Looking Back - Reminiscing with Jack Lebo
Remembering The Mysterious Disappearance Of Glenn Miller
As a young teenager, I was always a huge collector of 78 RPM recordings, including many bearing the Bluebird label. My favorite has always been those of Glenn Miller and his Orchestra.
I was shocked and saddened in December 1944 when I heard the news of the disappearance of Major Miller, when he served in the Army Air Force during World War II. In the last year of World War II, the disappearance of famed of Miller — en route from England to entertain troops on the European continent — shocked his fans.
The mystery apparently remained unsolved for almost four decades...and in fact is still shrouded in controversy.
On December 15, 1944, Major Glenn Miller climbed into a single-engine Norseman O aircraft at a military airstrip near Bedford some 40 miles north of London. He was scheduled to lead his acclaimed United States Army Air Forces Band in a Christmas concert for Allied troops the next week in liberated Paris.
At the last moment, he had asked for a change in his orders so that he could precede the band to France. A chance encounter at an officers’ club the previous evening had earned Miller space on the small plane that was defying the rain and fog to make this hop across the English Channel.
Always nervous about flying, Miller expressed doubt about the single-engine plane. His fellow passenger, Colonel Norman Baesell, reminded him that Lindbergh made it across the Atlantic Ocean on one engine; they were flying only to Paris. “Hey, where in the hell are the parachutes?” Miller asked. “What’s the matter, Miller, do you want to live forever?” the colonel joked in reply. Shortly there after, the Norseman took off in the dense fog and disappeared forever.
Not until December 24 — after Miller’s wife back home in New Jersey had been notified — was it announced that the famous bandleader was missing. Preoccupied with far larger problems in this decisive phase of the war in Europe, the American high command assumed that the Norseman had crashed into the Channel when its wings iced over or its engine failed. There was no searched or inquiry into the tragedy.
Friends and fans of the popular swing musician were not satisfied with the official explanation. Wild rumors were soon circulating: Miller’s plane had been shot down by the Germans and the horribly crippled and disfigured bandleader was hidden in a hospital somewhere; he had been killed in a brawl in a Parisian brothel; Colonel Baesell, involved in a black-market delivery, had shot both Miller and the pilot and landed the plane in France; the high command had terminated Miller as a German spy.
Despite the absurdity of such stories, the disappearance has never been fully explained, and legends about the lost musician who entranced millions with his smooth rhythms continue to thrive.
Success had come to Glenn Miller in 1939 at the age of 35. A college dropout, he had joined Ben Pollack’s band as a trombonist and arranger 15 years earlier on the West Coast. He later performed with such well-known bands of the 1920s and 1930s as those of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols, Smith Ballew, and Benny Goodman, the “King of Swing,” who called Miller “a dedicated musician.”
The slender, serious looking young man with rimless glasses brought a meticulous perfectionism to music-making as he worked on developing a distinct sound: velvety soft, smooth, supple, independent of soloist. After failing to make the big time with his first orchestra, Miller formed a second group in 1938 and early the next year got prized bookings at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, NY, and the Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, NJ.
In the autumn of 1939, the new Glenn Miller band went on national radio, and before long, young people from New York to San Francisco were dancing cheek-to-cheek to such hit tunes as, “In the Mood,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “Tuxedo Junction,” “String of Pearls,” and the Miller theme song, “Moonlight Serenade.”
In 1940, his gross income was $800,000, and the next year, his band made the first of two movie appearances in “Sun Valley Serenade,” starring Sonja Henie. Miller’s recording of the film’s hit song, “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” sold a million copies and earned him a gold disc from RCA Victor. Humorously modest about his success, he once joked, “It’s an inspiring sight to look down from the balcony on the heads of 7,000 people swaying on a dance floor — especially when you are getting $600 for every thousand of them.” Asked if he wanted to be the new “King of Swing, he said, “I’d rather have a reputation as one of the best all-round bands. Versatility, more than anything else, is what I want to accomplish.”
Eight months after America entered World War II, Glenn Miller gave up his phenomenally successful career to volunteer his services to the military; in the autumn of 1942, he was commissioned a captain in the U.S. Army. Seeking out other musicians drafted or volunteering for service, Miller formed the U.S. Army Air Forces Band, which by the next year was playing for cadets training at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. But when he introduced swing music into marches, a senior officer reminded him that John Philip Sousa’s music had been good enough for World War I. “Are you still flying the same planes you flew in the last war, too?” he asked. The military accepted swing.
