PG |1 hr 30m | Documentary | 2023
They have been called the “Greatest Generation,” but only a few of the young American men (and they were almost entirely men) who fought the National Socialists during World War II are still alive to tell their stories. Fortunately, quadriplegic filmmaker Trent McGee and co-director/co-writer Josh Berman recorded the dramatic oral history of five American pilots who were shot down by the Germans and held as prisoners-of-war (POWs) in the documentary, “Angels of the Sky.”
As one of the former POWs explains, at the height of the War, the 8th Airforce was losing 60 airplanes a day over Europe, (which also meant they were also losing 60 pilots). It is hard to imagine how the partisan media would have reacted if we had lost 60 planes each day during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. In any event, that was the reality Mr. McGee and Mr. Berman’s interview subjects, Robert Barney, Walter Drake, George Emerson, Harry Selling, and Ed Stapleton, survived to talk about years after the fact….