Title: Miller,Glenn 12/15/1944
Description: over the English Channel
Description: over the English Channel
monkalup - July 27, 2006 08:00 PM (GMT)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Miller
Glenn Miller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Major Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904–circa December 15, 1944) started life as Alton Glenn Miller in Clarinda, Iowa. Miller was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era who was the genre's best-selling performer from 1939–1942 and the best-known of the "Big Bands.". After a very successful career, including many famous recordings, he disappeared in bad weather (some say "under mysterious circumstances") during World War II, while on a flight to entertain U.S. troops in France.
Miller's signature recordings — including, among others, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Sun Valley Jump", "String of Pearls", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (named for the exchange of his New York hotel residence) — have remained familiar, even to generations born decades after their creator disappeared.
[edit]
Life and career
Miller's family moved to North Platte, Nebraska during his boyhood, and he started his musical career when his father brought home a mandolin. As soon as possible, he traded the instrument for an old horn, which he practiced diligently.
In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado where he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity, but spent most of his time there away from school, attending auditions and playing any gigs he could get, most notably with Boyd Senter's band in Denver. He dropped out of school after failing three out of five classes one semester, and decided to concentrate on making a career as a professional musician. He later studied the Schillinger technique with Joseph Schillinger, who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound" and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his longtime theme, "Moonlight Serenade."
RCA/BMG's Glenn Miller website continues: (in 1926) "Miller toured with several groups [...](and landed) a good spot in Ben Pollack's group in Los Angeles. [...] (D)uring his stint with Pollack, Miller had the opportunity to write several musical arrangements of his own. In 1928, when the band arrived in New York City, he sent for and married his college sweetheart, Helen Burger. He was a member of Red Nichols’s orchestra in 1930 and, because of Nichols, played in the pit bands of two Broadway shows, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy,[...] his bandmates included Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. The consensus there was that Miller was no more than an average trombonist[...]." [1]
Despite this, during the 1930s, Miller earned a living working as a freelance trombonist in several bands. In 1934 he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, developing the arrangement of lead clarinet over four saxophones that eventually became the sonic keynote of his own big band.
He also compiled several musical arrangements before forming his first band in 1937.Jerry Jerome, Hal McIntyre, Charlie Spivak, Sterling Bose, and Irving Fazola were some of the musicians in the band. Kathleen Lane was the singer. The band failed to distinguish itself from the many others of the era, and broke up. “Peg O’ My Heart,” “Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere,” “Moonlight, Bay,” “I’m Sitting on Top The World,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Sleepy Time Gal,” “Community Swing,” “Time On My Hands” and “Silhouetted In The Moonlight” were some of their best recordings.
Discouraged, he returned to New York. Realizing that he needed a unique sound, he dedicated himself to finding it. After a lot of work, he decided to make the clarinet play a melodic line with a tenor saxophone on the same note, while three saxophones harmonized. With this sound, the Miller band that became the most popular was born in 1938. He was not the first to try that style, but he was the most successful at refining it and making it key to just about his entire repertoire, and it made his new band a hit and, in short enough order, the top selling big band in the country. Tex Beneke, Al Klink, Chummy MacGregor, Billy May, Johnny Best, Maurice Purtill, Wilbur Schwartz, Ernie Caceres, Ray Anthony, Clyde Hurley and Hal McIntyre, among others, were some of the musicians in the band. Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton and The Modernaires were the singers.
The new Miller band immediately attracted large audiences to their concerts and their records. Beginning in June 1938, Miller dominated the top spot on the various popular music charts for more than a year, with "In the Mood" holding the top spot for more than fifteen weeks at the beginning of 1940 and "Tuxedo Junction" taking over and keeping Miller at number one into the summer. From 1939 to 1942, his band was featured on a three times a week broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes. On February 10, 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first ever gold record for "Chattanooga Choo Choo". His other popular hits included "A String Of Pearls", "Moonlight Serenade", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (which was, and still is, the real telephone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania) in Manhattan. By RCA accounting, the Glenn Miller Band had 22 recordings reach number one on the charts.
Many jazz critics of that time felt that Miller's rise shifted popular music away from the "hot" bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie. Miller himself emphasized orchestrated arrangements over improvisation, but he did leave a little room for his best musicians to improvise.
"[Glenn Miller’s] arrangements are inventive and refreshing. He never forgets the melodic line. He lets you recognize the tune." — New York Times, January 1940.
Miller and his band also appeared in two Hollywood films, Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942), the latter featuring future television legend Jackie Gleason as the group's fictitious bassist.
[edit]
Military service, disappearance, and personality
In 1942, Miller joined the United States Army Air Forces and was commissioned as a captain as well as being appointed Director of Bands. He initially formed a large marching band that was to be the core of a network of service orchestras, but his attempts at modernizing military music were met with resistance from tradition-minded career officers. He instead formed what was first known as the Band of the Training Command, an orchestra consisting of a large (twenty-four musicians) dance band augmented by twenty-one string players chosen from a number of symphony orchestras. The dance band included several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger Jerry Gray as well as stars from other bands such as Ray McKinley, Bobby Nichols, Hank Freeman, Peanuts Hucko and Mel Powell. Johnny Desmond and the Crew Chiefs were the singers, although recordings were also made with guest stars such as Bing Crosby, Irene Manning, and Dinah Shore. The Dinah Shore sessions include a charming version of Stardust and are of special musical interest as they were recorded in high fidelity and were intended as the band's first commercial releases, although they were not made public until the early 1990s.
The orchestra was first based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. From mid-1943 to mid-1944 they made hundreds of live appearances, transcriptions, and "I Sustain the Wings" radio broadcasts. Miller felt it was important that the band be as close as possible to the fighting troops so in mid-1944 he had the group transferred to London, where they were renamed the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force. While in the United Kingdom the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated one million Allied servicemen.
For many years, the only available recordings of this band were on a five-record set issued by RCA in the mid-1950s. Since the nineties however, RCA and various companies have issued high fidelity compact discs of music previously thought lost. This link shows what the Glenn Miller Army Air Force band sounded like: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/snd/glennmiller.html
On December 15, 1944, by this time with the rank of major, Miller was scheduled to fly from the UK to Paris to play for the soldiers who had recently liberated the city. His plane departed from RAF Twinwood Farm, Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the English Channel and was never found. Miller's disappearance remains a mystery; neither his remains nor the wreckage of his plane (a single-engined Noorduyn Norseman UC-64, USAAF Tail Number 44-70285) were ever recovered from the Channel. (Clive Ward's discovery of a Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France in 1985 was unverifiable and contained no human remains.) This has led to many conspiracy theories over the years. He is considered to have died that day, aged forty. A popular theory holds that, in the foggy weather that bedeviled the Channel on that day, Miller's plane strayed into a "safe drop" zone and was bombed out of the air by Canadian Air Force bombers disposing of bombs that went unused during an aborted bombing run on German positions. Another theory holds that he landed safely, but died of a heart attack in a bordello ín Paris (source: George T. Simon: "Glenn Miller, Sein Leben, Seine Musik", Wien 1987). A third theory has also gained some recent credibility based on observations from both his biographer and his younger brother Herb Miller. Glenn had been a chain-smoker for much of his life and by late 1944 was suffering from severe weight loss and shortness of breath, leading to speculation that he was terminally ill, probably with lung cancer. This theory also holds that he landed safely, but died of his illnesses on December 16th. Both of these latter theories overlook the fact that Miller wasn't alone on the flight; there were two other officers onboard the aircraft when it disappeared. They also have never been found.
According to Leo Walker in his book The Big Band Almanac, few people knew Miller well. Two people who did were Don Haynes, Miller's manager, and George T. Simon, jazz critic and author of Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. Don Haynes told Walker that Miller was a reserved person, but extremely warm towards those near him. But other musicians who were associated with Miller thought differently. They all respected Miller, but described him as all business, generally cold, perhaps insecure, and a person who had a driving ambition to be successful. But they all agreed that Miller was a musical perfectionist. "Glenn had guts," said Simon in his book The Big Bands. "He could also spot phonies, whom he truly detested. If you were straight with Glenn, he'd give you at least the time of day. But if you weren't, he wouldn't even give you the time of night."
[edit]
Legacy
Glenn Miller's music is familiar to many born long after his death, especially from its use in a number of movies. James Stewart starred as Miller in 1953's The Glenn Miller Story, which portrayed many of his compositions and also took many liberties with his life story. For example, Marion Hutton, Paula Kelly, Tex Beneke and Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all. (Benny Goodman and the Dorsey brothers, to be fair, suffered similar fates when films of their lives were made in the same decade.)
Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio careers in Hollywood and New York after World War II. For example, Billy May, who became a much-coveted arranger and studio orchestra leader — and backed up singers like Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day, and Bing Crosby. Also George Siravo [2] from Miller's first band was a noted arranger who worked for Columbia in the late forties and early fifties and arranged songs for Doris Day and Sinatra. Wilbur Schwartz, Herman "Trigger" Alpert, Johnny Best, and Ernie Caceres backed up many singers in the fifties. Ray Anthony led his own extremely popular band during that same time period. Norman Leyden[3] from the Army Air Force Band was a noted arranger in New York, who arranged for Sarah Vaughan, among other people. Johnny Desmond from the Army Air Force Band became a popular singer in the fifties and starred on Broadway in the 1960s in "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand [4]
The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke and had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band; it had a large string section. By 1948, economics dictated that the string section be dropped. This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the U.S., including a few dates at the Hollywood Palladium, where the original Miller band played in 1941. "Even after the war, when big bands began to lose their popularity, the Palladium still drew in a record 6,750 eager dancers to the 1947 opening night performance of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra – an event enthusiastically covered by Life Magazine." [5]
What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. The post-war Miller/Beneke band was heavily influenced by 1940s jump and R&B as evidenced by hits like "Hey Ba-Ba-Re-bop". Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. The Miller estate had to please the ballroom operators and the record producers at RCA Victor. By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. The break was acrimonious and Beneke is rarely mentioned by the Miller estate as ever leading the Glenn Miller orchestra. Six years later, after the success of The Glenn Miller Story, Ray McKinley was asked to lead a new ghost band; this is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours today.
In April 1992, at his daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in Arlington National Cemetery. Every year Clarinda, Iowa, Glenn Miller's birthplace, runs a Glenn Miller festival. [6] Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.
[edit]
New Sound?
Miller himself may have been pondering a change to his music before his death. Adding a string section to his military band was one hint; other writings have cited Miller himself suggesting he had taken his trademark sound as far as he could take it without becoming completely sterile. In particular the aforementioned Dinah Shore recordings display a very different arranging style with only a slight hint of the famous reed blend. His death left forever unanswered the question of where he might have taken his music after the war, particularly when postwar economics made most bands the size of Miller's nearly impossible to sustain.
On the other hand, a soundtrack album of his two films showed the pre-Army Miller band playing with a more full-blooded attack (abetted by the broad reverberation of the sound stages where they cut the soundtracks, including new and meatier versions of some of their most familiar material) than they were known to do on their original recordings; perhaps Miller might have developed a new sound from that vantage point.
[edit]
Quotations
"A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality."
"I haven’t (got) a great jazz band and I don’t want one... A dozen colored bands have a beat better than mine."
"(The saxophone sound) was always intended to be an all-around combination; but when we do play a swing number, we expect and try to make it swing as much as possible."
"There is no rest, there must be no rest for a fellow when he is successful. He has got to keep right on going... And don’t think that I am the product of luck or breaks or anything like that. I have worked hard ever since I came out of the University of Colorado. I have played the trombone in so many bands, I can’t count them all."
Glenn Miller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Major Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904–circa December 15, 1944) started life as Alton Glenn Miller in Clarinda, Iowa. Miller was an American jazz musician and bandleader in the swing era who was the genre's best-selling performer from 1939–1942 and the best-known of the "Big Bands.". After a very successful career, including many famous recordings, he disappeared in bad weather (some say "under mysterious circumstances") during World War II, while on a flight to entertain U.S. troops in France.
Miller's signature recordings — including, among others, "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Moonlight Serenade", "Sun Valley Jump", "String of Pearls", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (named for the exchange of his New York hotel residence) — have remained familiar, even to generations born decades after their creator disappeared.
[edit]
Life and career
Miller's family moved to North Platte, Nebraska during his boyhood, and he started his musical career when his father brought home a mandolin. As soon as possible, he traded the instrument for an old horn, which he practiced diligently.
