Already done.

@@georgeharrisonfan75 Correct, no one except for a few diehard conspiracy types have ever claimed that anything - debris OR remains - was ever recovered. The location and condition of the debris in this story make it unlikely - but definitely not impossible - to have been Miller's plane however, so any final resolution is still wide open. And at the risk of sounding a bit ghoulish, people who deal with such things have said the chances are near zero that there'd be any identifiable remains after nearly 80 years.

We all do.

In the mood

Me, too. I was born in the 50s but I used to love to dance to his music, especially "In the Mood".

Same

Us too

The 'plane has been found.

@@daveday5507 ---> W H E R E I S T H E P L A N E ?

The plane went down at an unknown point over the Channel, which leaves a LOT of territory to search. The plane's airframe was mostly metal tubing and wood so there'd be almost nothing left after years underwater. The engine and cowling of a Norseman are about its only substantial metal pieces, meaning what's left of Miller's craft is about the size of a Smart car stuck on the seabed with maybe 3000 years of other junk that's also fallen into the ocean. I spoke with the head of an aircraft-recovery group who said the proverbial needle in a haystack would be easier to find.

It hasnt been definitively found.

How many people were in his orchestra? Generations past dont seem to appreciate older music, and thats a shame, because Glen Miller, and even guys like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven had more talent in their pinky finger than modern musicians have in their entire bodies. To be able write parts for that many people and instruments, to me, takes genius. As much as I love The Beatles, all they really had to write for their hits, was three chords and a chorus.

@@chocolatetownforever7537 I'm not sure if you're asking how many people were in each orchestra at any given time, or how many people were members of his bands and their successors since 1937. I don't feel qualified to answer the second question - that's probably a candidate for the uber-experts at the U. of Colorado - but his two civilian bands pretty much had standard makeups for their time. The '37 band had 13 or 14 members, while the '38-'42 edition ranged from ~15 to ~18, more if you count two vocalists and the Modernaires. The AAF group was unique. It comprised an expanded dance band with 23 or 24 members (although usually not all of them performed at the same time) combined with a 21-member string section and half a dozen or so vocalists. That massive outfit was subdivided into various smaller groups for performances and recordings: the full concert orchestra, the dance band, the string section, and a couple of small jazz combos. Never formed before, and sadly never equalled after.

Several years ago I spoke with both an aircraft-recovery expert and the lead investigator from the Glenn Miller Archives. The Norseman aircraft was mostly wood and steel-frame tubing. Both would have shattered on impact and eventually disintegrated from exposure to salt water. (The Channel's cold, but not _that_ cold or deep; we’re not talking _Titanic_ here.) And at the risk of being ghoulish, any evidence of the bodies would have been gone in a year or two. Pretty much all that would be left is part of the cockpit plus the engine block. As the recovery expert told me, you’d be looking for something smaller than a compact car buried in the seabed with two or three thousand years of other wrecks.

And the melody dates back to 1930!

I'd go with that. I know when younger I rocked out to it many times.

See if you can find a copy of George T. Simon's biography. It was written back in the 1970s but I've seen copies still on shelves.

An interesting what-if is that he initially applied for a naval commission but was turned down. In one of the greatest examples of the oxymoron "military intelligence", the Navy reportedly told him they didn’t see how his music would be of value their mission … ?!? You have to wonder if he might have survived if whoever rejected him had had any brains instead.

It's still the military.

That's the military 🤦🏽‍♀️

I read, decades ago, that very same story in Dear Abby, of all places. A man who had been part of the Bomb Group, wrote to her and said he'd just seen "The Glenn Miller Story," and he made the connection and believed that the dropping of their payload that night was what downed Miller's plane.

I've been following the various stories since the 1980s and remember when the dropped-bomb hypothesis came out. Even at the time there were questions because the RAF Lancasters were too high for anyone to have made a positive ID of a Piper-Cub-sized plane nearly 1 km below them. Even at the time was mostly a case of "Saw small plane crash. December 15th. Ergo it was Major Miller's plane." Since then the dropped-bomb idea's been further researched and is now pretty much discounted. The "smoking gun", if you will, was the discovery about a decade ago of coast-spotter logs that positively ID'ed a Norseman heading out over the Channel at a time and place consistent with where Miller's pilot should have been, in the southernmost SHAEF air corridor. Miller's was the only UC-64 in that part of the country that day, meaning the sighting was in fact his plane. The sighting puts the pilot too far south and at the wrong time to have been anywhere near the returning bombers, even if they'd drifted way off course. What the newer investigations showed was (a) The UC-64 had a type of fuel heater that was known to be highly prone to failure. The AAF was in the process of replacing them but of course combat craft got priority. Low-end things like a transport were just patched and sent back out. In particular Miller's plane had multiple fixes for the same fuel-icing issues. (b) The pilot had made the trip many times before but only in good weather. He wasn't trained for adverse conditions like those on Dec. 15th. While visibility at Twinwood was tolerable, heavy clouds were settling in near the coast of France. Sooo ... the far more probable causes boil down to mechanical failure, pilot failure, or maybe a combination of both. ** SHAEF rather than "SHAFE" - Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces

@@skyepuppy7763 Except the returning planes were RAF Lancasters, not USAAF B-17s, *AND* Miller's plane was positively identified in the standard SHAEF non-combatant transport corridor - exactly where it should have been for the Twinwood Field / Paris shuttle, and more importantly at the wrong place and time to have been under any returning bombers from either air force. The whole story started because in the 1980s, forty years after Miller's loss, an RAF navigator just happened to remember seeing a small plane go down in the Channel that afternoon. The air separation was on the order of a km. which would have made a little transport appear to be the size of a big bumblebee, no way to make a positive identification. The U of Colorado investigation found the plane's repair records showed it had a dodgy fuel system that was never properly repaired due to parts shortages. In addition the pilot wasn't qualified for bad-weather flight. So take a fuel system that kept icing up in cold weather and add a pilot who wasn't trained to fly in cloudy weather - what could possibly go wrong?😢

@@Poisson4147 Thank you! It's a shame that the RAF navigator took on guilt that didn't belong to him.

@@skyepuppy7763 And thank you in return. I talked to the lead investigator of the U. of CO group a couple of years after they found their evidence. He said RAF personnel were relieved, although as you said they wished the evidence had come to light earlier. Apparently the dropped-bomb story has rankled even to the current day.

Golden times while there was a world war raging?

There are plans to look for the wreckage, but its location is far from the plane's flight path. In addition the wreckage showed a lot less corrosion than would be expected. That leaves two possibilities: more likely, it’s debris from a more recent crash, or less likely, F/O Morgan had aborted the flight, then lost his way and crashed while trying to return to the UK.

EXACTLY! The idea that an RAF navigator flying at least 1 km above a tiny plane in cloudy weather could make a positive ID, *and* only remembered it 4 decades later is crazier than Daffy Duck. People don't want to admit the crash was most likely caused by a series of dumb mistakes and mechanical failure, they want it to be an, oooooh, conspiracy.

Sadly it may never be found. UC-64s were remarkably flimsy planes given the hard use they got in their civilian versions. The framework was metal tubing covered with doped fabric (!) and wood reinforcements. The only substantial parts were the cockpit and engine compartment. Aircraft experts have said that the fuselage would be long-corroded or dissolved by now, and the tiny cockpit and engine are buried in the mud along with 3K years worth of other accident debris.

We haven't really had anything quite like World War II either.

@@Rhythmicons no, but I can't see Hollyweird stars doing this. They are too focused on themselves and their causes.

Which one of todays (2020) over paid and over pampered 'entertainers' would ever avail themselves to anything selfless? Since the 1960s it's been over the top ridiculous adulation for so very little in return.

Oh fer cryin' out lout. Almost nothing in Hunton Downs' book stands up to basic fact-checking. His claims were examined in depth by historians at the University of Colorado. They found almost none of his conclusions could be substantiated. In particular Downs' core idea was that Miller spoke fluent German ... except he drew that conclusion after listening to his narration of various propaganda broadcasts beamed into Germany. Long before Downs' book came out, people who were with the AAF Orchestra (e.g. Johnny Desmond) had remarked that Miller's lines were written out phonetically and that his pronunciation was SO bad they had to assign a German-speaking announcer to help him through. The U of CO people looked through Miller's school and family records and were unable to find a shred of evidence that he in fact had even studied the language let alone spoke it fluently. It's true that the Miller family had German roots but they'd been in the US for many generations. Second, the U of CO historians found that Downs had relied on third- and fourth-hand sources, many of which were themselves suspect. His narrative has Miller being in places and times when contemporaneous documentation puts him hundreds of miles away. Downs also claimed his "spy" preparation was going on at times he and the band were working double shifts recording shows in advance of their transfer to Paris, a physical impossibility. Bluntly put, the story of his loss is tragic enough without Downs' BS.