On cross-country tours, the AAF Band raised millions for the war bond drives, but nonetheless Miller felt that he was not doing enough. Finally, in June 1944, he got approval to take his band overseas to play for the troops stationed in England. In the next five and a half months, the band played 71 concerts — the biggest morale booster for his men, one general commented, “next to a letter from home.”
The concerts were broadcast over the Allied Expeditionary Forces network, beamed at troops in Britain and on the European continent. Programs on the British Broadcasting Company quickly ended, however, when a director insisted that the band play at a constant volume; listeners in remote areas weren’t hearing the softer music. Nonetheless, Glenn Miller gained some “civilian” fans as well. Presented to the queen of England, Miller learned that the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose listened to his broadcasts almost nightly.
In December came the orders to take the show to France. Sitting up almost all night on the 14th, Glenn Miller discussed with his friend, his plans for a postwar band and eventual retirement on a ranch he had bought in California.
“Glenn Miller did not die in a plane crash over the Channel, but from lung cancer in a hospital.” With this startling statement, the bandleader’s younger brother, Herb Miller, broke a nearly 40-year silence in 1983. Miller had indeed boarded the Norseman at the airstrip outside of London on December 15, 1944. But when the airplane landed a half hour later, he was taken to a military hospital where he died the following day. It was Herb Miller who fabricated the story about the crash, because his brother had wanted to die as a hero and not “in a lousy bed.”
Herb Miller tried to substantiate his story with a letter that the chain-smoking musician had written in the summer of 1944: “I am totally emaciated, although I am eating enough. I have trouble breathing. I think I am very ill.” Because there was no crash, the younger Miller claimed, there was no need for a search or an inquiry. Moreover, the official weather report for December 15 listed a temperature of 41 degrees Fahrenheit — not cold enough to have caused the wings to ice over. Both the pilot of the Norseman and Glenn Miller’s fellow passenger, Colonel Baesell, had died later in battle with the Germans. His brother was probably buried in a mass grave at some military cemetery in Britain, according to Herb Miller.
Supporting this story is the fact that Glenn Miller seemed to be depressed, irritable, and exhausted during the last few months of his life, suffering from what he described as repeated sinus attacks. According to Don Haynes, Glenn Miller’s executive officer and manager of the AAF Band, the bandleader had lost a lot of weight and his tailor-made uniforms “didn’t fit him well at all. They merely hung on him.” George Voutsas, the director of his military programs, remembered a late night discussion of postwar plans. “I don’t know why I spend time making plans like this,” Miller sighed. “You know George, I have an awful feeling you guys are going home without me....”
Herb Miller’s version of his brother’s death has not been substantiated by U.S. Military authorities, but former British airmen have come up with a more plausible explanation for the famous musician’s disappearance. A 30-year-old movie prompted the revelation.
In 1955, James Stewart and June Allyson co-starred as Glenn Miller and his wife, Helen, in the film, “The Glenn Miller Story.” After seeing it, a former Royal Air Force navigator, Fred Shaw, tried to present his own theory about the fate of the Norseman to the press, but it was rebuffed. Not until 1984 did Shaw, then living in South Africa, see the movie again. This time, he succeeded in getting the story published.
On December 15, 1944, Shaw was aboard a Lancaster bomber returning from an aborted raid on Germany. Approaching the south coast of England, the bombardier jettisoned his payload, including a 4,000-pound bomb called a “cookie,” which exploded several feet above the surface of the sea. As Shaw looked out to see the explosion, he spotted a Norseman flying below. A moment later, the rear gunner called over the intercom: “Did you see that kite (slang for plane) go by?” Shock waves from the explosion, Shaw explained, could have knocked the small aircraft out of the sky.
In England, a member of the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society wrote the British Defense Ministry and placed an advertisement in the R.A.F. Association Journal for information that would confirm Shaw’s story. The Lancaster’s pilot, Victory Gregory answered the ad.
Although he himself had seen nothing, Gregory confirmed that his navigator, Shaw, had seen a Norseman flying below and that the rear gunner, since deceased, had reported it falling into the sea. Since his mission had been aborted, there was no debriefing, and Gregory never mentioned the incident to his superiors. “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.” His concern was getting home safely from the raid.