In 1923, Miller entered the University of Colorado where he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity, but spent most of his time there away from school, attending auditions and playing any gigs he could get, most notably with Boyd Senter's band in Denver. He dropped out of school after failing three out of five classes one semester, and decided to concentrate on making a career as a professional musician. He later studied the Schillinger technique with Joseph Schillinger, who is credited with helping Miller create the "Miller sound" and under whose tutelage he himself composed what became his longtime theme, "Moonlight Serenade."
RCA/BMG's Glenn Miller website continues: (in 1926) "Miller toured with several groups [...](and landed) a good spot in Ben Pollack's group in Los Angeles. [...] (D)uring his stint with Pollack, Miller had the opportunity to write several musical arrangements of his own. In 1928, when the band arrived in New York City, he sent for and married his college sweetheart, Helen Burger. He was a member of Red Nichols’s orchestra in 1930 and, because of Nichols, played in the pit bands of two Broadway shows, Strike Up the Band and Girl Crazy,[...] his bandmates included Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. The consensus there was that Miller was no more than an average trombonist[...]." [1]
Despite this, during the 1930s, Miller earned a living working as a freelance trombonist in several bands. In 1934 he assembled an American orchestra for British bandleader Ray Noble, developing the arrangement of lead clarinet over four saxophones that eventually became the sonic keynote of his own big band.
He also compiled several musical arrangements before forming his first band in 1937.Jerry Jerome, Hal McIntyre, Charlie Spivak, Sterling Bose, and Irving Fazola were some of the musicians in the band. Kathleen Lane was the singer. The band failed to distinguish itself from the many others of the era, and broke up. “Peg O’ My Heart,” “Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere,” “Moonlight, Bay,” “I’m Sitting on Top The World,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Sleepy Time Gal,” “Community Swing,” “Time On My Hands” and “Silhouetted In The Moonlight” were some of their best recordings.
Discouraged, he returned to New York. Realizing that he needed a unique sound, he dedicated himself to finding it. After a lot of work, he decided to make the clarinet play a melodic line with a tenor saxophone on the same note, while three saxophones harmonized. With this sound, the Miller band that became the most popular was born in 1938. He was not the first to try that style, but he was the most successful at refining it and making it key to just about his entire repertoire, and it made his new band a hit and, in short enough order, the top selling big band in the country. Tex Beneke, Al Klink, Chummy MacGregor, Billy May, Johnny Best, Maurice Purtill, Wilbur Schwartz, Ernie Caceres, Ray Anthony, Clyde Hurley and Hal McIntyre, among others, were some of the musicians in the band. Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton and The Modernaires were the singers.
The new Miller band immediately attracted large audiences to their concerts and their records. Beginning in June 1938, Miller dominated the top spot on the various popular music charts for more than a year, with "In the Mood" holding the top spot for more than fifteen weeks at the beginning of 1940 and "Tuxedo Junction" taking over and keeping Miller at number one into the summer. From 1939 to 1942, his band was featured on a three times a week broadcast for Chesterfield cigarettes. On February 10, 1942, RCA Victor presented Miller with the first ever gold record for "Chattanooga Choo Choo". His other popular hits included "A String Of Pearls", "Moonlight Serenade", and "Pennsylvania 6-5000" (which was, and still is, the real telephone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania) in Manhattan. By RCA accounting, the Glenn Miller Band had 22 recordings reach number one on the charts.
Many jazz critics of that time felt that Miller's rise shifted popular music away from the "hot" bands of Benny Goodman and Count Basie. Miller himself emphasized orchestrated arrangements over improvisation, but he did leave a little room for his best musicians to improvise.
"[Glenn Miller’s] arrangements are inventive and refreshing. He never forgets the melodic line. He lets you recognize the tune." — New York Times, January 1940.
Miller and his band also appeared in two Hollywood films, Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942), the latter featuring future television legend Jackie Gleason as the group's fictitious bassist.
[edit]
Military service, disappearance, and personality
In 1942, Miller joined the United States Army Air Forces and was commissioned as a captain as well as being appointed Director of Bands. He initially formed a large marching band that was to be the core of a network of service orchestras, but his attempts at modernizing military music were met with resistance from tradition-minded career officers. He instead formed what was first known as the Band of the Training Command, an orchestra consisting of a large (twenty-four musicians) dance band augmented by twenty-one string players chosen from a number of symphony orchestras. The dance band included several members of his civilian orchestra, including chief arranger Jerry Gray as well as stars from other bands such as Ray McKinley, Bobby Nichols, Hank Freeman, Peanuts Hucko and Mel Powell. Johnny Desmond and the Crew Chiefs were the singers, although recordings were also made with guest stars such as Bing Crosby, Irene Manning, and Dinah Shore. The Dinah Shore sessions include a charming version of Stardust and are of special musical interest as they were recorded in high fidelity and were intended as the band's first commercial releases, although they were not made public until the early 1990s.
The orchestra was first based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. From mid-1943 to mid-1944 they made hundreds of live appearances, transcriptions, and "I Sustain the Wings" radio broadcasts. Miller felt it was important that the band be as close as possible to the fighting troops so in mid-1944 he had the group transferred to London, where they were renamed the American Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force. While in the United Kingdom the band gave more than 800 performances to an estimated one million Allied servicemen.
For many years, the only available recordings of this band were on a five-record set issued by RCA in the mid-1950s. Since the nineties however, RCA and various companies have issued high fidelity compact discs of music previously thought lost. This link shows what the Glenn Miller Army Air Force band sounded like: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/snd/glennmiller.html
On December 15, 1944, by this time with the rank of major, Miller was scheduled to fly from the UK to Paris to play for the soldiers who had recently liberated the city. His plane departed from RAF Twinwood Farm, Clapham, Bedfordshire, but disappeared over the English Channel and was never found. Miller's disappearance remains a mystery; neither his remains nor the wreckage of his plane (a single-engined Noorduyn Norseman UC-64, USAAF Tail Number 44-70285) were ever recovered from the Channel. (Clive Ward's discovery of a Noorduyn Norseman off the coast of Northern France in 1985 was unverifiable and contained no human remains.) This has led to many conspiracy theories over the years. He is considered to have died that day, aged forty. A popular theory holds that, in the foggy weather that bedeviled the Channel on that day, Miller's plane strayed into a "safe drop" zone and was bombed out of the air by Canadian Air Force bombers disposing of bombs that went unused during an aborted bombing run on German positions. Another theory holds that he landed safely, but died of a heart attack in a bordello ín Paris (source: George T. Simon: "Glenn Miller, Sein Leben, Seine Musik", Wien 1987). A third theory has also gained some recent credibility based on observations from both his biographer and his younger brother Herb Miller. Glenn had been a chain-smoker for much of his life and by late 1944 was suffering from severe weight loss and shortness of breath, leading to speculation that he was terminally ill, probably with lung cancer. This theory also holds that he landed safely, but died of his illnesses on December 16th. Both of these latter theories overlook the fact that Miller wasn't alone on the flight; there were two other officers onboard the aircraft when it disappeared. They also have never been found.
According to Leo Walker in his book The Big Band Almanac, few people knew Miller well. Two people who did were Don Haynes, Miller's manager, and George T. Simon, jazz critic and author of Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. Don Haynes told Walker that Miller was a reserved person, but extremely warm towards those near him. But other musicians who were associated with Miller thought differently. They all respected Miller, but described him as all business, generally cold, perhaps insecure, and a person who had a driving ambition to be successful. But they all agreed that Miller was a musical perfectionist. "Glenn had guts," said Simon in his book The Big Bands. "He could also spot phonies, whom he truly detested. If you were straight with Glenn, he'd give you at least the time of day. But if you weren't, he wouldn't even give you the time of night."
[edit]
Legacy
Glenn Miller's music is familiar to many born long after his death, especially from its use in a number of movies. James Stewart starred as Miller in 1953's The Glenn Miller Story, which portrayed many of his compositions and also took many liberties with his life story. For example, Marion Hutton, Paula Kelly, Tex Beneke and Ray Eberle are not mentioned at all. (Benny Goodman and the Dorsey brothers, to be fair, suffered similar fates when films of their lives were made in the same decade.)
Many of the Miller musicians went on to studio careers in Hollywood and New York after World War II. For example, Billy May, who became a much-coveted arranger and studio orchestra leader — and backed up singers like Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day, and Bing Crosby. Also George Siravo [2] from Miller's first band was a noted arranger who worked for Columbia in the late forties and early fifties and arranged songs for Doris Day and Sinatra. Wilbur Schwartz, Herman "Trigger" Alpert, Johnny Best, and Ernie Caceres backed up many singers in the fifties. Ray Anthony led his own extremely popular band during that same time period. Norman Leyden[3] from the Army Air Force Band was a noted arranger in New York, who arranged for Sarah Vaughan, among other people. Johnny Desmond from the Army Air Force Band became a popular singer in the fifties and starred on Broadway in the 1960s in "Funny Girl" with Barbra Streisand [4]
The Miller estate authorized an official Glenn Miller "ghost band" in 1946. This band was led by Tex Beneke and had a make up similar to the Army Air Force Band; it had a large string section. By 1948, economics dictated that the string section be dropped. This ghost band played to very large audiences all across the U.S., including a few dates at the Hollywood Palladium, where the original Miller band played in 1941. "Even after the war, when big bands began to lose their popularity, the Palladium still drew in a record 6,750 eager dancers to the 1947 opening night performance of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra – an event enthusiastically covered by Life Magazine." [5]
What began as the "Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Tex Beneke" finally became "The Tex Beneke Orchestra". This band recorded for RCA Victor, just as the original Miller band did. The post-war Miller/Beneke band was heavily influenced by 1940s jump and R&B as evidenced by hits like "Hey Ba-Ba-Re-bop". Beneke was struggling with how to expand the Miller sound and also how to achieve success under his own name. The Miller estate had to please the ballroom operators and the record producers at RCA Victor. By 1950, Beneke and the Miller estate parted ways. The break was acrimonious and Beneke is rarely mentioned by the Miller estate as ever leading the Glenn Miller orchestra. Six years later, after the success of The Glenn Miller Story, Ray McKinley was asked to lead a new ghost band; this is the original version of the current ghost band that still tours today.
In April 1992, at his daughter's request, a stone was placed in Memorial Section H, Number 464-A on Wilson Drive in Arlington National Cemetery. Every year Clarinda, Iowa, Glenn Miller's birthplace, runs a Glenn Miller festival. [6] Glenn Miller remains one of the most famous and recognizable names of the big band era of 1935 to 1945.
[edit]
New Sound?
Miller himself may have been pondering a change to his music before his death. Adding a string section to his military band was one hint; other writings have cited Miller himself suggesting he had taken his trademark sound as far as he could take it without becoming completely sterile. In particular the aforementioned Dinah Shore recordings display a very different arranging style with only a slight hint of the famous reed blend. His death left forever unanswered the question of where he might have taken his music after the war, particularly when postwar economics made most bands the size of Miller's nearly impossible to sustain.
On the other hand, a soundtrack album of his two films showed the pre-Army Miller band playing with a more full-blooded attack (abetted by the broad reverberation of the sound stages where they cut the soundtracks, including new and meatier versions of some of their most familiar material) than they were known to do on their original recordings; perhaps Miller might have developed a new sound from that vantage point.
[edit]
Quotations
"A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality."
"I haven’t (got) a great jazz band and I don’t want one... A dozen colored bands have a beat better than mine."
"(The saxophone sound) was always intended to be an all-around combination; but when we do play a swing number, we expect and try to make it swing as much as possible."
"There is no rest, there must be no rest for a fellow when he is successful. He has got to keep right on going... And don’t think that I am the product of luck or breaks or anything like that. I have worked hard ever since I came out of the University of Colorado. I have played the trombone in so many bands, I can’t count them all."
Ell - October 24, 2006 02:18 AM (GMT)
Who:
Glenn Miller, U.S. Army Major and band leader
Total Persons on Board:
Three (Flight Officer John Morgan, Major Glenn Miller and Lt. Col. Norman F. Baessell)
When:
December 15, 1944
Weather:
Reported as "terrible weather conditions which existed between London and Paris."
Flight Route:
Disappeared on flight between London and Paris.