What was it?

Sadly no. There have been several searches - and more planned - but so far nothing verifiable has turned up. The tube-frame described in the story was in better condition and a significant distance from what would have been expected of the Norseman UC-64 after 40+ (then) years in the ocean.

They have! At the National Cemetery of the Pacific (Punch Bowl) they have finished the Memorial to the Missing. The name of every military person who are still missing are listed. They list World War II, Korean War and the Virtnm

They list WW II, Korea, and Vietnam. I found the names of some friends who disappeared on a flight out of NAS Cubi Point, PI in a P3 Orion. They were on patrol over the South China Sea, At some point they gave an "Ops Normal" report and were never heard from again.

There’s also a memorial to Maj. Miller at Arlington Cemetery*, although IIRC it incorrectly shows him as being in the Army Air Corps rather than the Army Air Forces. The AAC became the AAF in 1941, a year before he enlisted. * no "a"

They centephons graves for dead of those who will never be found.

It’s really hard to survive a plane crash. He likely died in the crash

The civilian version of the UC-64 was widely used in Canada. It came in two models, one with pontoons and one with open landing gear. Pilots knew to avoid ANY kind of water landing in an open-wheel model because the wheels would grab the water and send the plane into a cartwheel. Every single Canadian water landing with open wheels had been fatal. Guess which model they gave the pilot who was carrying Maj. Miller.... Also given that the Channel isn't deep and not super-cold, it's doubtful any human remains could be found today. Aircraft-recovery experts have said that even the plane would be largely gone. About the only parts that wouldn't have corroded away would be the cockpit and engine, and they're buried in the mud with 3000 years of other debris. 😢

WW11? Lmao

We DO know more, although certainly not 100%. The U. of CO investigation found coast-spotter logs with a positive ID of a UC-64 headed out over the Channel exactly where Miller's plane would travel on the normal SHAEF non-combatant air corridor used for flights from Twinwood Field to Paris. The plane he took was the only UC-64 in that part of the country on Dec. 15 which makes it pretty certain the plane in the spotter's logs was his. That also puts it at the wrong place and time to have been anywhere near the returning bombers in Fred Shaw's guesswork, and too far away to have flown there even if the pilot changed course. As you point out, the flight wasn't that long. There was no record of them landing at the standard destination of Villacoublay Field near Paris, nor at any other airfield in the vicinity. That puts a possible bracket around the plane's loss, beginning with the spotter log and ending with the expected arrival time. What it _doesn't_ do is account for the possibility that if the pilot realized he was lost or in danger, he might have changed course in an attempt to return to the UK. That possibility expands the potential loss area significantly because no one knows what course(s) he might have taken - if any. Regardless, wreck recovery from the Channel isn't as easy as it might seem. The bottom is littered with 2K or 3K years worth of debris, plus the cockpit and engine of a UC-64 are about the only parts that would survive more than a few years underwater. It would be like looking for a small refrigerator in a junkyard the size of Rhode Island.

Read some actual history instead of making assumptions. UC-64s were military versions of the Noorduyn Norseman that were modified for wartime use. The AAF had equipped them with a particular type of fuel system that turned out to be highly susceptible to icing in cold, damp conditions. The system was used across multiple aircraft types. Its flaws were a very serious issue, so much so that there was an ongoing program to upgrade affected engines. Obviously combat planes came first, so dinky little transports had to wait or make do with temporary patches. The repair records for Miller’s plane show multiple tickets for fuel lockup. In addition, Norsemans were well-suited to use over land but were a known death trap over water unless equipped with pontoons. Miller’s plane had fixed wheels which would act like brakes if the plane hit water. There’d been a number of fatal crashes in Canada where a Norseman lost power and came down over a lake or river and did a full 360 flip. In each case the crash caused the fuselage to disintegrate, almost always killing everyone on board. Facts matter. Try them sometime.

he was hit by a jettison bomb from a failed british bomb run. from a radio boradcast: "at 1:40pm on December 15 a fleet of 139 Lancaster bombers returning from an aborted mission to Germany dumped their bombs above the English channel" which hit his plane

The only report of that nature was Fred Shaw's logbook, which was later shown to have been (unintentionally) mistaken. Regardless of the other answer, documents uncovered around 2014 show that it’s highly unlikely his plane was hit by fire or bombs from returning RAF aircraft. Specifically, a coast spotter's report positively ID'ed a Norseman headed across the Channel at a time and place consistent with the standard route F/O Morgan would have taken from Twinwood to Villacoublay. No other Norseman were in that part of the country on Dec. 15, making it almost 100% certain the spotter observed Miller’s doomed plane AND it was too far from the drop zone to have been what Fred Shaw saw. Occam's Razor leaves the most probable causes as mechanical failure, pilot error, or a combination of both.

