The Disappearance of Glenn Miller (with Dennis Spragg)
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The larger something is, the harder it is to imagine it going missing. A set of keys is different from a book, which is different from a bus. The bigger the size, the easier it should be defined. The same rule applies to fame. The more well-known something is, the harder it is to imagine it disappearing. The Mona Lisa is different from the live, laugh, love sign hanging in your parents' home. There are more eyes on it, more systems keeping it safe.

it should be difficult to lose. Now imagine something as large as a bus going missing with something as famous as the Mona Lisa. This is the story of Glenn Miller's disappearance. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday.

Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Buzz Balls. Every time I see these guys in the store, I have to smile. They are hilarious and so cute. My favorite flavor is watermelon smash. Thanks to Buzz Balls, you can get delicious cocktails in these cute, ready-to-drink ball cans.

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Even if you don't know the name Glenn Miller, chances are you've heard his songs. His music is everywhere. You'll hear his band playing Moonlight Serenade as you wait in line for the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. If you've seen the movie The Notebook, you've heard his rendition of A String of Pearls.

"In the Mood" is currently his most popular track on Spotify with more than 88 million streams and counting. That version was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in 1939 while the band leader's star was still on the rise. From the time of that recording to his sudden disappearance in the winter of 1944,

it's hard to overstate Miller's impact on pop culture. He shared stages with Dinah Shore, Marlena Dietrich, and Bing Crosby. Crosby once called Miller's Air Force Orchestra the best band he'd ever performed with.

His music dominated the charts. He was awarded the first gold record in American history and had 69 top 10 hits in just four years, which is more than Elvis and the Beatles. And in 1940, Miller had a situation where at one point it was alleged that two out of every three tunes on jukeboxes were Miller. This is Dennis Sprague, a historian and radio broadcaster. When it comes to Glenn Miller...

He knows what he's talking about. I am the coordinator of the Glenn Miller Collections at the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder and a director of the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society in Clarinda, Iowa. And I also represent the estate of Glenn Miller. He's also the author of the book Glenn Miller Declassified. You could call it the book on Miller's life and legacy. ♪

We asked Dennis to compare Miller's fame to an artist in the industry today. It's going to sound crazy, but it's like Taylor Swift. In terms of the broad scope of, I wouldn't call it a fanatical audience, but a dedicated audience. Young women especially loved Miller's band. Teenage girls were fanatical about Miller's band.

And they morphed into fanatics for Frank Sinatra. Of course, the music landscape was different. Between two and a half radio networks, three recording companies, the publishing business, and Tin Pan Alley around Broadway, the music business was very hard to get into. But once you were in, and if you were good, you could earn a very good living in it.

Audiences were different. The theaters were a big deal for the bands. And New York City, the Paramount Theater was the biggest, and Miller played there four times.

And once with the Ink Spots, once with the Andrews Sisters. You'll see pictures of it in history books, the lines and lines of Bobby Soxers going down the street, around the corner, queuing up to wait to get in to see Miller or Benny Goodman or Frank Sinatra or Tommy, whomever. But on the road, it was almost always dances. Remember, the bands performed for dancing. People danced.

in those days. He didn't just stand there and go, "Yay!" One of the complaints with Miller was that people had was because everybody would crowd around the bandstand, there wasn't as much room for dancing. So how did the Taylor Swift of the swing era just up and disappear? Well, it has a lot to do with what was going on on a global stage. In 1942, while Miller's at the peak of his career, World War II is raging overseas,

And Miller doesn't want to sit idly by. It's hard for us to imagine somebody in the entertainment industry who's on the top of their game caring enough to say, I'm going to bag all this and just join the military. But in the fall of 1942, Miller joins the Army Air Force. Dennis says the decision is multifaceted. I'm not discounting his patriotism.

That was legitimate. It was genuine. But on a practical level, the draft is disrupting the music industry and causing staffing problems. Too many young musicians are being sent overseas. And these guys are going, I'm going into the army to carry a rifle and get killed? Musicians aren't exactly people who make the best soldiers.