Shaw’s story led to an investigation by the British Defense Ministry’s Air Historical Branch. Up until that time, the R.A.F. had considered Miller’s disappearance strictly an American matter. Yet, the Norseman in which Miller had vanished took off from a British airfield and was known to be headed for France — although no flight plan was filed. The Norseman and the bomber could have crossed in flight, the report concluded, or they could have been miles apart.
The true story of Glenn Miller’s disappearance will probably never be known — and perhaps, after all these years, it may not really matter. What is important is his music. On January 17, 1946, only five months after the end of World War II and 13 months after the Norseman vanished, the Glenn Miller Orchestra under the direction of Tex Beneke, made its successful debut at New York City’s Capitol Theatre. For the next five years, it continued to delight audiences with the familiar and well-loved songs of the Swing Era.
Later, the success of the Glenn Miller Story led to a reissue of many old recordings and a revived Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1956. What most delighted the band members playing into the 1970s were audiences too young to have heard Glenn Miller himself, but who clearly wanted to continue hearing the smooth Glenn Miller sound.
Author’s Note:
A close friend, and a WWII veteran, Mickey Green, of Bryn Mawr, PA, who just turned 90 years of age, recalls quite vividly that fateful day. He was in that same Paris Theatre, waiting for the arrival of Major Glenn Miller and his famed AAF Orchestra.
According to Mickey, “During the lengthy wait, the theatre presented a dancer who was promptly booed off of the stage. Then, came a singer, who received the same treatment. After all, this overflow GI audience came to see and hear the great Glenn Miller and his famed AAF Orchestra.”
Following a very long wait, an announcement was made informing the anxious audience that the Miller Band was delayed in arriving in Paris. The date was December 15, 1944, the very same day that Glenn’s aircraft disappeared in the English Channel. Not a word was announced to the waiting GI audience. The news was not released word-wide until a few days later.
*
Looking Back appears each month. Do you have a memory you’d like to share? Drop a line to: Jack Lebo, Looking Back, 37 Locust Lane, Levittown, PA 19054, or call (215) 943-8870, email: jacklebo@verizon.net.
As a young teenager, I was always a huge collector of 78 RPM recordings, including many bearing the Bluebird label. My favorite has always been those of Glenn Miller and his Orchestra.
I was shocked and saddened in December 1944 when I heard the news of the disappearance of Major Miller, when he served in the Army Air Force during World War II. In the last year of World War II, the disappearance of famed of Miller — en route from England to entertain troops on the European continent — shocked his fans.
The mystery apparently remained unsolved for almost four decades...and in fact is still shrouded in controversy.
On December 15, 1944, Major Glenn Miller climbed into a single-engine Norseman O aircraft at a military airstrip near Bedford some 40 miles north of London. He was scheduled to lead his acclaimed United States Army Air Forces Band in a Christmas concert for Allied troops the next week in liberated Paris.
At the last moment, he had asked for a change in his orders so that he could precede the band to France. A chance encounter at an officers’ club the previous evening had earned Miller space on the small plane that was defying the rain and fog to make this hop across the English Channel.
Always nervous about flying, Miller expressed doubt about the single-engine plane. His fellow passenger, Colonel Norman Baesell, reminded him that Lindbergh made it across the Atlantic Ocean on one engine; they were flying only to Paris. “Hey, where in the hell are the parachutes?” Miller asked. “What’s the matter, Miller, do you want to live forever?” the colonel joked in reply. Shortly there after, the Norseman took off in the dense fog and disappeared forever.
Not until December 24 — after Miller’s wife back home in New Jersey had been notified — was it announced that the famous bandleader was missing. Preoccupied with far larger problems in this decisive phase of the war in Europe, the American high command assumed that the Norseman had crashed into the Channel when its wings iced over or its engine failed. There was no searched or inquiry into the tragedy.
Friends and fans of the popular swing musician were not satisfied with the official explanation. Wild rumors were soon circulating: Miller’s plane had been shot down by the Germans and the horribly crippled and disfigured bandleader was hidden in a hospital somewhere; he had been killed in a brawl in a Parisian brothel; Colonel Baesell, involved in a black-market delivery, had shot both Miller and the pilot and landed the plane in France; the high command had terminated Miller as a German spy.