The story’s been around for a long time but no one has ever managed to explain why, if it’s true, - there’s no record of the plane landing at Villacoublay - no one reported seeing Miller after they arrived - no one ever reported seeing the other two officers anywhere after 15 December At least on the surface it would seem to be almost impossible to have found every single person involved, ensured their silence for decades, and "eliminated" the two fellow officers without someone, somewhere, leaking. But without the aircraft itself, we’ll never know.

Ur dad told you a tall tale to seem important. It's a common human frailty. Doesn't make him bad. Makes him normal. Many nobodies want to feel like somebody's if only for a moment.

That hypothesis has pretty much been ruled out. By December there was almost no Luftwaffe activity in that region. Occam's Razor argues for mechanical failure, pilot error, or a combination of both.

@@Poisson4147 his plane was hit by a jettison from a Lancaster after a failed bombing mission over germany. and it is believed Millers pilot strayed into the jettison zone because of his lack of bad weather experience.

@@thisoldchevy2371 That was the accepted hypothesis for many years but it had enough loose ends that the Miller family asked for a new investigation to be opened. Historians from UC Boulder's Glenn Miller Archive gained access to reams of previously-classified AAF and RAF documents, as well as other sources obtained via FOIA. After about three years of digging they found that: • The UC-64 Norseman carrying Miller, Baessell, and pilot J. S. Morgan had had multiple repair orders to address recurring cold-weather problems with its fuel system. However proper repair of small transports like a Norseman was of necessity deferred in favor of keeping combat aircraft in top shape. • F/O Morgan had flown the Twinwood-Villacoublay route many times, but only in good weather because he wasn’t fully instrument-rated. Baessell had ordered him to make only a brief stop at Twinwood, leaving him unaware of updated weather reports warning of low clouds and storms forming near the coast of France. • The RAF navigation logs reporting a downed "kite" (slang for any small plane) didn’t note what type of aircraft it was. The bombers were at an altitude of at least 1500 m which would have made it almost impossible to make a positive ID of a plane at a Norseman's typical altitude. More critically the time of the reported downing was at least an hour different from when Miller’s Norseman would have been underneath, given when it left Twinwood and its normal airspeed. The original confusion about the report's timing was found to have been caused by an ongoing disagreement between time zones used in RAF versus AAF reporting. • Finally and most significantly, the investigation turned up a coast spotter's log that *did* record a positive sighting of a Norseman at a time and place consistent with the standard flight path F/O Morgan would have been expected to take. Obviously without physical evidence the dropped-bomb hypothesis can’t be dismissed with 100% certainty. That said, when you combine a positive sighting in the expected location, a poorly maintained aircraft, an incompletely trained pilot, near-freezing temperatures, and unanticipated bad weather the most likely explanation is now mechanical failure, pilot error, or a combination of both. And it ALL could have been avoided if people had followed standard safety rules. 😥🥺

@@Poisson4147 its sad how we still dont know for 100% certainty what happened. thanks for sharing the information i would have never found it otherwise. unreal this was close to 80 years ago.

@@thisoldchevy2371 And thank you in return. The lead researcher wrote the book "Glenn Miller Declassified" which details what was found. It’s kind of a dry read in places but has tons of previously unavailable, primary-source material, photos, etc. The UC-Boulder Archives are the main repository for documents, recordings, and artifacts related to Miller’s career. FWIW I’ve met several people associated with the Archives and found them to be serious historians with strong credentials, definitely not given over to conspiracy theories. Even if we can’t ever be 100% certain about his fate (of course barring recovery of the wreckage), my view not just as a fan but as a writer is that their conclusions are as close to the truth as we’ll get.

Source?

he was hit by a jettison bomb from a fleet of 139 lancaster bombers after a failed run. his pilot had little bad weather flying experience and most definitely strayed into the jettison zone. it was indeed an accident.

There's no evidence other than hearsay to support any of the "friendly fire" hypotheses. The "jettisoned bomb" hypothesis cited by the other poster has been investigated and shown to be very unlikely (though admittedly not impossible). Documents found by the UC-Boulder investigation show that the plane wasn’t near the jettison zone, and further that it suffered from ongoing fuel-system problems. In addition the pilot wasn’t instrument rated and almost certainly unaware of approaching bad weather. Together that leaves the most probable cause as mechanical failure, pilot error, or a combination of both.