With Miller in the Air Force, he creates a pathway for musicians to support the war efforts with their talents. He's going to ostensibly channel all these musicians that are getting drafted into the Army Air Forces. And in turn, they will staff Air Force bands all over the country, one of which will be a super band that he'll lead himself.

you know, and that will be on the radio. The idea is the music will unite everyone listening, from the soldiers on the battlefields to their families back home. And Miller and his farm system of bands do just that. They raise money and boost morale, all while stationed domestically, safely removed from the fighting. Then, in December 1943, Dwight D. Eisenhower finds himself as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe.

In the spring of 1944, Eisenhower requests the services of Miller's Army Air Force Orchestra to start an Allied radio network in England that will broadcast to all of Europe and the troops. The scales are tipping in the Allies' favor, and they want to keep up the momentum. Well, the Air Force first answer is, no. No, no, no, no, no. He's too valuable to us. But they work out a deal. So...

they get transferred to England. Well, London specifically, much to the dismay of Miller's wife, Helen. England is removed from the front lines, but still under threat. In fact, not long after being stationed in London, Miller's band gets transferred to Bedford,

A day or two after they move, an unmanned German V-1 rocket hits the street outside the building where they'd been staying. "If they had still been there, they might have all been killed." At least 75 people die in the blast. As luck would have it, Miller lives to see another day. And his Air Force orchestra reaches new and broader audiences. By some accounts, he finds fans among the German military who tune into his radio station.

By November, the tides of the war continue to turn in the Allies' favor. The Nazis have been driven from Paris a few months earlier, so Eisenhower sets up his headquarters in Versailles and his staff members call Miller in for a meeting. Miller takes a flight over the English Channel to France. The idea is floated that Miller should take over the French broadcasting studios and facilities in Paris. Miller's pitch was, if we're in Paris,

We can play for the hospitals for the wounded troops, ground troops, and we can be available for service people on leave in Paris. People in England have seen us, they've had access to us." And the troops in France hadn't. Before long, a plan is made for Miller and his super orchestra to deliver a live Christmas concert in Paris.

It'll be this big spectacle, hopefully celebrating the inevitable end of the deadliest war in recorded history. Miller's administrative manager and longtime friend, Lieutenant Don Haynes, is put in charge of the logistics, living arrangements, helping make sure the broadcasting studios were ready for the band after the Nazis tried but failed to destroy them. Haynes schedules flights for December 16th, 1944.

Three planes to carry Miller, his band, and all their stuff. But before that day comes, two things happen. Miller disappears without a trace. And he sends a letter to his younger brother that now feels like a premonition.

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Glenn Miller's flight to Paris is scheduled for December 16th, 1944. But the man he put in charge of logistics, his good friend Lieutenant Don Haynes, well, Haynes has been having a little too much fun partying in the recently freed City of Light, along with a guy named Lieutenant Colonel Norman Bissell, who will become important to the story soon. Miller's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel David Niven, calls up Miller and tells him,

There are loose ends that need tying up. And so on December 11th, 1944, Niven ordered Miller to come ahead and to work with him to square things away. He didn't want Haynes. He wanted Miller. Miller got orders to fly from London to Paris.

via the standard air transport route. There are 12 flights that fly daily from England to France. Dennis calls them VIP flights. And Miller's booked on one of these flights for Thursday, December 14th, two days earlier than scheduled. But he's in such a hurry to get to Paris, he goes to an air base outside of London a day early on the 13th and basically tries to see if he can get the equivalent of standby.

But he can't because the weather's bad in Paris. The next day, for his scheduled flight, the weather's bad in both Paris and London. Once again, there aren't any flights. So on the morning of December 14th, Miller is grounded and anxious to get out. He's frustrated. And he gets a call from his number two guy, Don Haynes, saying...

"Uh, I've been talking to a friend of ours who we play poker with in Bedford named Colonel Norman Bazell." That's Haynes' party pal who's now important to the story. Haynes tells Miller: "Norm has his own plane and pilot. Norm has to get back to France. He's on a deadline to build an air depot in France."

