Mystery Factory

            In December 1944, Glenn Miller, famous 40s’ band leader, mysteriously disappeared. Tales of intrigue, changed planes, missing files, Parisian brothel brawls, altered documents, government cover-ups, and advanced cancer are tangled together, obscuring the final hours of the man who made famous such hits as In the Mood and Tuxedo Junction.

            Glenn Miller joined the army in 1942, formed a band and introduced swing music into the military marches. His superiors told him that John Philip Sousa’s music had been good enough for World War I, so he asked, “Are you still flying the same planes you flew in the last war, too?” They accepted swing.

            In December 1944 Miller’s 60-piece orchestra was booked in Paris to give a Christmas concert for Allied troops. At the last minute Miller wanted to precede the band to France. The confusion begins:

            Did he fly out on the single-engine Norseman aircraft that vanished over the Channel;

either from mechanical problems or unknowingly shot down by friendly fire? Was he on the Dakota that arrived safely in France, only to die in a drunken brawl? Did he survive the fight to be secretly transported to a military hospital in Ohio? Was he moved due to cancer? Was he a spy who had to be terminated? Circumstantial, physical evidence and eye-witnesses can be found to support all these scenarios. Reports are conflicting: the weather was good, the weather was bad; there was a search to find Miller, there was no search to find Miller.

            Whatever the truth is surrounding his death, swing lovers have reason to hope Miller did not go down in the English Channel. When the band leader left England, he carried with him a case full of new music scores. If Glenn Miller disappeared in Paris, they may still be found.