Area Believed Crashed:
English Channel
Reason for flight:
Transportation to Paris where he was to join his band (they had preceded him) to perform at the opening of SHAEF Headquarters at Versailles, which was being moved from London to Paris.
Type Plane:
Norseman UC-64, a single engine aircraft. USAAF Tail Number 44-70285
Search efforts:
At the time, there was a war going on. No real search effort reported.
Controversy:
In October 1942, Miller disbanded his orchestra and joined the US Army Air Force with the rank of captain and assembled a quality dance band to perform for the troops. When the troops moved to England, Miller's band followed. On December 14, 1944, Miller got on a plane to Paris. The plane never arrived. It crashed somewhere over the English Channel. Miller's death was mourned by music lovers all over the world, and he was heralded as a hero worldwide. The movie The Glenn Miller Story, starring Jimmy Stewart, was filmed in 1953 as a tribute to Miller. In fact, the Glenn Miller Orchestra still plays today.
Over the years there have been much speculation as to what happened. One of the most widely held beliefs is that the aircraft Miller was flying in was victim to friendly fire of a sorts. At the time B-17s returning from the front, dropped unused bombs over the English Channel before returning to their home base. In a freak accident, a load of these bombs may have hit the lower flying UC-64 in the dark. For more regarding this particular theory, click here.
Another account had him in Paris dying in the arms of a prostitute.
Still another had him captured by the Germans and dying during the war in a prison camp.
Then there is the account of Fred W. Atksinson, Jr. According to Atkinson, who was a member of the 320th Air Transport Squadron based at Le Borge' Airport at Paris, France, one of there aircraft was used to transport Miller to Paris.
"Several days after our plane left London, we were notified that an aircraft that might be ours had crashed on the coast of France and that the occupants were dead. We dispatched a plane to that location and the aircraft and the bodies of our pilots were identified. Our crew also said that the other body definitely was that of Glenn Miller. They said there were identification papers and dog tags that were on his body. Our second crew that was in London at the time verified they had witnessed Glenn Miller and our two pilots board the aircraft and depart."
Glenn Miller, U.S. Army Major and band leader
Total Persons on Board:
Three (Flight Officer John Morgan, Major Glenn Miller and Lt. Col. Norman F. Baessell)
When:
December 15, 1944
Weather:
Reported as "terrible weather conditions which existed between London and Paris."
Flight Route:
Disappeared on flight between London and Paris.
Area Believed Crashed:
English Channel
Reason for flight:
Transportation to Paris where he was to join his band (they had preceded him) to perform at the opening of SHAEF Headquarters at Versailles, which was being moved from London to Paris.
Type Plane:
Norseman UC-64, a single engine aircraft. USAAF Tail Number 44-70285
Search efforts:
At the time, there was a war going on. No real search effort reported.
Controversy:
In October 1942, Miller disbanded his orchestra and joined the US Army Air Force with the rank of captain and assembled a quality dance band to perform for the troops. When the troops moved to England, Miller's band followed. On December 14, 1944, Miller got on a plane to Paris. The plane never arrived. It crashed somewhere over the English Channel. Miller's death was mourned by music lovers all over the world, and he was heralded as a hero worldwide. The movie The Glenn Miller Story, starring Jimmy Stewart, was filmed in 1953 as a tribute to Miller. In fact, the Glenn Miller Orchestra still plays today.
Over the years there have been much speculation as to what happened. One of the most widely held beliefs is that the aircraft Miller was flying in was victim to friendly fire of a sorts. At the time B-17s returning from the front, dropped unused bombs over the English Channel before returning to their home base. In a freak accident, a load of these bombs may have hit the lower flying UC-64 in the dark. For more regarding this particular theory, click here.
Another account had him in Paris dying in the arms of a prostitute.
Still another had him captured by the Germans and dying during the war in a prison camp.
Then there is the account of Fred W. Atksinson, Jr. According to Atkinson, who was a member of the 320th Air Transport Squadron based at Le Borge' Airport at Paris, France, one of there aircraft was used to transport Miller to Paris.
"Several days after our plane left London, we were notified that an aircraft that might be ours had crashed on the coast of France and that the occupants were dead. We dispatched a plane to that location and the aircraft and the bodies of our pilots were identified. Our crew also said that the other body definitely was that of Glenn Miller. They said there were identification papers and dog tags that were on his body. Our second crew that was in London at the time verified they had witnessed Glenn Miller and our two pilots board the aircraft and depart."
Ell - October 24, 2006 02:20 AM (GMT)
In the month of December 1944, I was a member of the 320th Air Transport Squadron based at Le Borge' Airport at Paris, France. This squadron was a unit of Colonel Arnold's Air Transport Wing. We were never connected physically to his Wing, except administratively, because we were an experimental air evacuation squadron designed to remove wounded soldiers from field hospitals and bring them back to Paris. There they were then sent to various other hospitals that were equipped to treat their specific types of wounds. The aircraft that we were using in this new operation were C-64's, a single engine aircraft that was equipped with three stretchers and at times carried a flight nurse whenever one was available. These C-64's were so small they could land on roadways, fields, or open spaces near the field hospitals and take off right away to return the wounded to Paris (rescue missions of this sort are conducted today through the use of helicopters). These aircraft had no navigation instruments, and they were grounded in bad weather conditions. This information is needed in order for one to understand what happened to our aircraft that carried Glenn Miller to his death. My job in our squadron was Personnel Records and Administrative Assistant to Major James R. Lyons, our Commanding Officer, and Lieutenant Charles S. Groseclose, our Adjutant.
On the day that Glenn Miller left London two of our aircraft were in London and were scheduled to return to Paris. A decision was made to cancel the flights due to the terrible weather conditions which existed between London and Paris. However, two of the pilots were ordered to fly Glenn Miller to Paris where he was to join his band (they had preceded him) to perform at the opening of SHAEF Headquarters at Versailles, which was being moved from London to Paris. This order was given by a Brigadier General we were informed (I do not recall the name). We were told this by the other flight crew that remained in London until the weather improved.
You will recall in the movie, "The Glenn Miller Story", the letter that Glenn Miller wrote to his wife that day he expressed the feeling that he might not see them again. Given the weather conditions and the type of aircraft that was a realistic probability.
Several days after our plane left London, we were notified that an aircraft that might be ours had crashed on the coast of France and that the occupants were dead. We dispatched a plane to that location and the aircraft and the bodies of our pilots were identified. Our crew also said that the other body definitely was that of Glenn Miller. They said there were identification papers and dogtags that were on his body. Our second crew that was in London at the time verified they had witnessed Glenn Miller and our two pilots board the aircraft and depart.
I recall the papers being processed to salvage our aircraft and report the death of our pilots on the squadron morning report. This report was turned in on a daily basis and notes the changes in status of all personnel as they occur. We had not experienced any deaths in our squadron until this time and this was a "double whammy" to us because of the loss of our pilots and the loss to the U. S. Armed Forces of probably the greatest moral booster (along with Bob Hope) that we all loved.
It was rumored that the officers in our squadron had pledged to bring manslaughter charges against the General but they were advised that they could not do that until he was officially pronounced "dead". It was also rumored that they intended to do this whenever the death announcement was ordered. I was always under the impression that no one could be listed "missing in action" forever and after a certain length of time they had to be pronounced killed in action or some other reasonable explanation. I have often wondered if any of our officers are still waiting for this action. I have watched over the years for an official announcement that Glenn Miller was killed in action and I have never seen one.
I have listed all of the names and facts that I can remember. I can clearly picture the faces of many of the members of our squadron, but I have difficulty remembering most of their names. I was assigned to our squadron about six months prior to the invasion of Normandy, so most of our unit was together for only about twelve or thirteen months before the war ended in Europe. I was discharged one year and sixteen days (New Year's eve, 1945) after the fateful flight.
We could never understand why this was not brought to a conclusion. There were enough witnesses at the time to have confirmed these events. I don't doubt Fred Shaw's logbook (see AP article, Sat., April 9, THE STATE, "Book may explain Glenn Miller's death") and his seeing a small plane spiraling out of control. However, I do not see how this could have been the aircraft that crashed into the coast of France.
I have written my recollections in the hope that this information might help those who are still wondering what happened in the "mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller" the creator of the ever popular Big Band Sound. Perhaps my observations will help to answer the questions of Glenn Miller's many fans and "one of aviation's most captivating puzzles".
Fred W. Atkinson, Jr.
http://www.mishmash.com/glennmiller/
On the day that Glenn Miller left London two of our aircraft were in London and were scheduled to return to Paris. A decision was made to cancel the flights due to the terrible weather conditions which existed between London and Paris. However, two of the pilots were ordered to fly Glenn Miller to Paris where he was to join his band (they had preceded him) to perform at the opening of SHAEF Headquarters at Versailles, which was being moved from London to Paris. This order was given by a Brigadier General we were informed (I do not recall the name). We were told this by the other flight crew that remained in London until the weather improved.
You will recall in the movie, "The Glenn Miller Story", the letter that Glenn Miller wrote to his wife that day he expressed the feeling that he might not see them again. Given the weather conditions and the type of aircraft that was a realistic probability.
Several days after our plane left London, we were notified that an aircraft that might be ours had crashed on the coast of France and that the occupants were dead. We dispatched a plane to that location and the aircraft and the bodies of our pilots were identified. Our crew also said that the other body definitely was that of Glenn Miller. They said there were identification papers and dogtags that were on his body. Our second crew that was in London at the time verified they had witnessed Glenn Miller and our two pilots board the aircraft and depart.
I recall the papers being processed to salvage our aircraft and report the death of our pilots on the squadron morning report. This report was turned in on a daily basis and notes the changes in status of all personnel as they occur. We had not experienced any deaths in our squadron until this time and this was a "double whammy" to us because of the loss of our pilots and the loss to the U. S. Armed Forces of probably the greatest moral booster (along with Bob Hope) that we all loved.
It was rumored that the officers in our squadron had pledged to bring manslaughter charges against the General but they were advised that they could not do that until he was officially pronounced "dead". It was also rumored that they intended to do this whenever the death announcement was ordered. I was always under the impression that no one could be listed "missing in action" forever and after a certain length of time they had to be pronounced killed in action or some other reasonable explanation. I have often wondered if any of our officers are still waiting for this action. I have watched over the years for an official announcement that Glenn Miller was killed in action and I have never seen one.
I have listed all of the names and facts that I can remember. I can clearly picture the faces of many of the members of our squadron, but I have difficulty remembering most of their names. I was assigned to our squadron about six months prior to the invasion of Normandy, so most of our unit was together for only about twelve or thirteen months before the war ended in Europe. I was discharged one year and sixteen days (New Year's eve, 1945) after the fateful flight.
We could never understand why this was not brought to a conclusion. There were enough witnesses at the time to have confirmed these events. I don't doubt Fred Shaw's logbook (see AP article, Sat., April 9, THE STATE, "Book may explain Glenn Miller's death") and his seeing a small plane spiraling out of control. However, I do not see how this could have been the aircraft that crashed into the coast of France.
I have written my recollections in the hope that this information might help those who are still wondering what happened in the "mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller" the creator of the ever popular Big Band Sound. Perhaps my observations will help to answer the questions of Glenn Miller's many fans and "one of aviation's most captivating puzzles".
Fred W. Atkinson, Jr.
http://www.mishmash.com/glennmiller/
wv171 - February 9, 2008 05:41 AM (GMT)
Plane wise these was wonderfull planes, Tough, Short Take Off , Very reliable and
easy to service, Design for anything the severe Canadian environment could
throw at it. Very rugged transport aircraft ,, These was very well built plane's I
never think twice flying one as long as it maintan to spect's, These plane's remind
me of today's Caravan's a very tough easy to fly and very well made plane single
engine plane's ..wv171
History: In the mid 1930s, Noorduyn Aviation Ltd. of Canada began design work on a rugged transport aircraft which would be suitable for anything the severe Canadian environment could throw at it. It needed to have the capability to be fitted with floats, skis, or wheels; carry large, bulky loads; have excellent rough and short-field capabilities; be reliable and easy to service; and be a true "bush" airplane in every respect. The prototype Norseman I first flew on 14 November 1935, powered by a 420-hp Wright R-975 engine.
The first production model, designated Norseman II, soon followed, but it was soon realized that the airplane was underpowered. This led to the production of the Norseman III, powered by a 450-hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine, and the Norseman IV, powered by the 550-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340-AN-1 Wasp. With the larger engine, the airplane now lived up to all expectations.