And he's chomping at the bit. He's going to fly. Let me put him on the phone. So Bazell gets on the phone with Glenn and Bazell invites Glenn. Hey, if all those air transport flights are socked in, he goes, they're chickens. They're just not flying, whatever. I won't read into the conversation. Bazell is a character. Brash, bombastic. The type of guy who's independently wealthy and speaks with a southern accent, even though he isn't from the south.

Miller agrees. He travels up to Bedford and spends the night there after grabbing dinner with Bazell. The next morning, December 15th, the weather still isn't ideal.

But like Miller, Bazell's been anxious to get over to France and has been delayed for days. And he finally just orders Morgan, we're going. John Morgan, Bazell's pilot. A 22-year-old who volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force before ending up in the Royal Air Force. But here's what's important to know. Dennis says most retellings of Miller's story get one thing wrong. Contrary to popular belief, Altenberry and Twinwood

were open. People will tell you, well, Twinwell was closed. There's no way Glenn Miller could have been on a plane flying in and out of Twinwell. What they confuse is that there was no training flights. The weather is such that we don't want student pilots up. But the tower and the airfield were open. They weren't fogging. There had been fog in the morning, ground fog, which

Twinwood was up on a hill. By midday, it was a 2,000 to 3,000 foot ceiling. That's not foggy in. That's England. The combat commands flew missions that day. They all took off. Well, not all of them. Some were grounded because the weather was bad at some places. So what Morgan saw was that, well, okay, can I fly? If I can't get instrument clearance, can I fly visually?

And they go, "Yeah, you can fly visually at your own discretion." Adding even more confidence to the plan, two senior officers fly into England from Paris that morning. They arrive while Miller and Bazell are having lunch. So from Bazell's point of view, everything's fine. My buddies flew in from Paris. They're good. I can go that way too. I can go the other way. You know, we're good. We're all good. Miller gets to the airfield first, followed by Haynes and Bazell.

For the most part, things are going smoothly. There's just one big catch. Miller, and by extension, Haynes, who's the middleman in all of this, don't tell their administrative sergeant or anybody else, for that matter, of what Miller's intentions are. They don't tell anybody that Miller is going to jump on this plane with Brazil. If Miller sends a memo or communication saying,

saying, "It's my intention to go ahead and hitch a ride with Norman Bizzell on C-64," I guarantee you the answer would have been no. Even Morgan probably doesn't know that Bizzell's got Miller with him. He just thinks he's getting Bizzell.

What happens next, or what we know about what happens next, Dennis says boils down to just a few facts. It's really simple. Morgan lands at Twinwood at 1345, quarter of two. He picks them up, and at 1355, five minutes of two, they're wheels up, out of there. They're observed by a civilian observer flying over Reading. And then... Nobody ever sees him again.

Morgan's C-64 Norseman never arrives. A clerk at the airfield in Paris notices that Morgan doesn't check in and reports it to his boss.

And his boss... We'll go down in history. I mean, Kramer says, just set it aside. These guys are always late getting their paperwork in and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, who knows? The weather was like what it was. He probably diverted somewhere and he hasn't checked in with us yet. And the next day, December 16th, nobody's really thinking about the fact that Morgan hasn't checked in because the Germans mount their final offensive on the Western Front.

It's the beginning of what will become one of the most pivotal and bloodiest battles of World War II. What we now call the Battle of the Bulge. December 16th is Saturday. Everyone's kind of forgotten about Morgan, the pilot, and no one is really thinking about Glenn Miller. Well, they assume he's still in his hotel room or something. No one knows he got on a plane, let alone that that plane's now missing.

Meanwhile, Miller's band is stuck in England waiting for everything to clear. The weather, the battles. Sunday rolls around, nothing. Monday comes, the band finally lands in Paris and Miller's not there to meet them. They start making calls. Where's Glenn? We don't know. We thought he was with you. We thought he had waited and gone with you. Nope, not with us. When the top military brass finally put the pieces together, they immediately realized they got a big problem here.