@@Poisson4147 no malfunction beacuse plane was inspected before flight everything was ok.engines did not freeze temp was 5.english warplanes flying across channel non stop.middle of war 1943.

Please take, oh, 45 seconds to read how carbs work. The pressure difference at the Venturi can easily cause a drop of 30 Celsius degrees inside the chamber. I.e. ice can form in the throttle body on a nice spring day, let alone during December. That’s been known for over a century and is why piston planes have carb heaters, which is the likely failure point on the Norseman. Second, the experiences of far better maintained combat aircraft says ZERO about what might have happened to a small transport that was still waiting for a permanent fix. Finally it doesn’t address how the plane could have been hit by returning bombers in a drop zone at least an hour and hundreds of kms from where the craft was sighted.

That idea's been pretty much superseded by newer research. See my response to Stephen McElroy; the most likely culprits are now thought to be mechanical failure or pilot error. P.S. * "their"

No.

I’d be interested in your sources. The facts I cited were compiled by University of Colorado historians who had access to original AAF and RAF documents surrounding the crash. In any case, what you stated doesn’t really conflict with their findings; however it doesn’t look at additional information they turned up. Specifically: 1) Yes, the plane was cleared for takeoff but that doesn’t mean the clearance was justified. Its service records showed that it had been patched multiple times for the same fuel-system problems. Each time it came back despite being cleared. Its system was a type that was common to multiple different planes, and icing issues were well-known. Yes, the AAF had a program to replace rather than patch them but as the saying goes, there was a war on. Combat aircraft got top priority while small transports like a Norseman were at the back of the queue. 2) You’re again correct that the air temperature at Twinwood Field that afternoon was recorded as 5°C. However that doesn’t preclude freezing in any way. Carburettors use lower internal pressures that can cause the throttle body temp to be at least 30 Celsius degrees lower than ambient. That’s been known since the early days of flight, and it’s why a malfunctioning carb heater can be deadly even on a nice spring day. 3) The fact that other combat aircraft flew successfully is orthogonal to the Norseman’s situation. As noted in 1) combat aircraft were maintained to a very different standard. 4) Finally and even though this wasn’t part of the question, F/O J. S. Morgan wasn’t qualified to fly under adverse conditions. Even if the carb had been OK, he wasn’t trained to fly a small, minimally-equipped plane by instruments only. It’s not at all unreasonable to think he may have lost situational awareness and unknowingly flown into the water - exactly what’s suspected in the similar crash that took JFK Jr.

@@Poisson4147 And so many others, too. Makes you scratch your head trying to figure out why this deadly scenario plays out as often as it does. Sometimes, even a professional ace gets trapped in this no-win situation. Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi come to mind. I can't wrap my head around this phenomenon.

​@@imhere653 That’s so sadly true. The crashes usually seem to involve some combination of a small plane, bad weather, over-eager passengers, and/or a pilot who gets blindsided by unexpected events. What the U of C investigators found was almost a grocery list of mistakes and dangerous circumstances. They concluded even Miller himself shared some of the blame for not getting travel permission from his CO, although the primary failures were on the part of Col. Baessell. He too failed to inform his CO, authorized the flight himself, and ignored weather warnings. It’s just achingly sad to think that if ANY of the three officers had followed standard military regulations, mid-century popular music might have been very different. FWIW, Kobe Bryant grew up only a few miles from where I lived. By all accounts he was a really decent guy even then. ... and we lost him to another avoidable tragedy.

@@Poisson4147 True dat. I don't know if his generosity toward the WNBA and his dedication to coaching girl's basketball was the result of him trying to receive atonement for that unseemly Colorado resort incidentor not, but I've never seen such a humble and thoroughly sincere living example of altruism from a male that commanded that level of power and fame. He walked the walk.

@Incog Nito no temp was 5 c

okay you are going to need to provide factual evidence. Where did you hear this?

@@rickfrank7934 It's in the public domain. Do your homework.

@@daveday5507typical lazy answer. Wish I could give that when writing a paper or answering a question for my job or school.

@@rickfrank7934 You're calling me lazy? There is a book called 'Millergate'. Get it.

HAVE YOU SEEN THEM?

Quite a few people, apparently. I'd really only care about it if they FIND the wreckage.