When WWII created a need for versatile and tough utility aircraft, the Norseman was purchased by both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF), under the name Norseman VI (the number "V" having been reserved by chief designer Bob Noorduyn for the first civilian model produced after "V-Day.") The USAAF aircraft adopted the name C-64A, and later UC-64A. 764 were delivered to the USAAF alone. Three of these were eventually transferred to the U.S. Navy, which called them JA-1s. In 1946, the Canadian Car & Foundry company acquired the production and sales rights for the Norseman, and continued to build the airplane until 1953.
Used in military service by at least 10 nations during its life, a Norseman is a relatively rare sight outside of Canada, but the ones which are now flown in military colors as privately-owned warbirds attract a lot of attention wherever they go.
Nicknames: Miller-Killer (referring to the disappearance of big-band leader Glenn Miller in December 1944 while flying in a Norseman.)
Specifications :
Engines: One 550-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340-AN-1 Wasp radial piston engine.
Weight: Empty 4,680 lbs., Max Takeoff 7,400 lbs.
Wing Span: 51ft. 6in.
Length: 32ft. 0in.
Height: 10ft. 3in.
Performance:
Maximum Speed: 162 mph
Cruising Speed: 148 mph
Ceiling: 17,000 ft.
Range: 1,550 miles
Armament: None
Number Built: 903
Number Still Airworthy: ~35.
http://www.warbirdalley.com/uc64.htm
easy to service, Design for anything the severe Canadian environment could
throw at it. Very rugged transport aircraft ,, These was very well built plane's I
never think twice flying one as long as it maintan to spect's, These plane's remind
me of today's Caravan's a very tough easy to fly and very well made plane single
engine plane's ..wv171
History: In the mid 1930s, Noorduyn Aviation Ltd. of Canada began design work on a rugged transport aircraft which would be suitable for anything the severe Canadian environment could throw at it. It needed to have the capability to be fitted with floats, skis, or wheels; carry large, bulky loads; have excellent rough and short-field capabilities; be reliable and easy to service; and be a true "bush" airplane in every respect. The prototype Norseman I first flew on 14 November 1935, powered by a 420-hp Wright R-975 engine.
The first production model, designated Norseman II, soon followed, but it was soon realized that the airplane was underpowered. This led to the production of the Norseman III, powered by a 450-hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine, and the Norseman IV, powered by the 550-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340-AN-1 Wasp. With the larger engine, the airplane now lived up to all expectations.
When WWII created a need for versatile and tough utility aircraft, the Norseman was purchased by both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF), under the name Norseman VI (the number "V" having been reserved by chief designer Bob Noorduyn for the first civilian model produced after "V-Day.") The USAAF aircraft adopted the name C-64A, and later UC-64A. 764 were delivered to the USAAF alone. Three of these were eventually transferred to the U.S. Navy, which called them JA-1s. In 1946, the Canadian Car & Foundry company acquired the production and sales rights for the Norseman, and continued to build the airplane until 1953.
Used in military service by at least 10 nations during its life, a Norseman is a relatively rare sight outside of Canada, but the ones which are now flown in military colors as privately-owned warbirds attract a lot of attention wherever they go.
Nicknames: Miller-Killer (referring to the disappearance of big-band leader Glenn Miller in December 1944 while flying in a Norseman.)
Specifications :
Engines: One 550-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340-AN-1 Wasp radial piston engine.
Weight: Empty 4,680 lbs., Max Takeoff 7,400 lbs.
Wing Span: 51ft. 6in.
Length: 32ft. 0in.
Height: 10ft. 3in.
Performance:
Maximum Speed: 162 mph
Cruising Speed: 148 mph
Ceiling: 17,000 ft.
Range: 1,550 miles
Armament: None
Number Built: 903
Number Still Airworthy: ~35.
http://www.warbirdalley.com/uc64.htm
wv171 - February 9, 2008 06:14 AM (GMT)
SDSTAFF John Corrado replies:
On the afternoon of December 15th, 1944, Maj. Glenn Miller boarded an RAF Norseman C-64 aircraft. The plane left an RAF base in England to take Miller to Paris, where he would join up with the rest of his band for a show. The plane never arrived.
The official story was that foggy weather led to a crash over the Channel. But rumors ran rampant among the American troops still in Britain that Miller had been accidentally shot by an MP in Paris, or that a German assassination squad had shot down Miller's plane. The Army (said the rumors) had covered up the incident in order to preserve morale. Miller was one of the premiere performers of the time, and his death--because the Army had failed to protect him or because a jumpy MP had screwed up--had to be portrayed as an accident.
A more likely explanation emerged later. Fred Shaw was a navigator with the 149th Squadron based in Norfolk. According to his logbook, on December 15th his squadron was sent to make a bombing run over Seigen, Germany. However, once the planes reached Brussels, they were told to abandon the run because of bad weather. Returning home, they went to the "southern jettisoning area" 50 miles south of Beachy Head on the Channel to get rid of their bombs. Trying to land a plane with a full bomb load was suicidal--not only did the extra weight of the bombs make landing dangerous, a mistake in landing would easily turn into a catastrophe were the bombs to detonate. So the Allies had designated large areas of sea where air and ship traffic was forbidden and bombers could safely unload cargo that hadn't been "sent with a kiss" to the Germans.
Just after unloading the bombs, the bombardier called out that there was a plane below them. Shaw looked out the window and saw a Norseman flying south at 1500 feet. Bombs were going off all around it. Just before it disappeared from Shaw's line of vision, it went into a tailspin. Seconds later the rear gunner called out that "there's a kite just gone in down under." Shaw's aircraft then returned to base. Since they had never crossed into enemy territory, the crew never reported the plane they had seen go down over the Channel.
In 1985, the British Ministry of Defense, citing Shaw's logbook, claimed that the best explanation for Miller's disappearance was that his plane had gotten lost in bad weather and wandered into the jettison area just as a squadron was dropping its bombs. The small plane was buffeted by concussion waves from the explosions, and the pilot couldn't keep control.
But in 1997, German journalist Udo Ulfkotte came up with another explanation. According to the German tabloid Bild, Ulfkotte had been researching American and German intelligence efforts during the war for a book on German intelligence agencies. Ulfkotte claimed that while going over documents he had obtained from the American government under the Freedom of Information Act, he found evidence that Miller had actually arrived safely in Paris on the 14th, but had a heart attack on the 15th while consorting with a French prostitute, and that the American military had covered up the episode.
A shocking revelation if true. But Ulfkotte later claimed he'd been misquoted. He'd never actually found U.S. documents showing that Miller had died in a whorehouse, he said; rather, he'd been told this story by German intelligence specialists in an off-the-record conversation. So no papers, no proof, just a few old spies spinning stories.
The Bild story also claimed that British diver Clive Ward found the remains of Miller's Norseman plane off the coast of France in 1985, but that there was no damage and no signs of human remains. Which invites a few questions: if Miller's death had been faked, and the military had placed the plane there in order to bolster its story about the "real" cause of Miller's death, then why didn't they bother making it look like a wreck? And why leave it sitting there for forty years rather than "find" it after the "crash"? And since Ward stated that there was no registration number on the craft he found, how did he know it was Miller's plane?
Then there's the matter of Flight Officer John Morgan and Lt. Col. Norman F. Baessell, who allegedly accompanied Miller on his last flight. What happened to them? Were they just servicemen who had died in the same timeframe and the military was lucky that one of them was a pilot?
Ulfkotte's tale, if true, would involve a massive conspiracy by a military that was both stunningly incompetent and stunningly lucky. They found a pilot whose death hadn't been noted by others; they deposited a plane in the English Channel to act as "evidence" without thinking to damage it or place dead bodies (such as poor F/O John Morgan) in it, but that didn't matter because it wasn't found for another forty years; they managed to hush up absolutely everyone involved, from Miller's manager (who was bumped off the fateful flight so that Miller could take it) to Miller's band (if Miller had been in Paris, they would have known about it) to everyone who had seen Miller when he left the base (there's at least one eyewitness who states that Miller left on the flight that crashed) to everyone in the brothel where Miller died to every MP involved in removing his body and guarding the scene. Then, having hushed everyone up, they either wrote it all down for later generations to discover, or at the very least leaked it to some German intelligence agents.
Somehow, I doubt it.
Special thanks to SDSTAFF Coldfire for finding cites and providing German-to-English translation on the reports on Ulfkotte; also, thanks to my friend John Kilgallon for his expertise on World War II aeronautics.
--SDSTAFF John Corrado
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mglennmiller.html
On the afternoon of December 15th, 1944, Maj. Glenn Miller boarded an RAF Norseman C-64 aircraft. The plane left an RAF base in England to take Miller to Paris, where he would join up with the rest of his band for a show. The plane never arrived.
The official story was that foggy weather led to a crash over the Channel. But rumors ran rampant among the American troops still in Britain that Miller had been accidentally shot by an MP in Paris, or that a German assassination squad had shot down Miller's plane. The Army (said the rumors) had covered up the incident in order to preserve morale. Miller was one of the premiere performers of the time, and his death--because the Army had failed to protect him or because a jumpy MP had screwed up--had to be portrayed as an accident.
A more likely explanation emerged later. Fred Shaw was a navigator with the 149th Squadron based in Norfolk. According to his logbook, on December 15th his squadron was sent to make a bombing run over Seigen, Germany. However, once the planes reached Brussels, they were told to abandon the run because of bad weather. Returning home, they went to the "southern jettisoning area" 50 miles south of Beachy Head on the Channel to get rid of their bombs. Trying to land a plane with a full bomb load was suicidal--not only did the extra weight of the bombs make landing dangerous, a mistake in landing would easily turn into a catastrophe were the bombs to detonate. So the Allies had designated large areas of sea where air and ship traffic was forbidden and bombers could safely unload cargo that hadn't been "sent with a kiss" to the Germans.
Just after unloading the bombs, the bombardier called out that there was a plane below them. Shaw looked out the window and saw a Norseman flying south at 1500 feet. Bombs were going off all around it. Just before it disappeared from Shaw's line of vision, it went into a tailspin. Seconds later the rear gunner called out that "there's a kite just gone in down under." Shaw's aircraft then returned to base. Since they had never crossed into enemy territory, the crew never reported the plane they had seen go down over the Channel.
In 1985, the British Ministry of Defense, citing Shaw's logbook, claimed that the best explanation for Miller's disappearance was that his plane had gotten lost in bad weather and wandered into the jettison area just as a squadron was dropping its bombs. The small plane was buffeted by concussion waves from the explosions, and the pilot couldn't keep control.
But in 1997, German journalist Udo Ulfkotte came up with another explanation. According to the German tabloid Bild, Ulfkotte had been researching American and German intelligence efforts during the war for a book on German intelligence agencies. Ulfkotte claimed that while going over documents he had obtained from the American government under the Freedom of Information Act, he found evidence that Miller had actually arrived safely in Paris on the 14th, but had a heart attack on the 15th while consorting with a French prostitute, and that the American military had covered up the episode.
A shocking revelation if true. But Ulfkotte later claimed he'd been misquoted. He'd never actually found U.S. documents showing that Miller had died in a whorehouse, he said; rather, he'd been told this story by German intelligence specialists in an off-the-record conversation. So no papers, no proof, just a few old spies spinning stories.
The Bild story also claimed that British diver Clive Ward found the remains of Miller's Norseman plane off the coast of France in 1985, but that there was no damage and no signs of human remains. Which invites a few questions: if Miller's death had been faked, and the military had placed the plane there in order to bolster its story about the "real" cause of Miller's death, then why didn't they bother making it look like a wreck? And why leave it sitting there for forty years rather than "find" it after the "crash"? And since Ward stated that there was no registration number on the craft he found, how did he know it was Miller's plane?
Then there's the matter of Flight Officer John Morgan and Lt. Col. Norman F. Baessell, who allegedly accompanied Miller on his last flight. What happened to them? Were they just servicemen who had died in the same timeframe and the military was lucky that one of them was a pilot?