Despite the absurdity of such stories, the disappearance has never been fully explained, and legends about the lost musician who entranced millions with his smooth rhythms continue to thrive.
Success had come to Glenn Miller in 1939 at the age of 35. A college dropout, he had joined Ben Pollack’s band as a trombonist and arranger 15 years earlier on the West Coast. He later performed with such well-known bands of the 1920s and 1930s as those of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols, Smith Ballew, and Benny Goodman, the “King of Swing,” who called Miller “a dedicated musician.”
The slender, serious looking young man with rimless glasses brought a meticulous perfectionism to music-making as he worked on developing a distinct sound: velvety soft, smooth, supple, independent of soloist. After failing to make the big time with his first orchestra, Miller formed a second group in 1938 and early the next year got prized bookings at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, NY, and the Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, NJ.
In the autumn of 1939, the new Glenn Miller band went on national radio, and before long, young people from New York to San Francisco were dancing cheek-to-cheek to such hit tunes as, “In the Mood,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “Tuxedo Junction,” “String of Pearls,” and the Miller theme song, “Moonlight Serenade.”
In 1940, his gross income was $800,000, and the next year, his band made the first of two movie appearances in “Sun Valley Serenade,” starring Sonja Henie. Miller’s recording of the film’s hit song, “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” sold a million copies and earned him a gold disc from RCA Victor. Humorously modest about his success, he once joked, “It’s an inspiring sight to look down from the balcony on the heads of 7,000 people swaying on a dance floor — especially when you are getting $600 for every thousand of them.” Asked if he wanted to be the new “King of Swing, he said, “I’d rather have a reputation as one of the best all-round bands. Versatility, more than anything else, is what I want to accomplish.”
Eight months after America entered World War II, Glenn Miller gave up his phenomenally successful career to volunteer his services to the military; in the autumn of 1942, he was commissioned a captain in the U.S. Army. Seeking out other musicians drafted or volunteering for service, Miller formed the U.S. Army Air Forces Band, which by the next year was playing for cadets training at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. But when he introduced swing music into marches, a senior officer reminded him that John Philip Sousa’s music had been good enough for World War I. “Are you still flying the same planes you flew in the last war, too?” he asked. The military accepted swing.
On cross-country tours, the AAF Band raised millions for the war bond drives, but nonetheless Miller felt that he was not doing enough. Finally, in June 1944, he got approval to take his band overseas to play for the troops stationed in England. In the next five and a half months, the band played 71 concerts — the biggest morale booster for his men, one general commented, “next to a letter from home.”
The concerts were broadcast over the Allied Expeditionary Forces network, beamed at troops in Britain and on the European continent. Programs on the British Broadcasting Company quickly ended, however, when a director insisted that the band play at a constant volume; listeners in remote areas weren’t hearing the softer music. Nonetheless, Glenn Miller gained some “civilian” fans as well. Presented to the queen of England, Miller learned that the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose listened to his broadcasts almost nightly.
In December came the orders to take the show to France. Sitting up almost all night on the 14th, Glenn Miller discussed with his friend, his plans for a postwar band and eventual retirement on a ranch he had bought in California.
“Glenn Miller did not die in a plane crash over the Channel, but from lung cancer in a hospital.” With this startling statement, the bandleader’s younger brother, Herb Miller, broke a nearly 40-year silence in 1983. Miller had indeed boarded the Norseman at the airstrip outside of London on December 15, 1944. But when the airplane landed a half hour later, he was taken to a military hospital where he died the following day. It was Herb Miller who fabricated the story about the crash, because his brother had wanted to die as a hero and not “in a lousy bed.”
Herb Miller tried to substantiate his story with a letter that the chain-smoking musician had written in the summer of 1944: “I am totally emaciated, although I am eating enough. I have trouble breathing. I think I am very ill.” Because there was no crash, the younger Miller claimed, there was no need for a search or an inquiry. Moreover, the official weather report for December 15 listed a temperature of 41 degrees Fahrenheit — not cold enough to have caused the wings to ice over. Both the pilot of the Norseman and Glenn Miller’s fellow passenger, Colonel Baesell, had died later in battle with the Germans. His brother was probably buried in a mass grave at some military cemetery in Britain, according to Herb Miller.
