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The Pacific was 2010 so you're kind of nit picking. Besides if they made a new one now it would be more about Diversity than historical accuracy. I hope we don't get another big WW2 series until after this wave of pervasive ideological influence passes. I don't need to hear about how female, gay, black and trans soldiers really turned the tide of the war.
Looking at the trailer for Masters of the Air ot does look like the Tuskegee Airmen and their Red Tailed aircraft will stand in for all fighter escorts. It reminds me of all Pear Harbour shows have a scene of Doris (Dorie) Miller manning a machine-gun. In the 60s 12 O'clock High had Lloyd Haynes best known as Mr. Dixon on Room 222 in that role of the escorts commander.
Back to Hogan's Heroes and Ivan Dixon being a somehow captured Sergeant airman and McHale's Navy as I got older I was often annoyed that American segregation was white washed out of late 60s period piece shows in the want or need
'Masters of the Air' based on the book of the same name about the Bloody Hundredth, is an interesting choice in terms of a miniseries.
The 'Eighth Air Force' which included the 'Bloody Hundredth' are often over looked, yet they had some of the highest casualty rates in WW2 and one of the lowest life expectancies, which was often only weeks rather than even months in relation to some bomber squadrons.
I think the brave men of the 'Bloody Hundredth' and 'Eighth Air Force' are more than worthy of a miniseries in relation to their exploits and bravery.
Quote:
More than 26,000 Eighth Air Force personnel sacrificed their lives in service to the war effort. The total number killed or missing in action was slightly more than that suffered by the U.S. Marine Corps, and a little less than half the losses sustained by the entire U.S. Navy. Comparisons such as these do nothing to diminish the contributions of other military branches, but rather point out the gargantuan scale of the Eighth Air Force’s effort. The 100th Bomb Group’s portion of those losses was 785 men killed outright or missing in action and 229 aircraft destroyed or rendered unsuitable for flight.
......Back to Hogan's Heroes and Ivan Dixon being a somehow captured Sergeant airman and McHale's Navy as I got older I was often annoyed that American segregation was white washed out of late 60s period piece shows in the want or need
Not sure if Dixon/Ken Washington or the black prisoner standing behind Hogan in the opening credits was ever explained.....but does it matter............
..........for both in "The Great Escape" and "Twelve O'Clock High", they had situations of people who weren't suppose to be on combat flights ending up over Germany. In the former, it was how Donald Pleascence got shot down. In the latter, it was that mission that no one would want to miss and had Harvey the Adjutant, the Padre, and the company clerk out there.
FURTHER, history does tell us desegregation happening in some military units before Truman said it. In the Korean War, a Colonel Regiment Commander took black troops out of his trucking companies and had them bring up the numbers in his fighting units, integrating them.
Back to Hogan's Heroes, if it happened elsewhere in fiction, with people being where they weren't suppose to be and in reality, if a different war, then why not in this section of fiction?
Not sure if Dixon/Ken Washington or the black prisoner standing behind Hogan in the opening credits was ever explained.....but does it matter............
..........for both in "The Great Escape" and "Twelve O'Clock High", they had situations of people who weren't suppose to be on combat flights ending up over Germany. In the former, it was how Donald Pleascence got shot down. In the latter, it was that mission that no one would want to miss and had Harvey the Adjutant, the Padre, and the company clerk out there.
FURTHER, history does tell us desegregation happening in some military units before Truman said it. In the Korean War, a Colonel Regiment Commander took black troops out of his trucking companies and had them bring up the numbers in his fighting units, integrating them.
Back to Hogan's Heroes, if it happened elsewhere in fiction, with people being where they weren't suppose to be and in reality, if a different war, then why not in this section of fiction?
It depends if you are trying to hide past misdeeds, then yes accuracy does matter. As we strip away the fig leaf. I will always wonder if Mr. Dixon came to the same conclusion in 1970 and if it was part of the reason he left before the show ended its run.
Of course North Africa from an American perspective is interesting in being the first contact for the US against Germany but the action then went over to Italy and thus the European mainland you would think is covered by the Band of Brothers miniseries. But it would help remove the stink of having mostly Americans stand in for the British Long Range Desert Group on The Rat Patrol.
For a mostly unknown theatre I would nominated the engineering road and airfield building efforts in the China Burma India and not the large raid of Merrill's Marauders who had the early 60s movie
The Pacific missing the intimacy of the single paratrooper company and the Marines shown being more extreme in committing war crimes than their soldier counterparts along with the real world of Iraq affecting the audience reaction to the two shows.
With infantry combat with the two enemies and now the bomber campaign against the Germans getting the premium miniseries treatments I would think the next step would be focusing on the Navy. And where do you go from there? The floating city of an aircraft carrier (Enterprise surviving the war), a submarine or an escort ship in the Atlantic?
I think any series about North Africa would have to tread carefully given the largely British and other allied efforts, whilst in terms of the Far East, Britain had the likes of Orde Wingate and his Chindits, as well as Bill Slim and the Fourteenth Army (also known as the 'Forgotten Army').
Wingate was a master of irregular warfare, up there with the likes of Robert Rogers (Rogers Rangers), Ralph Bagnold (Long Range Patrol Group), Roger Courtney (Special Boat Service) and David Stirling (Special Air Service) etc.
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