Ulfkotte's tale, if true, would involve a massive conspiracy by a military that was both stunningly incompetent and stunningly lucky. They found a pilot whose death hadn't been noted by others; they deposited a plane in the English Channel to act as "evidence" without thinking to damage it or place dead bodies (such as poor F/O John Morgan) in it, but that didn't matter because it wasn't found for another forty years; they managed to hush up absolutely everyone involved, from Miller's manager (who was bumped off the fateful flight so that Miller could take it) to Miller's band (if Miller had been in Paris, they would have known about it) to everyone who had seen Miller when he left the base (there's at least one eyewitness who states that Miller left on the flight that crashed) to everyone in the brothel where Miller died to every MP involved in removing his body and guarding the scene. Then, having hushed everyone up, they either wrote it all down for later generations to discover, or at the very least leaked it to some German intelligence agents.
Somehow, I doubt it.
Special thanks to SDSTAFF Coldfire for finding cites and providing German-to-English translation on the reports on Ulfkotte; also, thanks to my friend John Kilgallon for his expertise on World War II aeronautics.
--SDSTAFF John Corrado
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mglennmiller.html
wv171 - February 9, 2008 06:24 AM (GMT)
It was a cold day on 15 December, 1944, when Major Glenn Miller boarded a Noorduyn 'Norseman' C-64 aeroplane. Since joining the war, the great American bandleader's Army Air Force Band had been performing for Allied troops all over England; now he was flying to Paris to make final arrangements to bring his musicians in for a Christmas concert for the Allied troops there.
Alas, the plane never made it to its destination. Its passengers were never seen again.
Glenn Miller's Final Hours
Glenn Miller was a national darling. The famous Glenn Miller Orchestra, formed in 1938, had soared out of nowhere to incredible success, creating over 70 top ten records in four years, selling over a million records, and dominating the American airwaves. When America was dragged into the war at the end of 1941, Miller decided that he would best serve his country by being in uniform and promptly enlisted. There he was transferred to the Army Air Corps, promoted to the rank of captain1, and given free rein to set up his own wartime band.
Miller's Army Air Force Band would prove to be every bit as successful as his civilian one, despite all the close shaves that had almost wiped them out of air force history. Now that Christmas was approaching and the Allied troops needed every morale boost they could get, Miller was preparing a concert for them at the Olympia.
The original plan was for manager Don Haynes to fly with Miller to Paris; however, fate interceded and sent a Lt Col Norman Baessell his way. Miller had bumped into him at an officers' mess at Milton East near Northampton on 14 December and had struck up a conversation with the officer. Baessell happened to mention that he would be departing for Paris the next day from an RAF airfield at Twinwood Farm2, and upon hearing of Miller's plans, offered him a seat on the plane. Miller gladly accepted, and whiled away the night eating dinner and playing poker with Haynes and Baessell.
The morning of 15 December found Bedford heavily fogged in. A concerned Haynes called up Baessell to find out if the flight was still on; Baessell assured him that by the time they took off after lunch the fog would be gone.
It was bitterly cold outside when Baessell contacted pilot John Morgan, who confirmed that he would be arriving soon. Miller, who had been waiting in the car with Haynes, quipped that Morgan would fail to locate the field as it was 24°F and 'even the birds were grounded'; he was forced to eat his words minutes later when an aircraft appeared through the dense fog and landed on the airstrip.
The trio left the control tower and drove to the Noordwyn Norseman C-64 on the tarmac where Morgan, waiting for them, apologised for being late. Miller must have had some last minute doubts about flying into the fog in the single-engine plane when he muttered: 'Where the h**l are the parachutes?' In a twist of irony Baessell replied: 'What's a matter with you Miller, do you want to live forever?' Charles Lindbergh had made it across the whole Atlantic on one engine; their C-64 would only be going as far as Paris. Miller made no further comment.
Don Haynes watched as the Norseman sped down the runway and took to flight. He was the last person to see them alive.
Theories concerning Glenn Miller's Disappearance
What had exactly happened to the passengers of the Norseman has been the subject of much speculation for the past half a century. The official report was that the Norseman aircraft had crashed into the channel due to either iced-over wings or engine failure; however, this explanation would prove unsatisfactory for the majority of the populace, thus causing multiple theories and speculations to mushroom over the years.
In 1985 British diver Clive Ward found what seemed to be the remains of the ill-fated Norseman off the coast of France. Aside from the ordinary corrosive effects of the sea, Ward found no damage to the plane and, more interestingly, no signs of the plane's registration number or human remains. This inevitably led to unanswered questions regarding the fates of Miller and the two other officers, and encouraging even more speculation to spread.
These theories, ranging from the somewhat plausible to spectacularly ridiculous, are:
Theory One: Miller had survived and later died in a bordello
The most preposterous claim in this collection of tales is that Glenn Miller (and the two officers) had safely crossed the Channel to Paris and had later died in somewhat compromising conditions.
The theory was first put forth in 1997 by the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, who had trawled through American and German intelligence wartime efforts for a book on German intelligence agencies. According to the German tabloid magazine Bild, Ulfkotte had supposedly found - among the many documents he had procured from the American government under the Freedom of Information Act - evidence of a steamy cover-up: that Miller had actually arrived safely in Paris on 14 December but had unfortunately met his end while in the dubious company of a French prostitute.
This eye-opening story suggested massive conspiracy and outstanding military idiocy. It implied that: (1) the US military had planted a plane in the English Channel as 'evidence', but had somehow managed to make the glaring mistake of (2) forgetting to plant dead bodies in it, and yet had pulled off the incredible feat of (3) silencing everybody who might have offered contradictory statements, from Miller's manager (who'd been bumped off the flight) to all the people who'd seen Miller depart from Twinwood on the 'doomed' plane, to Miller's band (who would have known if their bandleader had gotten to Paris) to everybody involved in removing Miller's body and guarding the scene at the French brothel. And then of course, being very proud of themselves, they had proceeded to leak the information to their German enemies!
Disputing this absurd claim, however, is retired Lt Col Robert Baker, who reported to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that there was no way Miller could possibly have reached Paris by 15 December except on his flight, because the two of them had been drinking together in England the night before.
An interesting twist to the story – Ulfkotte later claimed that he'd been the victim of misquotation. He asserted that he had never found evidence of Miller dying in a brothel; the story had apparently come from German intelligence specialists in an off-the-record conversation.
Theory Two: Miller had died of medical conditions in a hospital
There are two different claims made that Miller had in fact gone over the channel and back, but later died in an American hospital. One of the claims was put forth by the New Jersey Department of Health, which stated that Miller had died in Ohio in 1945 as a result of injuries. Dr Chris Valenti, notorious for his Glenn Miller conspiracy theories, had put out notices on his radio programme for people with information pertaining to this matter to come forward. Within the next week, an anonymous letter had arrived from an unnamed doctor, who'd claimed that Miller had been flown in with gunshot wounds in 1945 and had later died under his care.
Miller's younger brother Herb, however, had a different story for the press. Breaking a nearly 40-year silence in 1983, Herb Miller claimed that 'Glenn Miller did not die in a plane crash over the Channel but from lung cancer in a hospital.' Miller had apparently been shuttled off to a military hospital upon arrival, where cancer took his life the very next day3.
To support his story, Herb Miller had pointed out a passage in a letter written by his chain-smoking brother in the summer of 1944: 'I am totally emaciated, although I am eating enough. I have trouble breathing. I think I am very ill.' Miller's depression, irritability and exhaustion during the few months prior to his untimely demise, Herb Miller asserted, further proved that Miller had an underlying medical condition. To further corroborate this story, Don Haynes, Miller's band manager, had claimed that the bandleader had lost a lot of weight and that his tailor-made uniforms 'didn't fit him well at all. They merely hung on him.' Miller must have been aware of his impending doom, for late one night he told George Voustas, the director of his military programs, 'You know, George, I have an awful feeling you guys are going to go home without me ...' Furthermore, according to the weather report for 15 December the daytime temperature had been 5°C (41°F, and not the previously claimed 24°F) – too warm for aeroplane wings to have iced over and crashed into the English Channel.
Herb Miller was unable to furnish information about his brother's final resting place, claiming that Miller had probably been buried in a mass grave at some British military cemetery. True to his brother's heart, however, Herb had allegedly fabricated the crash story because his brother had wanted to 'die as a hero and not in a lousy bed'.
Theory Three: Miller's crashed due to bad weather
Why Glenn, who had a real fear of planes, decided to risk a trip under such adverse conditions has never been determined.
- George Simon, The Big Band Era and The Glenn Miller Story
The official report issued by the US military on 24 December was that Miller's plane had nose-dived into the English Channel, either because its wings had iced over, or due to engine failure. Supporting this claim is Fred W Atkinson Jr who, in 1944, had been at Le Bourget Airport at Paris.
Atkinson had been a member of the 320th Air Transport Squadron, which was a unit of Col Arnold's Air Transport Wing, and served as an experimental air evacuation squadron specialising in the removal of wounded soldiers from field hospitals and the transportation of these men back to Paris. The aircraft assigned to them were Norseman aeroplanes similar to the doomed one, chosen because they were small enough to land on roadways, fields or even open spaces. There were, however, two drawbacks to these planes: they had no navigation instruments4, and were grounded in bad weather conditions – information that would later be crucial to explaining the fate of Miller's plane.
According to Atkinson, two of the C-64 Norsemans were scheduled to return to Paris on the day Miller departed from London; however, the flights were cancelled on account of bad weather. In spite of the risk involved, an unnamed Brigadier General ordered that two pilots fly Miller into Paris to re-group with his band, who had arrived earlier. When Atkinson's unit left for Paris several days later, they were notified of a crashed aircraft on the coast of France that might belong to the unit, and whose occupants were dead. A plane was dispatched, and its crew identified the bodies as those of Miller and the two pilots, based on identification papers and dogtags as well as visual identification. The second crew in London further verified that Miller and the two pilots had been seen to depart in the crashed aircraft several days earlier.
Papers detailing the salvage of the crashed aircraft were processed, as were the report of the deaths of the pilots on the squadron morning report, which was updated on a daily basis to keep track of the status of all personnel. Because of the loss of the pilots and the army's number one morale man, there were rumours that officers in the 320th squadron had sworn to bring manslaughter charges against the brigadier general who had issued the order; however, as Miller had not yet been officially pronounced dead, they could do little but wait in frustration until the announcement was made.
Unfortunately for Atkinson's unit, there was never a conclusion to all this, despite the surplus of witnesses to confirm the events.
Theory Four: Miller's plane was downed by friendly fire
Currently, the most highly-debated theory regarding the disappearance of Glenn Miller was that his plane had been the victim of friendly fire.
The late Fred Shaw was the navigator of a Lancaster (serial number NF973) based in Methwold. On the day Miller's plane disappeared, 138 Lancaster bombers – one of them Shaw's – were returning from an aborted bombing raid on Siegen in Germany because their fighter escorts had failed to get off the ground. Because the squadron could not possibly land with their staggering bomb load5, their combined total of 100,000 incendiary bombs had to be jettisoned. The bomb jettison zone was known as the South Jettison Area (a ten-mile circle 50 miles south of Beachy Head over the English Channel), and was officially dangerous grounds to be avoided by all aeroplanes and ships.
When the bombs were jettisoned from a safety height of 4000 feet, Shaw, who had never seen a bombing before, was driven by curiosity to look out the window. As the bombs exploded several feet above the surface of the sea, he saw a plane 2500 feet below, flying south. Years later he would say: 'It was obvious to me that the aeroplane below was in trouble, so I watched intently. Then, just before it went out of sight under the leading edge of the wing, I saw it flick over to port in what looked like an incipient spin. And eventually I saw it disappear into the English Channel.' The bomb aimer had reported the same sighting a moment before; now a rear gunner called over the intercom that 'there's a kite6 just gone in down under'.
Because they were technically not in enemy territory and the mission had been reported, the men were not debriefed, and the downed plane remained unreported.
Shaw never connected the downed plane with Glenn Miller's mysterious disappearance until 1956 when he saw the movie The Glenn Miller Story. He had decided on impulse to check his old log book – and realised that the Norseman he'd seen plunging into the sea could very well have been Miller's.
When Shaw first came out with his story, the public's initial response – especially that of the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society – was to dismiss him as a publicity seeker. A hail of awkward questions descended: How could it be proven that Miller's plane had strayed into the path of Lancasters when John Morgan had even failed to register a flight path? How was Shaw able to recognise a Norseman, when there were only a half-dozen of these Canadian planes in Britain, all of them in American air bases? What about the one-hour discrepancy?
