During the Second World War, everybody did their part. Even the most famous of people. Alfred Hitchcock made pro-allied propaganda films, French actress Josephine Baker was a part of the French resistance, and James Doohan or Scotty from Star Trek stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in 1944.
It wasn’t just the film industry that got involved, the music industry was involved too. With radio being the biggest form of entertainment at the time, musicians were sought after to help raise the morale of troops and their families at home.
This is where our subject comes in. Glenn Miller. At the time the USA was involved in the war, Miller and his orchestra were one of the biggest musical acts in the country so, when his country came calling, he didn’t back down and knew he had to do his part. This would lead to his demise and yet another tragic story of what could have been. This week The Beat Marches On to the 15th December 1945, the last flight of Glenn Miller.
Everyone knows of and has heard a song by Glenn Miller and his band. When a pre-war memory appears on a TV show, the songs In The Mood, and/or Moonlight Serenade have played in the background. To put it in modern times Miller is the Taylor Swift of the 1930s, or should that be Swift is the 2020’s equivalent of Glenn Miller?
Whichever way it’s put you get the point; he was a superstar. He was given the first-ever gold record (one million copies sold) and had more top 10 hits than The Beatles and Elvis Presley in the singles charts.
At the height of his career in 1942, Miller decided to offer his services to the US military, as they were now involved in World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941. This was partly because the American Federation of Musicians were on strike over royalty payments, and the band leader and his orchestra couldn’t perform or record.
After initially volunteering to join the Navy they rejected Miller, so he applied to be a part of the army and they accepted him for a special branch. A first of its kind. He was taking charge of a military band that performed for the troops in person and over the radio. The band were performing three half-hour shows a day at their peak.
He was so successful at his role, that he ended up running the whole radio program by mid-1943. Overseeing 62 musicians, actors, actresses, and comedians. It wasn’t just for the troops either, the radio transmitted over the United States to the public as well. They used it as propaganda to bring more people on their side.
In the summer of 1944, the US Army wanted to send Miller over to the UK, as many American troops were stationed there. They wanted to keep his radio show going while he was over there and asked the BBC for help. The BBC were reluctant to help though as they thought that the British public didn’t want to hear the American broadcasts (although they actually did want to) It was only when Prime Minister Winston Churchill got involved the Beeb relented.
Miller and his band toured around all the airbases in the country, entertaining the troops all while still recording his radio show three times a day. He was a big morale booster to them.
Towards the end of that year, the Allied forces took over Paris and knew that the momentum of the war was in their favour. As a thank you to the troops who battled hard to regain France, the Army bosses wanted to send Miller and his army band to perform for them over Christmas.
The original plan for travelling was on Friday (15th) Miller would fly out in advance and the rest of the band would fly on Monday (18th) the control of the skies meant that military personnel could fly from England towards France easily. There were usually 12 commercial flights a day. Not on this day, however, as bad weather had grounded flights for the day.
Stuck at the airbase, Miller needed a way to get to France. He couldn’t travel by boat as the Germans would torpedo anything that travelled across the channel. Luckily there was one flight that was flying over the UK that day.
Lieutenant Colonel Norman Baessell was flying over to France that day and being a friend of Miller’s, he offered a seat to the band leader. The lieutenant told his personal pilot, John Morgan, to fire up the engines. They just needed approval from the air traffic controllers. He got the approval at the airbase in England as the weather had cleared but, in France, the fog was still lingering around, and they wouldn’t get the approval. Morgan was still only a junior pilot and wasn’t allowed to fly in bad weather.
Baesell decided to override the decision by the air traffic controllers and bypass it by flying visually. A risky option where the aircraft flies at a low altitude and you judge where you are by looking at the ground. As the trip was only 17 miles from point to point, it was okayed by the air traffic controllers. It is important to remember that the controllers only thought that Baesell and Morgan were on the flight at this point.
At 2:55 pm the flight set off for France and was expected to land that afternoon, but the plane never arrived. A report was made about the missing flight but deemed not important as they thought it was lost due to the bad weather. Plus a lot of the pilots were reported to be bad at filling in the paperwork.
Nothing was thought about the missing plane as this happened quite often during wartime. It was the 1940’s so there weren’t any computers, digital trackers or any modern technologies. The next day, however, the non-arrival of the aircraft was put on the back burner as the last German counter-offensive, the Ardennes offensive, more commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge, started.
When the rest of the band arrived in France to a big greeting, perplexed the soldiers in France asked them where the leader was. Confused the band said he should be here; he flew out on Friday. Realising that Miller wasn’t in France, something bad had happened, really bad.
They did a search for Miller’s plane in the UK, France and over the channel. The chances were slim as the plane had been missing for three days already and there wasn’t any hint of debris anywhere. It was most likely that it was lost at sea. General Ray Barker said, ‘How the hell did we lose Glenn Miller?’
The military police investigated the situation at the English air base and the army replaced the personnel who they deemed responsible, the air traffic controllers and the ones in charge of them. It felt retaliatory but the army had lost one of the world’s most famous people. The investigation was sealed this is believed to protect Miller’s reputation.
The sealed investigation led to a whirlwind of conspiracies, he was killed by the OSS, the CIA predecessor, he was captured by the Germans, he died in a brothel and the plane crash was to cover it up and even links to the black market. This all ended up just rumours.
The initial belief was that a Lancaster bomber was disposing of bombs on the channel high above Miller’s plane and hit it invertedly due to the bad weather. An ex-pilot even said he witnessed this; it was disproven however as the bomber was already parked up in its airfield long before the missing plane took off. The pilot couldn’t have seen this because apparently according to experts you can’t look out of the bottom of a Lancaster bomber.
It wasn’t until over 70 years later, in 2017 when the family of Richard Anderton was clearing out his home after he unfortunately passed. They found a notebook in which Anderton, only 17 at the time, was jotting down the planes going past.
He had spotted an aircraft at low altitude in Reading, this happened to be Baesell’s plane, and it had diverted off-course. This disproves the Lancaster theory and proves the most likely theories were human error or the transport malfunctioning due to the weather. Most pilots at the time thought it was an error by Morgan. They thought the pilot flew too close to the sea. The type of aircraft that the pilot was flying tended to flip over when in contact with anything.
Over his military career, Miller and his army band performed 800 shows, 300 of which were live. The impact of how he revolutionised the military band is that they still perform the same way to this day almost 80 years later. Glenn Miller may not have fired a gun or plotted which ammunitions plant to attack next in Dresden, but the morale-boosting performances his band provided is just as pivotal to the war effort as the building of the Spitfire or the decoding of the enigma machine.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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