Glenn Miller

December 15, 1944, a cold, wet and foggy afternoon, Glenn Miller departed RAF-Base, England in a Norseman C-64 aircraft. The flight was to take Glenn Miller and other passengers to Paris. However, the flight never made it. It is believed the aircraft encountered icing conditions over the English Channel and crashed. Glenn Miller and his band had been performing for Allied Troops prior to the crash and was planning on putting on a show in Paris, France. Glenn Miller and his band was idolized by many during his career.

The NORSEMAN C-64 plane IS THE EXACT TYPE OF PLANE Miller
ALLEGEDLY boarded that fateful night IN DECEMBER 1944.

A German newspaper says wartime bandleader Glenn Miller died of a heart attack in the arms of a French prostitute in 1944 and not, as officially reported, in a plane crash. The mass-circulation Bild newspaper alleged that the famed trombonist and exponent of the big band swing sound met his death in a Paris brothel. The paper said German journalist Udo Ulfkoutte discovered the secret of how he died in U.S. secret service files while doing research for his book, "BND, The Secret Files." The paper quoted the journalist as saying the true cause of Miller's death was concealed to keep his legend alive and protect the morale of U.S. troops. U.S. military and intelligence officials were not immediately available to comment on the cover-up allegation.

Official reports said his plane vanished over the English Channel in December 1944. But Bild said British diver Clive Ward discovered the wreck of his single-motor plane off the French coast in 1985 and found no signs the plane had crashed, or any human remains.

SO FAR, ALL OF THIS CLIVE WARD HYPE HAS NEVER BEEN SUSTANTIATED AND MR. WARD CANNOT BE FOUND!

MORE PROBABLE LIES.

A retired colonel who says he was Glenn Miller's pilot disputes the claim. Lt. Col. Robert Baker told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he and Miller were drinking together in England the night before. "I just know the brothel story is a lie because there was no way Miller could have gotten to Paris by December 15 except on my flight," Baker insisted.

Just two weeks before his death, Miller and his orchestra recorded 20 new tunes in London that were only unearthed in 1995. On the recordings, Miller can be overheard in an unguarded moment flirting with a German girl.

THESE RECORDINGS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN MILLER EXCHANGING PLEASANTRIES AND ONCE AGAIN THE ALLEGATIONS ARE FOUNDLESS.

In the year before his death, the 40-year-old Miller had a serious illness. And although Baker claims he drank with him, others say Miller was once kicked out of a bar for being a teetotaler.

Supposedly, Miller, another passenger and a pilot took off informally on an uncharted flight without clearance, on a foggy day when all other aircraft were grounded.

"Why Glenn, who had a real fear of planes, decided to risk a trip under such adverse conditions has never been determined," wrote his friend George Simon, author of the book The Big Band Era and The Glenn Miller Story.

Glenn Miller Spent His Last Hours With My Dad
By Brian McCulloch

The story of Glenn Miller's disappearance began for me at the age of six, when my family went to see the movie, The Glenn Miller Story. My dad leaned over to my mother and said, "they don't have that quite right."

He was referring to the scene where Glenn Miller leaves Twinwood Airfield in Bedfordshire, England. When we left the theater, I asked my father what he had meant with his comment.

He told me that he was Glenn Miller's driver the day Miller disappeared. He added that the vehicle was a staff car, not a jeep and that he was a Staff Sergeant, not an officer. Later, I was to learn the personal significance of the latter part of the answer to my question.

My mother said she was going to write to Hollywood to set the record straight. "They should have found my him – Hollywood isn't that far from here." We were living in San Lorenzo, California. Forty-nine years would pass for my dad's role in the story of that day in December 1944, when the Miller legend was born, to become public.

S/Sgt. Edward H. McCulloch was the driver of the Commanding Officer of the Eighth Air Force Service Command, which was headquartered at Milton Ernest Hall in Bedfordshire, England. Colonel James Early detailed my dad to drive Major Miller and his pilot, a Warrant Officer from the Temporary Officers Quarters at Milton Ernest Hall to the airfield for the flight to France.

In a conversation last week, my father told me that he approached Miller the evening before to tell him that he would be his driver the next day. Miller had been chatting with several enlisted men when my dad introduced himself.

Major Miller asked my dad if he would take him to the NCO Club. My father responded, "With all due respect Sir, you are an officer." To this Miller replied that he preferred the company of enlisted men and wanted to enjoy his evening. My dad remembers Miller saying, "some of the officers can be pretty stuffy."

After walking with the Major to the NCO Club and introducing him to the some of the other non-commissioned officers, my dad says he left, as he was on duty. He was billeted in a manor house several miles away in Pavenham Bury with Colonel Early, two other officers and another non-commissioned officer.

The time of Miller's flight had been scheduled to take advantage of available daylight. My father believes the flight to have been laid on specifically for Miller possibly by Early, perhaps at the request of other senior officers.