Supporting this story is the fact that Glenn Miller seemed to be depressed, irritable, and exhausted during the last few months of his life, suffering from what he described as repeated sinus attacks. According to Don Haynes, Glenn Miller’s executive officer and manager of the AAF Band, the bandleader had lost a lot of weight and his tailor-made uniforms “didn’t fit him well at all. They merely hung on him.” George Voutsas, the director of his military programs, remembered a late night discussion of postwar plans. “I don’t know why I spend time making plans like this,” Miller sighed. “You know George, I have an awful feeling you guys are going home without me....”
Herb Miller’s version of his brother’s death has not been substantiated by U.S. Military authorities, but former British airmen have come up with a more plausible explanation for the famous musician’s disappearance. A 30-year-old movie prompted the revelation.
In 1955, James Stewart and June Allyson co-starred as Glenn Miller and his wife, Helen, in the film, “The Glenn Miller Story.” After seeing it, a former Royal Air Force navigator, Fred Shaw, tried to present his own theory about the fate of the Norseman to the press, but it was rebuffed. Not until 1984 did Shaw, then living in South Africa, see the movie again. This time, he succeeded in getting the story published.
On December 15, 1944, Shaw was aboard a Lancaster bomber returning from an aborted raid on Germany. Approaching the south coast of England, the bombardier jettisoned his payload, including a 4,000-pound bomb called a “cookie,” which exploded several feet above the surface of the sea. As Shaw looked out to see the explosion, he spotted a Norseman flying below. A moment later, the rear gunner called over the intercom: “Did you see that kite (slang for plane) go by?” Shock waves from the explosion, Shaw explained, could have knocked the small aircraft out of the sky.
In England, a member of the Glenn Miller Appreciation Society wrote the British Defense Ministry and placed an advertisement in the R.A.F. Association Journal for information that would confirm Shaw’s story. The Lancaster’s pilot, Victory Gregory answered the ad.
Although he himself had seen nothing, Gregory confirmed that his navigator, Shaw, had seen a Norseman flying below and that the rear gunner, since deceased, had reported it falling into the sea. Since his mission had been aborted, there was no debriefing, and Gregory never mentioned the incident to his superiors. “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.” His concern was getting home safely from the raid.
Shaw’s story led to an investigation by the British Defense Ministry’s Air Historical Branch. Up until that time, the R.A.F. had considered Miller’s disappearance strictly an American matter. Yet, the Norseman in which Miller had vanished took off from a British airfield and was known to be headed for France — although no flight plan was filed. The Norseman and the bomber could have crossed in flight, the report concluded, or they could have been miles apart.
The true story of Glenn Miller’s disappearance will probably never be known — and perhaps, after all these years, it may not really matter. What is important is his music. On January 17, 1946, only five months after the end of World War II and 13 months after the Norseman vanished, the Glenn Miller Orchestra under the direction of Tex Beneke, made its successful debut at New York City’s Capitol Theatre. For the next five years, it continued to delight audiences with the familiar and well-loved songs of the Swing Era.
Later, the success of the Glenn Miller Story led to a reissue of many old recordings and a revived Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1956. What most delighted the band members playing into the 1970s were audiences too young to have heard Glenn Miller himself, but who clearly wanted to continue hearing the smooth Glenn Miller sound.
Author’s Note:
A close friend, and a WWII veteran, Mickey Green, of Bryn Mawr, PA, who just turned 90 years of age, recalls quite vividly that fateful day. He was in that same Paris Theatre, waiting for the arrival of Major Glenn Miller and his famed AAF Orchestra.
According to Mickey, “During the lengthy wait, the theatre presented a dancer who was promptly booed off of the stage. Then, came a singer, who received the same treatment. After all, this overflow GI audience came to see and hear the great Glenn Miller and his famed AAF Orchestra.”
Following a very long wait, an announcement was made informing the anxious audience that the Miller Band was delayed in arriving in Paris. The date was December 15, 1944, the very same day that Glenn’s aircraft disappeared in the English Channel. Not a word was announced to the waiting GI audience. The news was not released word-wide until a few days later.
*
Looking Back appears each month. Do you have a memory you’d like to share? Drop a line to: Jack Lebo, Looking Back, 37 Locust Lane, Levittown, PA 19054, or call (215) 943-8870, email: jacklebo@verizon.net.