The British Defence Ministry's Air Historical Branch decided to investigate the claim and recruited Roy Nesbit, an aviation historian and (now) RAF editor at the public record office, who spent years researching the problem. The findings revealed were:
1. How could Miller's plane have strayed into a jettison zone?
The Norseman had no option but to take the SHAEF shuttle path (the route employed by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) to France. Despite all the anti-aircraft emplacements on the south-east coast, a route had been cleared for flights. Unfortunately, this brought Miller's plane perilously close to the jettison area, which was only a few miles away from the SHAEF path. Because John Morgan was inexperienced in flying by instruments, he would most likely have used a compass - which was notoriously unreliable - especially if the pilot was navigating an area without landmarks - and was in this case fatal.
2. Why was there a one-hour discrepancy in flight time?
The official report was that the bomb group had jettisoned their bombs at 1.40pm on 15 December; Morgan's flight log put the plane one hour ahead of the bomb group, thereby raising questions as to the validity of the claim. However, by comparing logs written in the air with operations in the ground, Nesbit was able to determine that the Americans had used local time, which was an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, thereby explaining the discrepancy.
3. How could Shaw have recognised such a rare aeroplane?
In fact, Shaw had answered this question himself – his navigator training had taken place in Manitoba, Canada, where the Norseman aeroplanes were aplenty.
Although the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society dismissed the story because they believed that no plane could have possibly flown that day owing to bad weather, one member, Alan Ross, took it seriously and independently investigated the matter. He wrote in to Air Mail, the RAF Association Journal, asking for other members of the Lancaster's crew to come forward. Victor Gregory, who had captained Shaw's plane, responded to the mail, believing it to be for some sort of reunion. When asked about the sighting, Gregory confirmed the story. He himself had not witnessed the bombing of the plane; however, he recalled that the bombardier had spotted the plane, and had called the navigator over to have a look; soon after, Fred Shaw had identified the plane as a Norseman.
When asked why he had not come forward until now, Gregory replied:
When we got back from that raid, it was an aborted raid, so we didn't go in for our normal debriefing. Don't think me unsympathetic or callous, but when I heard of the plane going down, I would have said that he shouldn't have been there - forget him. My own concern was getting my own aeroplane home safely. We were fighting a war, and we lost thousands of planes. We had some pretty grim raids after that, and they didn't announce Miller's death until later. It had gone completely from my mind.
A separate investigation carried out by EA Munday of the Air Historical Branch at the Ministry of Defence revealed records confirming that a squadron had taken off at noon on 15 December 1944 to attack the railway yards at Steigen. The records further confirmed that the force had to be recalled before they even entered German-controlled airspace, and that the planes were ordered to jettison their bombs in the South Jettison Area.
A Ministry of Defence letter was eventually issued by Munday to Fred Shaw in 1985, stating that:
Until your story appeared in the South African press in 1984, the RAF had always regarded Miller's death as a strictly USAAF matter, as the result of some sort of flying accident, probably as a result of poor weather conditions. We have received letters at various times asking about it, some of which put forth theories, some feasible, and some not so feasible.
Up until 1984, the only RAF connection was that Miller's plane had taken off from the RAF airfield at Twinwood Farms, Bedfordshire in weather conditions which could be described as marginal, or at least marginal for that type of aircraft.
Your story, to a greater extent, changed this, and we carried out an investigation earlier this year into the aborted bomber operation of 15 Dec. 1944. Because the operation was aborted, there is no raid report on B(omber) C(ommand) records, as would have been customary with a completed operation. We did find reference to the intended course.
Shaw's documents were eventually sold by Mrs Shaw, who, according to her daughter Cheryl Fillmore of Southampton, believed that the material should not rot in a drawer but be made available to those who were interested in the matter. The documents were sold by Sotheby's on 13 April 1999 for a grand sum of £22,000.
The logbook of Derek Thurman, the flight engineer on board Shaw's Lancaster, surfaced in 2000, corroborating Shaw's testimonial. Thurman had written that when the bombs were away, three crew members on board the plane had spotted a light aircraft below, which seemed to have been downed by the hail of explosives. The bomb aimer saw it first from the nose and commented on it, whereupon the navigator shot out of his seat to the side blister (window) to have a look. He saw the plane whip by. Seconds later, the rear gunner called in to say: 'It's gone in, flipped over and gone in.' Thurman's logbook was also sold by Sotheby's, fetching a paltry sum of $880.
Arguments against Shaw's Testimonial and Nesbit's Report
In 2003 Howard Roth, who had been a B-17 pilot in the 306th Bomb Group during WWII, argued about certain discrepancies in Shaw's story and loopholes in Nesbit's reasonings.
1. The Dubious Nature of Shaw's Public Testimonial
The first discrepancy he pointed out was the testimonial Shaw had given to both The History Channel (THC) and the Public PBS. Shaw had initially identified the downed plane as 'a sort of Norseman' while giving the THC interview; later, when he was on PBS he'd changed it and stated explicitly that the plane had been a 'Noorduyn Norseman'. He had never mentioned bombs during the THC interview; it had only surfaced during the PBS one. Furthermore, Roth pointed out, with a combined speed of about 300 mph, very low visibility, and the fact that the plane downed was a small one, how could Shaw have seen the Norseman flip over? The plane would more likely have disintegrated.
Roth also pointed out that Shaw's initial reluctance to come forward to report the crash because 'he didn't want to get involved in a long drawn-out hearing', and his connection of the plane with Miller only 12 years later made no sense. Because of the incredibly high Air Force casualty rates, an average of one in four planes would not return from any given mission; the debriefing would surely have taken less than 30 minutes. And then there was the question of Shaw's logbook, which contained two different styles of handwriting - when Roth had pointed it out to Victor Gregory, the pilot had claimed, 'that's my handwriting - I often filled in log books if the lazy b****rs hadn't done it', therefore casting further doubt upon the veracity of Shaw's claim. And of course - why had it taken Shaw so long to make the connection? The bombing had been broadcast all over England, as had the mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller. Moreover, failure to report a plane - especially a friendly - going down was nothing short of unforgivable7.
2. The mystery bomb jettison area
And then there was the deal with the jettison of bombs, and where it happened. Nesbit and Shaw had both asserted that it was in the South Jettison Area; however, RAF pilot Ken Blythe, who had flown Halifax bombers during the war, stated that the jettison zone had been in the North Sea; he'd never so much as heard of the south one. Ron Brown, who had served on one of the Lancasters, had confirmed this, and had added that visibility was so bad that on occasions they could only see as far as their Lancaster's wing tips.
Furthermore, the allegation that a bomb had exploded upon jettison, Roth argued, was a serious one. The bombs were not designed to detonate on water impact; had they done so, there would not have been a bomb group to speak of, let alone Glenn Miller's aeroplane!
3. The undetermined flight route
And then there was the flight path to consider. Apparently Nesbit and Shaw had detailed different routes - Nesbit had claimed the plane took the SHAEF shuttle path; Shaw had put Miller's plane on a straight path from England to Paris; neither the RAF nor Miller's flight path was actually known. Anyway, the flight path Shaw stated made no sense - flying straight to Paris from Twinwood would have taken the plane right over London, which was playing host to an onslaught of V1s and V2s as well as barrage balloons. Furthermore, when Roth had scrutinised Shaw's flight map, he'd noticed that the jettison zone was nowhere near Miller's alleged route.
While the SHAEF shuttle might very well have caused Miller's plane to stray into the bomb drop zone had a pilot used an inaccurate magnetic compass, the fact was that, despite its supposed equipment deficiencies8, the Norseman had a highly accurate gyro compass as almost enough blind flying instruments to match those of the B-17's. With competent navigation instrumentation, it was highly unlikely that Miller's plane would have strayed from its flight path9.
4. Time Difference
Nesbit's explanation for the time discrepancy made no sense either. He had calculated that, what with the difference between local time and Greenwich Mean Time, Miller's plane could very well have strayed into the path of Lancasters. However, Nesbit had apparently neglected the fact that England, at the time, was on Greenwich Mean Time10. Taking this adjustment into consideration, the Lancasters and Miller's plane would have been at least 250-300 miles apart, and the bombers should have landed even before the Norseman took to flight.
So might Shaw's crew have gotten it wrong? Is it possible that the plane they'd seen plunging into the English Channel was not the Norseman carrying Miller to Paris? The reader is advised to personally go over the pertaining data and arrive at his or her conclusion.
Miscellaneous Crackpot Theories
Other theories to be included under the Utterly Ridiculous heading are: that Miller had been a spy and had subsequently been killed; that he had been the victim of black marketers; that US agents marked Miller for death because he was threatening to expose a cabal of gay US officers; that had accidentally been shot by an MP in Paris; that a German assassination squad had been sent to shoot down Miller's plane; that Miller had been abducted by aliens who'd apparently been interested in studying/dissecting him11. All of these theories hinted at the US military performing an incredible cover-up to preserve morale.
Of all the conspiracy theorists, Dr. Chris Valenti of Bigband Radio was by far the most active. He harassed the Government for the same files they'd allegedly supplied to the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte through the Freedom of Information Act; however, the five documents that arrived on his doorstep two years later were nothing short of disappointing. The documents were: (1) a letter (dated 12 February, 1945) notifying Helen Miller that her husband had been reported missing since 15 December, 1944; (2) a letter from Major General Edward F Witsell to George Eyermen (dated 21 January, 1946), requesting information concerning Major Miller, which Eyermen informed a Jimmie Fidler about at an earlier date; (3) a reply from Eyermen (dated 30 January, 1946) stating that the said information was in fact an inquiry, and that Eyermen had been misrepresented; (4) a letter from Asst Adjutant General JW Donnelly to Helen Miller (dated 6 September, 1946), stating that there was no further information pertaining to her husband's plane; and (5) a letter of inquiry (dated 30 September, 1946) from Miller's attorney David McKay, requesting that investigation be carried out upon the parts of a plane that had been found on Brittany beach, identified to be Miller's.
Annoyed, Valenti had apparently hired an agency to dig up more dirt from military, FBI and CIA records. This apparently led to Valenti receiving a phone call from an unnamed government official who had threatened Valenti and his family's lives if the 'smoking gun' findings he'd uncovered were ever revealed. Valenti had apparently kept quiet for two years until an unnamed doctor had come forward to corroborate his findings (see Theory 1). Supposedly, two days before Valenti's public broadcast, the official had called again with another threat – this time, leaving his warning on Valenti's voice mail, which Valenti audaciously aired for everybody to hear.
Epilogue
While romantic speculations of Miller having been the unfortunate victim of a vicious conspiracy may be appealing to those with rose-tinted glasses, the fact is that his death is far more likely attributed to a series of unfortunate accidents than it is to him having been silenced or the government having covered up an embarrassing situation.
However, we may never know for sure what happened in the final minutes of Miller's life. All we know is that he and his companions had boarded a plane, never to be seen again, and the world of swing music is a much poorer place for his passing.
Part 1: Glenn Miller (1904-1944)
References
Online International Newspaper Articles
BBC News: Bomb Clue to Glenn Miller Mystery
Guardian UK: Glenn Miller Died under 'Hail of British Bombs'
Netlondon.com:Does a wartime logbook solve the mystery of Glenn Miller disappearance?
New York Times: RAF Bombs May Have Downed Glenn Miller Plane
Various Organisations
The Doe Network: Case File 496DMDEU
Glenn Miller Museum: Glenn Miller's Last Stop
Howard Roth Summary: Correspondence
Skygaze.com: Glenn Miller
The Scotsman: It Did Mean a Thing
Other Resources
Chris Valenti's Glenn Miller files
Fred Shaw's flight map
Glenn Miller Conspiracy Finally Exposed!
The Glenn Miller Mystery
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board Report
Related BBC Links
Explore the past with BBC History.
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1 And then later to major
2 Three miles north of Bedford
3 It would seem that Lt Col Baessell made the trip safely as well, but later died while engaged in battle with the Germans.
4 Howard Roth would later contradict this: see Theory Four
5 Lancasters could carry 8000 pounds of four-pound incendiary bombs in 500-pound containers; some of them carried 4000-pound Blockbuster bombs and incendiaries.
