FIRST ARTICLE PUBLISHED BEFORE  ACTUAL CONFIRMATION OF HIS DEATH

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.

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.

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