Raised on Guam, a U.S. island in the middle of the Western Pacific, I grew up around the scene of a major battle involving tens of thousands of U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers with the remnants from the month-long retaking of the island still visible in bomb craters, concrete tunnels and big gun emplacements in the jungle hillsides.

The remnants of the Second World War were all around me as a kid and I became fascinated with the subject, eventually collecting a number of books, movies, television shows and making scale models of the planes of the conflict. In particular, I have numerous books on the B-17 and its missions.

A favorite reporter memory of mine is having had the honor to meet and interview the late, great Tuskegee Airman Arthur Hicks nearly 20 years ago. The Tuskegee Airmen, the famed all-African American fighter pilot unit known as Red Tails, were tasked with escorting and protecting allied bombers in their P-47s and P-51s over Europe from German fighters.

Another great experience is a flight I took on a restored B-17 for a feature story. The B-17 is a fantastic piece of engineering, from nose to tail, with the ball gun turret on its belly, a gunners turret just above the cockpit and tail guns. Inside a clear Plexiglass nose cone is where the famed Norden bombsight allowed the bombardier to look down upon the warbird’s targets.

It was a thrill to walk, mid-flight, along the plane’s narrow midsection where two side gunners had stood nearly back to back manning their .50-caliber machine guns exposed to the freezing air. I walked past a small radio room and over a bomb bay section, toward the front where the clear nose cone afforded a magnificent view.

Amidst the drone hum of four turbocharged prop engines, I could only imagine the terror of German fighters roaring past with guns blazing. I had already loved the 1990 movie “Memphis Belle,” which brought the story of the famed WW2 B-17 crew to the big screen.

During deadly air battles with German fighters, the planes could take a harsh beating, from bullet holes and flak, bringing their crews safely back to their bases in my wife’s country of England.

It’s been exciting to dive into the new Apple TV+ miniseries “Masters of the Air,” produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, the creatives behind the great HBO WWII miniseries “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” I’ve seen the first several episodes of the nine-episode series. So far, the most engaging parts of the show for me are the airborne combat mission sequences which really put the viewer inside the claustrophobia-inducing confines of the Flying Fortress.

We’ve seen such sequences before, but the production’s talented actors and director Cary Joji Fukunaga, who helmed season one of “True Detective” and the latest Bond movie “No Time to Die,” bring a fantastic level of authenticity and tension to the proceedings.

In the title sequence of the show, there is evidence of the Tuskegee Airmen being in the series and although the episodes have yet to air, I can’t wait to see Hicks’ famed air unit on screen again.