6 Slang for aeroplane
7 Roth hinted at Nesbit's professional hypocrisy - that Nesbit had insisted it was unnecessary to report a downed plane if there was no hope for the crew, and yet at the same time he relied on such reports as a historian, for historical conclusions.
8 As stated earlier by Atkinson.
9 And anyway, putting a VIP shuttle route right through a drop zone would have been nothing short of tactical suicide.
10 Which could be verified by USAAF Group navigators, or even with the British air historian Roger Freeman who had written several 8th USAAF documentaries. The pilots needed every extra hour of daylight they could get.
11 In fact, it was suggested that all the musicians who'd mysteriously vanished - including Jim Reeves and Buddy Holly - had been beamed up by Scotty.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2654822
Alas, the plane never made it to its destination. Its passengers were never seen again.
Glenn Miller's Final Hours
Glenn Miller was a national darling. The famous Glenn Miller Orchestra, formed in 1938, had soared out of nowhere to incredible success, creating over 70 top ten records in four years, selling over a million records, and dominating the American airwaves. When America was dragged into the war at the end of 1941, Miller decided that he would best serve his country by being in uniform and promptly enlisted. There he was transferred to the Army Air Corps, promoted to the rank of captain1, and given free rein to set up his own wartime band.
Miller's Army Air Force Band would prove to be every bit as successful as his civilian one, despite all the close shaves that had almost wiped them out of air force history. Now that Christmas was approaching and the Allied troops needed every morale boost they could get, Miller was preparing a concert for them at the Olympia.
The original plan was for manager Don Haynes to fly with Miller to Paris; however, fate interceded and sent a Lt Col Norman Baessell his way. Miller had bumped into him at an officers' mess at Milton East near Northampton on 14 December and had struck up a conversation with the officer. Baessell happened to mention that he would be departing for Paris the next day from an RAF airfield at Twinwood Farm2, and upon hearing of Miller's plans, offered him a seat on the plane. Miller gladly accepted, and whiled away the night eating dinner and playing poker with Haynes and Baessell.
The morning of 15 December found Bedford heavily fogged in. A concerned Haynes called up Baessell to find out if the flight was still on; Baessell assured him that by the time they took off after lunch the fog would be gone.
It was bitterly cold outside when Baessell contacted pilot John Morgan, who confirmed that he would be arriving soon. Miller, who had been waiting in the car with Haynes, quipped that Morgan would fail to locate the field as it was 24°F and 'even the birds were grounded'; he was forced to eat his words minutes later when an aircraft appeared through the dense fog and landed on the airstrip.
The trio left the control tower and drove to the Noordwyn Norseman C-64 on the tarmac where Morgan, waiting for them, apologised for being late. Miller must have had some last minute doubts about flying into the fog in the single-engine plane when he muttered: 'Where the h**l are the parachutes?' In a twist of irony Baessell replied: 'What's a matter with you Miller, do you want to live forever?' Charles Lindbergh had made it across the whole Atlantic on one engine; their C-64 would only be going as far as Paris. Miller made no further comment.
Don Haynes watched as the Norseman sped down the runway and took to flight. He was the last person to see them alive.
Theories concerning Glenn Miller's Disappearance
What had exactly happened to the passengers of the Norseman has been the subject of much speculation for the past half a century. The official report was that the Norseman aircraft had crashed into the channel due to either iced-over wings or engine failure; however, this explanation would prove unsatisfactory for the majority of the populace, thus causing multiple theories and speculations to mushroom over the years.
In 1985 British diver Clive Ward found what seemed to be the remains of the ill-fated Norseman off the coast of France. Aside from the ordinary corrosive effects of the sea, Ward found no damage to the plane and, more interestingly, no signs of the plane's registration number or human remains. This inevitably led to unanswered questions regarding the fates of Miller and the two other officers, and encouraging even more speculation to spread.
These theories, ranging from the somewhat plausible to spectacularly ridiculous, are:
Theory One: Miller had survived and later died in a bordello
The most preposterous claim in this collection of tales is that Glenn Miller (and the two officers) had safely crossed the Channel to Paris and had later died in somewhat compromising conditions.
The theory was first put forth in 1997 by the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, who had trawled through American and German intelligence wartime efforts for a book on German intelligence agencies. According to the German tabloid magazine Bild, Ulfkotte had supposedly found - among the many documents he had procured from the American government under the Freedom of Information Act - evidence of a steamy cover-up: that Miller had actually arrived safely in Paris on 14 December but had unfortunately met his end while in the dubious company of a French prostitute.
This eye-opening story suggested massive conspiracy and outstanding military idiocy. It implied that: (1) the US military had planted a plane in the English Channel as 'evidence', but had somehow managed to make the glaring mistake of (2) forgetting to plant dead bodies in it, and yet had pulled off the incredible feat of (3) silencing everybody who might have offered contradictory statements, from Miller's manager (who'd been bumped off the flight) to all the people who'd seen Miller depart from Twinwood on the 'doomed' plane, to Miller's band (who would have known if their bandleader had gotten to Paris) to everybody involved in removing Miller's body and guarding the scene at the French brothel. And then of course, being very proud of themselves, they had proceeded to leak the information to their German enemies!
Disputing this absurd claim, however, is retired Lt Col Robert Baker, who reported to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that there was no way Miller could possibly have reached Paris by 15 December except on his flight, because the two of them had been drinking together in England the night before.
An interesting twist to the story – Ulfkotte later claimed that he'd been the victim of misquotation. He asserted that he had never found evidence of Miller dying in a brothel; the story had apparently come from German intelligence specialists in an off-the-record conversation.
Theory Two: Miller had died of medical conditions in a hospital
There are two different claims made that Miller had in fact gone over the channel and back, but later died in an American hospital. One of the claims was put forth by the New Jersey Department of Health, which stated that Miller had died in Ohio in 1945 as a result of injuries. Dr Chris Valenti, notorious for his Glenn Miller conspiracy theories, had put out notices on his radio programme for people with information pertaining to this matter to come forward. Within the next week, an anonymous letter had arrived from an unnamed doctor, who'd claimed that Miller had been flown in with gunshot wounds in 1945 and had later died under his care.
Miller's younger brother Herb, however, had a different story for the press. Breaking a nearly 40-year silence in 1983, Herb Miller claimed that 'Glenn Miller did not die in a plane crash over the Channel but from lung cancer in a hospital.' Miller had apparently been shuttled off to a military hospital upon arrival, where cancer took his life the very next day3.
To support his story, Herb Miller had pointed out a passage in a letter written by his chain-smoking brother in the summer of 1944: 'I am totally emaciated, although I am eating enough. I have trouble breathing. I think I am very ill.' Miller's depression, irritability and exhaustion during the few months prior to his untimely demise, Herb Miller asserted, further proved that Miller had an underlying medical condition. To further corroborate this story, Don Haynes, Miller's band manager, had claimed that the bandleader had lost a lot of weight and that his tailor-made uniforms 'didn't fit him well at all. They merely hung on him.' Miller must have been aware of his impending doom, for late one night he told George Voustas, the director of his military programs, 'You know, George, I have an awful feeling you guys are going to go home without me ...' Furthermore, according to the weather report for 15 December the daytime temperature had been 5°C (41°F, and not the previously claimed 24°F) – too warm for aeroplane wings to have iced over and crashed into the English Channel.
Herb Miller was unable to furnish information about his brother's final resting place, claiming that Miller had probably been buried in a mass grave at some British military cemetery. True to his brother's heart, however, Herb had allegedly fabricated the crash story because his brother had wanted to 'die as a hero and not in a lousy bed'.
Theory Three: Miller's crashed due to bad weather
Why Glenn, who had a real fear of planes, decided to risk a trip under such adverse conditions has never been determined.
- George Simon, The Big Band Era and The Glenn Miller Story
The official report issued by the US military on 24 December was that Miller's plane had nose-dived into the English Channel, either because its wings had iced over, or due to engine failure. Supporting this claim is Fred W Atkinson Jr who, in 1944, had been at Le Bourget Airport at Paris.
Atkinson had been a member of the 320th Air Transport Squadron, which was a unit of Col Arnold's Air Transport Wing, and served as an experimental air evacuation squadron specialising in the removal of wounded soldiers from field hospitals and the transportation of these men back to Paris. The aircraft assigned to them were Norseman aeroplanes similar to the doomed one, chosen because they were small enough to land on roadways, fields or even open spaces. There were, however, two drawbacks to these planes: they had no navigation instruments4, and were grounded in bad weather conditions – information that would later be crucial to explaining the fate of Miller's plane.
According to Atkinson, two of the C-64 Norsemans were scheduled to return to Paris on the day Miller departed from London; however, the flights were cancelled on account of bad weather. In spite of the risk involved, an unnamed Brigadier General ordered that two pilots fly Miller into Paris to re-group with his band, who had arrived earlier. When Atkinson's unit left for Paris several days later, they were notified of a crashed aircraft on the coast of France that might belong to the unit, and whose occupants were dead. A plane was dispatched, and its crew identified the bodies as those of Miller and the two pilots, based on identification papers and dogtags as well as visual identification. The second crew in London further verified that Miller and the two pilots had been seen to depart in the crashed aircraft several days earlier.
Papers detailing the salvage of the crashed aircraft were processed, as were the report of the deaths of the pilots on the squadron morning report, which was updated on a daily basis to keep track of the status of all personnel. Because of the loss of the pilots and the army's number one morale man, there were rumours that officers in the 320th squadron had sworn to bring manslaughter charges against the brigadier general who had issued the order; however, as Miller had not yet been officially pronounced dead, they could do little but wait in frustration until the announcement was made.
Unfortunately for Atkinson's unit, there was never a conclusion to all this, despite the surplus of witnesses to confirm the events.
Theory Four: Miller's plane was downed by friendly fire
Currently, the most highly-debated theory regarding the disappearance of Glenn Miller was that his plane had been the victim of friendly fire.
The late Fred Shaw was the navigator of a Lancaster (serial number NF973) based in Methwold. On the day Miller's plane disappeared, 138 Lancaster bombers – one of them Shaw's – were returning from an aborted bombing raid on Siegen in Germany because their fighter escorts had failed to get off the ground. Because the squadron could not possibly land with their staggering bomb load5, their combined total of 100,000 incendiary bombs had to be jettisoned. The bomb jettison zone was known as the South Jettison Area (a ten-mile circle 50 miles south of Beachy Head over the English Channel), and was officially dangerous grounds to be avoided by all aeroplanes and ships.
When the bombs were jettisoned from a safety height of 4000 feet, Shaw, who had never seen a bombing before, was driven by curiosity to look out the window. As the bombs exploded several feet above the surface of the sea, he saw a plane 2500 feet below, flying south. Years later he would say: 'It was obvious to me that the aeroplane below was in trouble, so I watched intently. Then, just before it went out of sight under the leading edge of the wing, I saw it flick over to port in what looked like an incipient spin. And eventually I saw it disappear into the English Channel.' The bomb aimer had reported the same sighting a moment before; now a rear gunner called over the intercom that 'there's a kite6 just gone in down under'.
Because they were technically not in enemy territory and the mission had been reported, the men were not debriefed, and the downed plane remained unreported.
Shaw never connected the downed plane with Glenn Miller's mysterious disappearance until 1956 when he saw the movie The Glenn Miller Story. He had decided on impulse to check his old log book – and realised that the Norseman he'd seen plunging into the sea could very well have been Miller's.
When Shaw first came out with his story, the public's initial response – especially that of the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society – was to dismiss him as a publicity seeker. A hail of awkward questions descended: How could it be proven that Miller's plane had strayed into the path of Lancasters when John Morgan had even failed to register a flight path? How was Shaw able to recognise a Norseman, when there were only a half-dozen of these Canadian planes in Britain, all of them in American air bases? What about the one-hour discrepancy?
The British Defence Ministry's Air Historical Branch decided to investigate the claim and recruited Roy Nesbit, an aviation historian and (now) RAF editor at the public record office, who spent years researching the problem. The findings revealed were:
1. How could Miller's plane have strayed into a jettison zone?
The Norseman had no option but to take the SHAEF shuttle path (the route employed by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) to France. Despite all the anti-aircraft emplacements on the south-east coast, a route had been cleared for flights. Unfortunately, this brought Miller's plane perilously close to the jettison area, which was only a few miles away from the SHAEF path. Because John Morgan was inexperienced in flying by instruments, he would most likely have used a compass - which was notoriously unreliable - especially if the pilot was navigating an area without landmarks - and was in this case fatal.