Colonel Early told my dad that Glenn Miller's pilot was a twenty-five-mission man, waiting to go home. Recently my dad said, "He probably volunteered to fly Miller as much out of boredom as anything else. After all, Paris is not very far from that part of England. It should have been an easy flight there and back." The irony of the event was not lost on my father.

While the weather had been bad for several days, it had improved by the time they got to the airfield, in my dad's recollection. "There was an overcast, but it was above minimums at Twinwood."

"On the other hand, I remember thinking that I was glad not to be piloting the plane. I knew how quickly the fog could drop and how dense it was in England. As a driver, I had to contend with it all the time."

More interestingly, my dad remembers the plane that day to more closely resemble a Traveler, a biplane than the currently credited Norseman, a high wing monoplane. As a flight Cadet, he had trained in biplanes. Also, he does not remember a plane as large as the one used in the movie.

After picking-up the Major and the Warrant Officer at the Milton Ernest Hall TOQ, McCulloch drove directly to the airfield at Twinwood, several miles away. As he remembers it today, as well as in 1953, the plane was there when they entered the airfield.

They drove up to the plane. My dad got out and opened the door for the Major and got Miller's flight bag from the trunk of the Colonel's staff car. "It was a Dodge - we would never have used a jeep, especially an open one like the one in the movie, in England at that time of year.

Handing the Major his bag, my dad remembers saying a simple "have a good flight." Miller and the pilot boarded the plane. My dad did not see another passenger, although he agrees that another passenger could have already been on the plane. Both the car and the plane left the airfield at the same time.

Several hours later, the military police and/or intelligence arrived at Milton Ernest Hall. Colonel Early later told my father that they had collected a footlocker and some other personal affects left behind by Major Miller. The Colonel ordered him not to mention Miller's most recent stay at Milton Ernest.

He said nothing until he got home. There is not a mention in any of the letters or V-Mail to my mother – she saved all of them. There is, however, confirmation of his presence at Milton Ernest on December 13,1944 in them.

As for his impression of Glenn Miller during those last hours? My dad says that he seemed like a regular guy. He wore his billed hat without the wire brim, which was the way with many of the wartime US Army Air Corp personnel in England.

We may never know what became of Glenn Miller, but I know and now you do, whom Glenn Miller spent some of his last hours with – my dad. The uniform jacket he wore that day will be on permanent loan, along with his pictures of Pavenham Bury and Milton Ernest Hall, at the Twinwood Control Tower museum, near where my dad spent a year and half of his life and Glenn Miller left to become a legend.

Copyright 2002 Brian C. McCulloch - Shoreline, WA

The most popular Bandleader of the Swing-era was Alton Glenn Miller who was born on Mar. 1. 1904 in a small town called Clarinda, in the state of Iowa. He soon began to hate his name, because his mother would call for him, shouting at the top of her lungs. After having read and studied everything he could find about music and doing little jobs on the side, he had been allowed to set up a band for Ray Noble in winter 1934/35. Miller played the trombone and wrote the music, which was already very much his own unique style. On 25th of April 1935 Glenn Miller played his first 4 titles under his own name for Columbia. But the real "Glenn Miller Orchestra" was set up only in March of 1937. Appearances for Decca and Brunswick and a couple of concerts followed, but the band did not get have its real break-through.

In March of 1938 Miller started playing with a new band, practicing with Tex Beneke and Ray Eberle. The first big performance was at the "Paradise Restaurant" in N.Y. in June of the same year. The final break-through for the Glenn Miller Band was the performance at the famous "Glen Island Casino" in New Rochelle, New York. Now the "Glenn Miller Sound" had practically became No. 1 in America, and this overnight. At the peak of his popularity 20th Century Fox produced two films "Sun Valley Serenade" (1942) with the Glenn Miller Band. Extremely popular became the radio series where G. Miller played for Chesterfield between 12/17 1939 and 9/24 1942. In autumn 1942 G. Miller joined the Army as Captain. After more than a year of being in the "US Army Air Force Band" Miller boarded the Queen Elisabeth on June 22, 1944 at the port of New York, pier #90 to go to Europe.

From then the band played for hundreds of radio broadcasts in England and sometimes some of these were even "propaganda broadcasts", that were translated into German for the rest of Europe. Still today you can listen to Glenn Millers attempts at speaking German on discs. On Dec. 15. 1944, a cold winters day Glenn Miller, together with Lt. Col. Norman, F. Baessell and the pilot F/O John R.S. Morgan boarded the Noordwyn "Norseman" at the airport, at Twinwood Farm, near Bedford, by London, to fly to Paris, where he intended to prepare a performance at "Olympia". The airplane was never seen again and the three men were reported as "missing". Since then the wild stories have been invented about Glenn Millers disappearance. The most probable theory is that the airplane for some reasons crashed and fell into the British Channel. The AEF Band, carried on playing and supporting their troops, even without their big leader, and Jerry Gray conducted them until November the 17th 1945 when they gave their last concert.