Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are heading back to World War II on HBO for a third time. We first got wind of another follow-up to Band of Brothers and The Pacific back in October, when HBO executives Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler told press they were considering a third miniseries in a similar vein. At the time, we knew only that the new show would focus on aerial battles over the Pacific. Now the subject matter is coming into clearer focus as the project has secured the rights to Donald L. Miller‘s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. Read more after the jump.

Deadline reports that the project may eventually pick up additional source materials, but Masters of the Air is the only one they have rights to so far. Based on oral histories, archive entries, and interviews, Miller’s book is an in-depth account of “the world’s first and only bomber war.”

Spielberg and Hanks will executive produce on the new series, as they did on Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Hanks’ Playtone partner Gary Goetzman, who was a co-executive producer on Band of Brothers and an executive producer on The Pacific, will return as well. In case you were still wondering, David Fincher, who signed an unrelated deal with HBO around the same time the World War II miniseries was announced, does not appear to be involved in any way.

The mini will follow the “bomber boys” of the Eighth Air Force, who were based in England and fought in the air war against Germany. Though their conditions were in some ways better than those of men on the ground, the men of the “Mighty Eighth” were also at greater risk of dying. Throughout the course of the war, the Eighth Air Force had more casualties than did the Marine Corps. Here’s a summary of the book, from Amazon.com: