Channel '44 News

December.

Not the ideal time of year to embark on a flight across the English Channel and even more so in the wartime year of 1944.

Add to this that the flight is in a type of small plane known to have a bad history of accidents caused by the susceptibility of the carburettor to freeze in icy weather.

Further factors contributing to a likely mishap include fog and low cloud and the disobeyance of a no fly order by the pilot even following notification that weather conditions at the destination of Paris were bad.

Unfortunately all of these combined on 15th December 1944 with the outcome of the disappearance of one of the greatest band leaders of all time, Glenn Miller.

Traces of the plane and its occupants were never found.

Miller, a trombone player had great success in peacetime with his Big Band but felt a patriotic call to join up and and he enlisted in 1942 in the rank of Major. He was asked by the Allied Expeditionary Force to form a wartime band of musicians to boost the morale of troops in the European theatre of war.

Miller, regarded as reserved and quiet was nevertheless a strict disciplinarian but this and his own talent created an incredible ensemble who were stationed initially in Sloane Square, London. This was in the heart of the bombed Capital but the performances of the band served to thrill and delight a beleagured armed forces even more for this.

The band were certainly in demand and in August 1944 some 89 appearances were completed including 35 concerts and many radio broadcasts.

The audiences, almost entirely male in composition listened attentively and enthusiastically although in non-wartime conditions there will have been a very dance orientated scene.

In the winter of 1944 the success of the summer invasion meant a large deployment of troops in Europe and Miller sought permission to be nearer the action. He undertook a few trips to Paris to organise the logistics of a large band and its entourage and it was on the last of these on December 15th when the aircraft in which he was a passenger went missing over the English Channel.

The military authorities did not declare this fact until 9 days later which led to many conspiracies as to the disappearance. These included downing by friendly fire and being hit by the discarded bomb loads of returning Allied planes which were often common occurrences in a war to being found dead in a Parisian Brothel after a fight, returned sick to the United States and even being a fatality in a failed Secret Service plot to assassinate Hitler.

Many investigations and speculative enquiries subsequently have tended to attribute the untimely demise of Glenn Miller to a combination of mechanical failure and pilot error or in general terminology- it was an unfortunate accident.

His band stayed together for the remainder of the war before being disbanded later on in the 1940's.

Miller who died at age 40 is remembered with great admiration and affection for his music which is regarded by many as playing a major role in the personal recollections of those difficult conflict years.