One foggy afternoon in mid-December 1944, a plane carrying legendary US bandleader Glenn Miller vanished over the English Channel whilst en route to France. Miller was at the height of his popularity and his mysterious disappearance 80 years ago, at the height of World War II, caused shockwaves across the world. Speculation has continued ever since as to what happened on that fateful day to the man whose music has become synonymous with the wartime era.
Miller was just 40 years of age at the time of his disappearance. Born in the small town of Clarinda in Iowa, Alton Glenn Miller came from a family of music lovers and had already taught himself to play the mandolin and horn before being given his first trombone at around the age of 12. During his teenage years, the family lived in Fort Morgan, Colorado, where Miller played trombone in the high school band, and by the time he graduated he had already decided to become a professional musician.
For over a decade, Miller worked as a freelance trombonist, playing alongside many other great jazz musicians of the era like Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. He also honed his skills as a musical arranger, studying with the legendary Joseph Schillinger, before finally forming his own band in 1937.
By this stage, the big band sound was beginning to dominate the music scene, but Miller’s first ensemble did not prove commercially successful and was soon disbanded. He continued to persevere, though, forming a new band and experimenting with many different combinations of instruments and musical arrangements before finally coming up with the distinctive clarinet-led “Miller sound” that was to make his name.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra received its big break in 1939, when it was booked for the summer season at the prestigious Glen Island Casino on Long Island. Live radio broadcasts from this venue were transmitted across the nation and Miller’s big band became the hottest new act of that summer. Over the following two or three years, the Glenn Miller Orchestra enjoyed unrivalled popularity with a string of hit records including In The Mood, Moonlight Serenade and Little Brown Jug. The band even starred in its own 1941 Hollywood movie, Sun Valley Serenade. The movie’s stand-out hit, Chattanooga Choo Choo, was nominated for an Oscar and became the first song to receive a gold record for selling over one million copies.
When the USA entered World War II following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Miller was at the height of his commercial success. As a 38-year-old with prescription eyeglasses, the bandleader was exempt from compulsory conscription, but he was still keen to play an active role in the war effort. He offered to form a new Air Force band, writing to military leaders that it would “put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts”. In late September 1942, the Glenn Miller Orchestra made its farewell appearance at the Central Theater in Passaic, New Jersey. Just days later, Miller reported for military service.
The Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band staged performances across the USA and was given its own regular Saturday night radio show, as well as becoming involved in NBC’s Star Parade broadcasts, which were designed to promote the sale of US Treasury war bonds. This caused Miller to remark once that he didn’t want to spend the entire war selling bonds but would rather be closer to the action in Europe.
Following the D-Day landings in the early summer of 1944, the legendary bandleader was finally granted his wish when his Army Air Force Band was transferred to England in a bid to boost the morale of the vast numbers of US servicemen now stationed there. For the next six months Miller and his band undertook a grueling touring schedule, playing concert after concert at airbases, military hospitals and munitions factories all over the country, as well as recording hundreds of radio shows to entertain Allied troops.
Yet Miller still wanted to contribute more and pushed hard for his band to travel to continental Europe, where the Allies were now making significant headway. Eventually, in early December, he was given the go-ahead to prepare for a short tour of France, with the first concert due to be broadcast from the recently liberated Paris on Christmas Day.
With the band scheduled to fly to Paris on December 16, Miller was anxious to arrive there ahead of time to ensure that all the necessary arrangements were in place. However, he was thwarted by several days of bad weather, meaning that regular military shuttle flights to France were canceled. As one of the US Air Force’s most high-profile officers, Miller would have been expected to gain official clearance before taking any flight. However, on December 15, he appears to have taken the fatal decision to swerve official protocol and accept an offer of a ride on a UC-64A Norseman US transport plane.
Heading for France, the plane took off in heavy fog from RAF Twinwood Farm, near Bedford, just before 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but never reached its destination. Along with his fellow passenger Lieutenant Colonel Norman Baessell, and the plane’s pilot, Flight Officer John Morgan, Miller was never seen alive again.
It only became apparent that Miller was missing two days later when his band members arrived in Paris to discover that he wasn’t there. The UC-64A Norseman had already been reported as missing over the English Channel, but only the pilot, Morgan, was listed as having been on board. Miller and Baessell’s presence on the plane only became apparent when the band’s manager, Lieutenant Don Haynes, came forward to report that he had driven them to the airbase that afternoon to board the doomed cross-Channel flight.
Miller’s disappearance was not reported to the wider public until Christmas Eve. Despite the loss of its leader, the band went ahead with its planned live broadcast from Paris the following day and continued to perform regularly thereafter until the end of the war.
From the start, a variety of rumors circulated as to Miller’s fate. Early newspaper reports suggested that he had been captured in France by the enemy and was being held prisoner. Now believed to have been the result of deliberate Nazi disinformation, another more lurid story circulated that he had been discovered dead in a Paris brothel and Miller’s presence on the missing plane was fabricated to cover up the sordid truth.
It has even been claimed that at the time Miller went missing, the bandleader was acting as an American secret agent and was assassinated whilst on a top-level mission to end the war. Supporters of this theory point to the fact that some of Miller’s broadcasts were used for propaganda purposes, with the bandleader even speaking briefly in German on occasion to appeal directly to the enemy. Yet, despite extensive research, no direct evidence has ever been uncovered to suggest that Miller operated as a spy.
Long after the war had ended, a former British RAF navigator came forward to suggest that Miller’s plane had been destroyed by friendly fire. The veteran airman claimed that on the December 1944 afternoon in question, he was on board one of over 100 Lancaster bombers returning from an aborted mission to Germany. All of the planes jettisoned their unused explosives over the English Channel, with one unintentionally scoring a direct hit on the UC-64A Norseman in the process.
The news that such a high-profile personality had been killed by friendly fire would have certainly proved controversial and damaging to wartime morale, so the authorities may well have deliberately concealed such an incident. However, the most likely explanation as to Miller’s disappearance remains probably the most prosaic of all: mechanical failure.
Aviation experts point to a known defect with the carburetor of the UC-64A Norseman which, in wintry conditions typical of a cold December afternoon, prevented the regular flow of fuel to the engine. With little notice that the engine was about to cut out, the pilot, Morgan, would have been presumably unable to prevent the doomed plane crashing into the sea and probably exploding on impact.
In accordance with usual practice, Miller was officially declared dead a year and a day after being declared missing in action. When he was awarded a Bronze Star Medal posthumously, the citation described his contribution to “the morale of the armed forces” as “little less than sensational”. Today, the music of the big band era, which once dominated the airwaves, has been largely forgotten. Yet, Glenn Miller’s legacy still lives on, fueled at least in part by the continuing mystery of his untimely death.