2. Why was there a one-hour discrepancy in flight time?
The official report was that the bomb group had jettisoned their bombs at 1.40pm on 15 December; Morgan's flight log put the plane one hour ahead of the bomb group, thereby raising questions as to the validity of the claim. However, by comparing logs written in the air with operations in the ground, Nesbit was able to determine that the Americans had used local time, which was an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, thereby explaining the discrepancy.
3. How could Shaw have recognised such a rare aeroplane?
In fact, Shaw had answered this question himself – his navigator training had taken place in Manitoba, Canada, where the Norseman aeroplanes were aplenty.
Although the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society dismissed the story because they believed that no plane could have possibly flown that day owing to bad weather, one member, Alan Ross, took it seriously and independently investigated the matter. He wrote in to Air Mail, the RAF Association Journal, asking for other members of the Lancaster's crew to come forward. Victor Gregory, who had captained Shaw's plane, responded to the mail, believing it to be for some sort of reunion. When asked about the sighting, Gregory confirmed the story. He himself had not witnessed the bombing of the plane; however, he recalled that the bombardier had spotted the plane, and had called the navigator over to have a look; soon after, Fred Shaw had identified the plane as a Norseman.
When asked why he had not come forward until now, Gregory replied:
When we got back from that raid, it was an aborted raid, so we didn't go in for our normal debriefing. Don't think me unsympathetic or callous, but when I heard of the plane going down, I would have said that he shouldn't have been there - forget him. My own concern was getting my own aeroplane home safely. We were fighting a war, and we lost thousands of planes. We had some pretty grim raids after that, and they didn't announce Miller's death until later. It had gone completely from my mind.
A separate investigation carried out by EA Munday of the Air Historical Branch at the Ministry of Defence revealed records confirming that a squadron had taken off at noon on 15 December 1944 to attack the railway yards at Steigen. The records further confirmed that the force had to be recalled before they even entered German-controlled airspace, and that the planes were ordered to jettison their bombs in the South Jettison Area.
A Ministry of Defence letter was eventually issued by Munday to Fred Shaw in 1985, stating that:
Until your story appeared in the South African press in 1984, the RAF had always regarded Miller's death as a strictly USAAF matter, as the result of some sort of flying accident, probably as a result of poor weather conditions. We have received letters at various times asking about it, some of which put forth theories, some feasible, and some not so feasible.
Up until 1984, the only RAF connection was that Miller's plane had taken off from the RAF airfield at Twinwood Farms, Bedfordshire in weather conditions which could be described as marginal, or at least marginal for that type of aircraft.
Your story, to a greater extent, changed this, and we carried out an investigation earlier this year into the aborted bomber operation of 15 Dec. 1944. Because the operation was aborted, there is no raid report on B(omber) C(ommand) records, as would have been customary with a completed operation. We did find reference to the intended course.
Shaw's documents were eventually sold by Mrs Shaw, who, according to her daughter Cheryl Fillmore of Southampton, believed that the material should not rot in a drawer but be made available to those who were interested in the matter. The documents were sold by Sotheby's on 13 April 1999 for a grand sum of £22,000.
The logbook of Derek Thurman, the flight engineer on board Shaw's Lancaster, surfaced in 2000, corroborating Shaw's testimonial. Thurman had written that when the bombs were away, three crew members on board the plane had spotted a light aircraft below, which seemed to have been downed by the hail of explosives. The bomb aimer saw it first from the nose and commented on it, whereupon the navigator shot out of his seat to the side blister (window) to have a look. He saw the plane whip by. Seconds later, the rear gunner called in to say: 'It's gone in, flipped over and gone in.' Thurman's logbook was also sold by Sotheby's, fetching a paltry sum of $880.
Arguments against Shaw's Testimonial and Nesbit's Report
In 2003 Howard Roth, who had been a B-17 pilot in the 306th Bomb Group during WWII, argued about certain discrepancies in Shaw's story and loopholes in Nesbit's reasonings.
1. The Dubious Nature of Shaw's Public Testimonial
The first discrepancy he pointed out was the testimonial Shaw had given to both The History Channel (THC) and the Public PBS. Shaw had initially identified the downed plane as 'a sort of Norseman' while giving the THC interview; later, when he was on PBS he'd changed it and stated explicitly that the plane had been a 'Noorduyn Norseman'. He had never mentioned bombs during the THC interview; it had only surfaced during the PBS one. Furthermore, Roth pointed out, with a combined speed of about 300 mph, very low visibility, and the fact that the plane downed was a small one, how could Shaw have seen the Norseman flip over? The plane would more likely have disintegrated.
Roth also pointed out that Shaw's initial reluctance to come forward to report the crash because 'he didn't want to get involved in a long drawn-out hearing', and his connection of the plane with Miller only 12 years later made no sense. Because of the incredibly high Air Force casualty rates, an average of one in four planes would not return from any given mission; the debriefing would surely have taken less than 30 minutes. And then there was the question of Shaw's logbook, which contained two different styles of handwriting - when Roth had pointed it out to Victor Gregory, the pilot had claimed, 'that's my handwriting - I often filled in log books if the lazy b****rs hadn't done it', therefore casting further doubt upon the veracity of Shaw's claim. And of course - why had it taken Shaw so long to make the connection? The bombing had been broadcast all over England, as had the mysterious disappearance of Glenn Miller. Moreover, failure to report a plane - especially a friendly - going down was nothing short of unforgivable7.
2. The mystery bomb jettison area
And then there was the deal with the jettison of bombs, and where it happened. Nesbit and Shaw had both asserted that it was in the South Jettison Area; however, RAF pilot Ken Blythe, who had flown Halifax bombers during the war, stated that the jettison zone had been in the North Sea; he'd never so much as heard of the south one. Ron Brown, who had served on one of the Lancasters, had confirmed this, and had added that visibility was so bad that on occasions they could only see as far as their Lancaster's wing tips.
Furthermore, the allegation that a bomb had exploded upon jettison, Roth argued, was a serious one. The bombs were not designed to detonate on water impact; had they done so, there would not have been a bomb group to speak of, let alone Glenn Miller's aeroplane!
3. The undetermined flight route
And then there was the flight path to consider. Apparently Nesbit and Shaw had detailed different routes - Nesbit had claimed the plane took the SHAEF shuttle path; Shaw had put Miller's plane on a straight path from England to Paris; neither the RAF nor Miller's flight path was actually known. Anyway, the flight path Shaw stated made no sense - flying straight to Paris from Twinwood would have taken the plane right over London, which was playing host to an onslaught of V1s and V2s as well as barrage balloons. Furthermore, when Roth had scrutinised Shaw's flight map, he'd noticed that the jettison zone was nowhere near Miller's alleged route.
While the SHAEF shuttle might very well have caused Miller's plane to stray into the bomb drop zone had a pilot used an inaccurate magnetic compass, the fact was that, despite its supposed equipment deficiencies8, the Norseman had a highly accurate gyro compass as almost enough blind flying instruments to match those of the B-17's. With competent navigation instrumentation, it was highly unlikely that Miller's plane would have strayed from its flight path9.
4. Time Difference
Nesbit's explanation for the time discrepancy made no sense either. He had calculated that, what with the difference between local time and Greenwich Mean Time, Miller's plane could very well have strayed into the path of Lancasters. However, Nesbit had apparently neglected the fact that England, at the time, was on Greenwich Mean Time10. Taking this adjustment into consideration, the Lancasters and Miller's plane would have been at least 250-300 miles apart, and the bombers should have landed even before the Norseman took to flight.
So might Shaw's crew have gotten it wrong? Is it possible that the plane they'd seen plunging into the English Channel was not the Norseman carrying Miller to Paris? The reader is advised to personally go over the pertaining data and arrive at his or her conclusion.
Miscellaneous Crackpot Theories
Other theories to be included under the Utterly Ridiculous heading are: that Miller had been a spy and had subsequently been killed; that he had been the victim of black marketers; that US agents marked Miller for death because he was threatening to expose a cabal of gay US officers; that had accidentally been shot by an MP in Paris; that a German assassination squad had been sent to shoot down Miller's plane; that Miller had been abducted by aliens who'd apparently been interested in studying/dissecting him11. All of these theories hinted at the US military performing an incredible cover-up to preserve morale.
Of all the conspiracy theorists, Dr. Chris Valenti of Bigband Radio was by far the most active. He harassed the Government for the same files they'd allegedly supplied to the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte through the Freedom of Information Act; however, the five documents that arrived on his doorstep two years later were nothing short of disappointing. The documents were: (1) a letter (dated 12 February, 1945) notifying Helen Miller that her husband had been reported missing since 15 December, 1944; (2) a letter from Major General Edward F Witsell to George Eyermen (dated 21 January, 1946), requesting information concerning Major Miller, which Eyermen informed a Jimmie Fidler about at an earlier date; (3) a reply from Eyermen (dated 30 January, 1946) stating that the said information was in fact an inquiry, and that Eyermen had been misrepresented; (4) a letter from Asst Adjutant General JW Donnelly to Helen Miller (dated 6 September, 1946), stating that there was no further information pertaining to her husband's plane; and (5) a letter of inquiry (dated 30 September, 1946) from Miller's attorney David McKay, requesting that investigation be carried out upon the parts of a plane that had been found on Brittany beach, identified to be Miller's.
Annoyed, Valenti had apparently hired an agency to dig up more dirt from military, FBI and CIA records. This apparently led to Valenti receiving a phone call from an unnamed government official who had threatened Valenti and his family's lives if the 'smoking gun' findings he'd uncovered were ever revealed. Valenti had apparently kept quiet for two years until an unnamed doctor had come forward to corroborate his findings (see Theory 1). Supposedly, two days before Valenti's public broadcast, the official had called again with another threat – this time, leaving his warning on Valenti's voice mail, which Valenti audaciously aired for everybody to hear.
Epilogue
While romantic speculations of Miller having been the unfortunate victim of a vicious conspiracy may be appealing to those with rose-tinted glasses, the fact is that his death is far more likely attributed to a series of unfortunate accidents than it is to him having been silenced or the government having covered up an embarrassing situation.
However, we may never know for sure what happened in the final minutes of Miller's life. All we know is that he and his companions had boarded a plane, never to be seen again, and the world of swing music is a much poorer place for his passing.
Part 1: Glenn Miller (1904-1944)
References
Online International Newspaper Articles
BBC News: Bomb Clue to Glenn Miller Mystery
Guardian UK: Glenn Miller Died under 'Hail of British Bombs'
Netlondon.com:Does a wartime logbook solve the mystery of Glenn Miller disappearance?
New York Times: RAF Bombs May Have Downed Glenn Miller Plane
Various Organisations
The Doe Network: Case File 496DMDEU
Glenn Miller Museum: Glenn Miller's Last Stop
Howard Roth Summary: Correspondence
Skygaze.com: Glenn Miller
The Scotsman: It Did Mean a Thing
Other Resources
Chris Valenti's Glenn Miller files
Fred Shaw's flight map
Glenn Miller Conspiracy Finally Exposed!
The Glenn Miller Mystery
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board Report
Related BBC Links
Explore the past with BBC History.
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1 And then later to major
2 Three miles north of Bedford
3 It would seem that Lt Col Baessell made the trip safely as well, but later died while engaged in battle with the Germans.
4 Howard Roth would later contradict this: see Theory Four
5 Lancasters could carry 8000 pounds of four-pound incendiary bombs in 500-pound containers; some of them carried 4000-pound Blockbuster bombs and incendiaries.
6 Slang for aeroplane
7 Roth hinted at Nesbit's professional hypocrisy - that Nesbit had insisted it was unnecessary to report a downed plane if there was no hope for the crew, and yet at the same time he relied on such reports as a historian, for historical conclusions.
8 As stated earlier by Atkinson.
9 And anyway, putting a VIP shuttle route right through a drop zone would have been nothing short of tactical suicide.
10 Which could be verified by USAAF Group navigators, or even with the British air historian Roger Freeman who had written several 8th USAAF documentaries. The pilots needed every extra hour of daylight they could get.
11 In fact, it was suggested that all the musicians who'd mysteriously vanished - including Jim Reeves and Buddy Holly - had been beamed up by Scotty.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2654822
monkalup - July 20, 2008 05:29 PM (GMT)
