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Ah. I see what you mean.
'There are two kinds of pilots, those who have had a wheels-up landing and those who will.' - Maj. John 'Bucky' Egan (Masters of the Air) Share on X
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Hey. You know, I am amazed that we’re friends. You don’t like to dance with a beautiful woman. You don’t drink. You don’t gamble. You don’t even like sports.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Well, we are one of life’s great mysteries.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: I’ll see you in a few weeks.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: If I don’t die first.
Pilot: That was a hell of an observation mission, Major.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Are they all like that?
Pilot: You wondering what to tell your guys? Don’t say anything. They’ll figure it out. We all do.
Lt. Harry Crosby: Most of us had never traveled far from home, let alone flown in an airplane. We came from every corner of the country, with a common purpose, to bring the war to Hitler’s doorstep.
Lt. Harry Crosby: I got to be the worst navigator in the entire Army Air Force.
Lt. Joseph ‘Bubbles’ Payne: Oh, Crosby, there’s got to be somebody worse. At least one.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I just don’t think I was made to sit behind a desk. I need to be up there helping my guys.
Lt. Harry Crosby: There was always a special breakfast on mission days, eggs, French toast, flapjacks, double rations of bacon, fresh grapefruit juice, and a couple of cups of GI coffee. The men would come to call it the last supper.
Lt. Curtis Biddick: I’m going to fly like an angel today, and not die like one.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Let’s rack them up and knock them down.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: You’ve been up. Two missions. You didn’t tell me it was like that.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I didn’t know what to say. You’ve seen it now.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: I don’t know what I saw. Thirty guys just…
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I should have been up there with you.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: We got a long road ahead of us.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Yeah.
2. Part Two
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Do you feel anything?
Lt. Curtis Biddick: Yeah. I miss those guys.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Because me, I don’t feel a thing.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I got to meet that goddamn new CO. First thing tomorrow.
Lt. Curtis Biddick: Today is tomorrow.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: You know, if this whole thing ended, and there were only two pilots left up in the air, it’d be me and it’d be you, Buck.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Don’t count on it.
RAF Officer: It’s a question of philosophies. We bomb at night because it doesn’t matter what we hit, so long as it’s German. But bombing during the day is suicide.
Lt. Curtis Biddick: I mean, maybe if you bombed during the day, you’d hit your targets.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: And why the hell do you Brits add an S on the end of math?
Bryan: Because there’s more than one of them.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I can see more than one of you too. I’m pretty sure I could knock all of you out.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Oh, we’re getting through this.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Says the gambler.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Well, if I’m going to bet on anything, I’m going to bet on us, Buck.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: That RAF p**ck was right. These daylight missions, they’re suicide.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Then why didn’t you agree with him?
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Didn’t like his delivery.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Well, if you aren’t a betting man, what’s the move?
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: We lead our boys through it.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: We do.
3. Part Three
Maj. ‘Red’ Bowman: You’re headed to Africa, gentlemen. The 12th Air Force will welcome you with open arms, ice-cold beer and lobster tails. It’ll be like a holiday.
Cpt. Everett Blakely: You’re on the way through purgatory and you reach a fork in the road. One road goes to Valhalla, the other goes to hell. Damnation. On each of the road is a goblin. One goblin always tells the truth. The other is a tricky little f***er. He always lies. Okay? What’s the one question that you need to ask that’s going to tell you the right way to go?
Lt. Harry Crosby: Do you ask it, “Are you the good goblin?”
Cpt. Everett Blakely: No. No, but you’re getting closer. You’re smarter than I thought, Croz.
Col. ‘Chick’ Harding: We’re sending them straight into hell. Alone.
Cpt. Everett Blakely: Pilot to crew, prepare for landing.
Lt. Charles Cruikshank: To Valhalla, boys.
Cpt. Everett Blakely: Valhalla here we come, fellas.
Lt. James Douglass: Well, pretty sure this ain’t Valhalla.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: How many of us made it?
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Eleven out of twenty-one.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: We’re going to get through this. Come on. Don’t you stop believing that.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Sure, Bucky.
4. Part Four
'The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. Every second is a little death.' - Paulina (Masters of the Air) Share on X
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: All these are new faces. We go down, they won’t remember us either. Like we never existed, Buck.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: What does it matter?
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Nothing, I guess.
