On the first mission, B-17s are getting shot down and they are calling out things like Jones ship is down, Smith ship is in flame, no chutes.

Who is Jones? Who is Smith? Don't remember seeing a Smith and a Jones in the previous 20 minutes.

In Band of Brothers and in The Pacific, right from the first half of the first episodes you are already remembering names and faces:

Winters, Nixon, Meehan, Malarkey or Leckie, Basilone, Sledge.

Here in episode 1 everyone of those flight crews from CO to each B-17 captain to crew members, they all LOOK SIMILAR.

I had to rewind during the bombing mission to get an second look on the flight crews . There maybe 6 squadrons totaling 78 B-17s but looking at those crew, for all intention and purposes, I'm thinking I'm looking at the interior of only one B-17.

I think the lack of character development is no training shown in the episode. It starts right away in 1943 and the air crews are headed to England.

Unlike Band of Brothers and The Pacific where you show them going through the hardship of boot camp and you the viewer sort of form a bond with the characters on screen.

Both Band of Brothers and The Pacific had 10 episodes each. This only has 9 episodes. Unless they show the air crews training later on which I doubt they will, I think there should also had 10 episodes instead of 9 and dedicate at least the first episode to introduce the characters starting at their flight crew training.

The series is reported to have a budget of 200-250 million dollars, so far I can't see where that money went. Couldn't be all for the CGI and to build full size mock B-17 models .