Col. ‘Chick’ Harding: You know how we could end this whole thing tonight? We fill up one of our forts with as many five hundred pounders as she can hold, we bomb the hell out of Hitler’s hidey-hole. I’m sure Red and Bubbles could locate that mustachioed little f***er.
'There is no balance. Just one event after another. The worst come out untouched. The innocent dead.' - Paulina (Masters of the Air) Share on X
Jean Achten: Here stupid means dead.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Never been on the business end of a bomb before.
Paulina: Business. A funny word for death.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I’ve dropped a lot of those things. Probably done a lot of killing. Hell of a job.
Paulina: Does it weigh on your conscience?
Paulina: The Germans deserve every last one of your bombs. Some believe there is a difference between war and senseless murder. They don’t.
Lt. Nash: I think you might be the last pretty face I ever see.
Helen: Don’t say that.
Lt. Nash: And damned if you ain’t the prettiest.
5. Part Five
Cpt. Harry Crosby: I also saw Major Cleven’s plane take a direct hit and go down. From the day I joined the 100th, Buck Cleven was our leader. We thought he was invincible. If Gale Cleven couldn’t make it, who could?
Cpt. Harry Crosby: The hardest part of any mission was the anticipation. The waiting.
Maj. Jack Kidd: Where are our boys, Chick?
Col. ‘Chick’ Harding: He said none of them made it.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: None of them?
Lt. ‘Bubbles’ Payne: [as Crosby reads Bubble letter to his wife] Dear Jean, You know this already, but your husband was the best friend I ever had. He was also the best navigator I ever met, even though he was too humble to admit it to himself. Takes a special kind of courage for a man to stay modest surrounded by blustering blowhards in every direction, but that was Croz. I wish more than anything it was him sitting here and not me, and then no one would have to write this letter.
6. Part Six
German Farmer: [to Bucky] For you, the war’s over.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: When a crew went down, they disappeared. No more than four months at Thorpe Abbotts until thirty-two of the thirty-five original 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.
Sandra Westgate: What we all need in life is someone to heave with, shoulder to shoulder.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: 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.
British Officer: This chap turned to me and he said, “You know, sir, there are three problems with these bloody Americans.” Excuse my language. He said, “They’re oversexed, overpaid, and over here.”
Sandra Westgate: Ah, Captain Crosby. What is it the Yanks say the trouble with we Britons is? That’s okay. I remember now. We are undersexed, underpaid, and under Eisenhower.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: You’re a terrible liar.
Sandra Westgate: Well, give me time. I’ll get better. Promise.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: That’s not a good thing.
Dr. Huston: This war, human beings weren’t meant to behave this way. You disagree?
Lt. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: No. But you see people being persecuted, subjugated, you have to do something, right? They can’t fight for themselves, can they? So, what do we do?
Dr. Huston: No. You’re right. We had to do something, and here we are.
Lt. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: You don’t go foxhunting. And 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.
Sandra Westgate: [to Crosby] 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.
Lt. Ulrich Haussmann: [to Bucky] It seems we’re shooting down all the good pilots.
Lt. Ulrich Haussmann: [to Bucky] I regret to inform you that you are, as you say, in a bit of a pickle.
Lt. Ulrich Haussmann: The Gestapo would say that makes you a spy.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: They would be mistaken.
Lt. Ulrich Haussmann: One thing I can tell you, Major, the Gestapo is never mistaken.
Lt. Ronald C. Bailey: [referring to Rosenthal] I got to say, hearing his voice over the radio, that was the first time that I didn’t feel scared s**tless. Even though he’d clearly lost his f***ing marbles. I knew that I wasn’t alone.
Lt. Clifford Milburn: None of us were.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: 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 whiskey. We all needed something to help us climb back into that plane and do it all again.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: [as Bucky is entering the POW camp] What took you so long?
7. Part Seven
Cpt. Harry Crosby: Nothing gave us more hope than the return of men we thought were lost. Lucky for them, there was a rule that if a downed flyer made it out of occupied Europe, he wasn’t allowed to fly any more missions. Because if a flyer got shot down again, and was captured and tortured by the Gestapo, they knew too much about the escape routes, and the French and Belgian men and women who had assisted them. The lucky b****rds got a ticket home.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: These goddamn goons are going to take us out one at a time, Buck.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: [after telling Bucky that he’d proposed to Marge in his letter] I was even thinking maybe you’d be my best man.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I will be your best man.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: My plan is to get home to Marge in one piece.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Well, you’d die here in one piece, from sickness, walking too close to that goddamn fence.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: I mean, we can wait here, doing nothing. Is that what you want to do?
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: No. I can’t stand this place any more than you.
Cpt. Harry Crosby: It had become clear that it was no longer enough just to drop bombs on our target. We had to completely destroy the German Luftwaffe. My friend Rosie understood this very well. But he had completed his twentyfifth mission. He had done his duty. And now he could go home.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Maybe, but I can’t help thinking you were right. Better to play it safe. What the hell am I rushing back home for? Other guys get letters. You get letters. To get a letter, you need someone to get it from. Guess I never set that part up right.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: You’ll have plenty of time for that when you get out. You’ll set it up right next time.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: They’re only going to know this me. Not the old me. Me before I got here. That’s if we even get out.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: We’ll get out. And this you will be the one worth knowing.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: [after they’ve been told prisoners trying to escape were killed] So, what do you think the odds are now?
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Of us making it home alive? Long. Very, very long.
Cpt. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: I can’t go home. Not yet. Not until the job is done. One way or another.
8. Part Eight
Hans Scharf: Why do you fight for a country who treats you like that?
Lt. Richard D. Macon: Do you know any other country that’s better? I know what my country’s shortcomings are. And I know it’s trying hard to become what it says it’s supposed to be. And when I get back, I’m going to help them do that a lot faster.
Cpt. Erwin B. Lawrence: You’re a clever fella, Alex. But don’t let smart be the enemy of happy.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Well, I’m great, is the truth. I’ve been here for eight months now. Still trapped, still cold, still eating scraps. And we keep waiting for something to happen, even though it doesn’t.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: It could be worse. We could be dead.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Well, maybe for you. At least that I could stand. I can’t stand this.
Maj. Harry Crosby: [as he’s having to stay awake for 72 hours] The lack of sleep, the coffee, the uppers, the stress, the fear, the disconnect. That’s a drug in itself.
Maj. Harry Crosby: Sixty-four hours. You just try to survive, breath by breath, step by step.
Lt. Col. John Bennett: Any last words of wisdom, sir?
Maj. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: No. No, I don’t have any last words because I’m going to see you again. Alright? Just take off, do your job, you land, and then you’re going to be giving me some words of wisdom. Each flight is its own lesson.
Maj. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: You excited to see Jean?
Maj. Harry Crosby: I mean, what if it’s not the same?
Maj. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: Nothing’s the same, Croz. Nothing. Never will be.
Maj. Harry Crosby: Ain’t that the truth.
9. Part Nine
'Whoever fights monsters should take care not to become a monster himself. Because if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes right back into you.' - Maj. Harry Crosby (Masters of the Air) Share on X
Maj. Harry Crosby: By the first few weeks of 1945, we were closing in on the Third Reich from all sides. In the west, the Allies were storming into Germany. In the east, the Russians were approaching the Oder River. And in the sky, the Eighth Air Force flew uncontested. We were the true masters of the air.
Polish Refugee: He says if God exists, He has forgotten him. Not even the earth that covers our bones will remember us.
'To live one must make choices.' - Polish Refugee (Masters of the Air) Share on X
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: We move tonight or we don’t move at all.
Maj. Harry Crosby: You know, all this killing we do, you know, day in, day out, does something to a guy. Makes him different, not in a good way.
Maj. Harry Crosby: You know, Rosie, sometimes I wake up, I don’t even recognize myself in the mirror.
Maj. Robert ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal: We’re here to fight the monsters, Croz. And, yeah. Yeah, that’s made us do some tough things. But we had to. There’s no other way. The things these people are capable of. No, they got it coming. Trust me. They got it coming.
Maj. Harry Crosby: So Bucky didn’t make the breakout with you, huh?
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: No. No, Bucky had to, he had to stay behind with the men.
Maj. Harry Crosby: He’s okay though, right?
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Yeah, when do you ever know him not to be okay?
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: Look who it is. Stone in my shoe.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: Oh, I’m back.
Maj. Harry Crosby: At first, it felt unreal, impossible, unimaginable. And then, inevitable. We were going home. All of us. I had a wife to see. A son. A life to start.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: This is it.
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: This is it.
Maj. Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven: You ready to go home?
Maj. John ‘Bucky’ Egan: You ready to see Marge?
'On occasion, the world must confront itself, answer what we are with who we are.' - Maj. Harry Crosby (Masters of the Air) Share on X
Maj. Harry Crosby: I was going home. I just wished more of us were.