How the hell do you lose Glenn Miller? Three days after Miller's plane takes off from England, the military launches a search, but they don't find anything. Not Miller, not the plane. Officials wait until December 24th, Christmas Eve, to officially declare him missing. Nine days after Morgan's Norseman disappeared, and the rumor mill has already started. Between the 18th and the 24th, during that week,

There were 300 accredited news correspondents cooling their heels at the Scribe Hotel in Paris, talking to each other about everything that was going on in the war. And over drinks and over whatever they were doing, they talked. And they knew the Miller band was in Paris, had arrived, and they knew Miller wasn't with them. So in that six-day period, all the seeds for every conspiracy theory that you've ever heard

about Glenn Miller were planted by the reporters who had idle time going, gee, I wonder what happened to him. And the next day, German national radio, Deutsche Rundfunk, announces that Glenn Miller, the famous American band leader and entertainer, is dead. And he died in a barbello in Paris. A.K.A. a brothel.

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Remember, America and Germany are at war, and the Nazis literally have a guy whose title is Minister of Propaganda: Joseph Goebbels. Dennis Assert and Goebbels Agency planted the story. "Goebbels was not above or beyond something really nasty. So there you go. That's what really happened." But debunking one claim doesn't solve the mystery.

Ever since Glenn Miller went missing all those years ago, there's been no shortage of theories about what happened to him. Some are completely unfounded, like: He was a member of a gay officer clique that was involved in the black market, and they were making all kinds of money illegally. And the United States Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner of the CIA, arrested him.

incarcerated him at OSS clandestine headquarters in Bedfordshire and put him before a firing squad and executed him. So the theory was the United States of America executed Bill Miller.

pretty out there. And some sound like the plots of an action movie. Glenn being Eisenhower's deputy to effect the surrender of the German armed forces. As in Glenn Miller, the band leader, worked as an American spy. And when he disappeared, it was because he was trying to infiltrate the Nazi party and negotiate a surrender on Eisenhower's behalf.

Now, as outrageous as that sounds, there actually were a handful of notable public figures who worked covert ops during World War II.

Roald Dahl, the author of beloved children's books like Matilda and James and the Giant Peach, actually spied on the United States for England using his influential social circles to gauge any policies that might affect the Brits. The US's Office of Strategic Services recruited former Brooklyn Dodger Morris Moe Berg to run counterintelligence in Latin America.

Actually, Glenn Miller's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel David Niven, a beloved British actor, worked for a secret reconnaissance unit of the British Army early in the war. His connection to Miller is actually part of the reason the whole spy idea gained traction.

The theory ends dramatically. "Otto Scorzani, the Nazi, captures Miller and tortures him, and they want him to lead them to Eisenhower's headquarters to kill Eisenhower, blah, blah, blah." As you can tell, Dennis doesn't buy it. With good reason. As fun as the theory is to entertain, it was partially inspired by the Nazi propaganda I mentioned earlier.

And the rest was invented by writers who offered no evidence and didn't cite sources. Then there's the suggestion that Glenn might have been sick. "He somehow got himself on a plane to fly back to the United States to die privately because he found out that he was suffering from lung cancer." There are photos of him looking gaunt a few months before he disappeared. But Dennis says that's because he got pneumonia.

As for the weight... He starts gaining it back by December, but people see these pictures and they go, oh, look, he must have had lung cancer because he smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. He's this and he's that. Dennis doesn't give much credence to the theory. Well, you know, a pack and a half of cigarettes a day is what most people smoked in 1944. Times have changed. In all likelihood, Glenn Miller didn't die from lung cancer, and he met his end shortly after he disappeared.

Which brings us to one of the most popular theories out there, that Miller, Bazell, and Morgan all died shortly after takeoff due to friendly fire. The Royal Air Force accidentally bombed the plane. It first surfaced in 1982. A RAF veteran who lived in South Africa named Fred Shaw had been a navigator aboard an RAF Lancaster, which had flown that day.

on a mission to Siegen, Germany. The mission was called back, recalled. So all the RAF bombers had to turn around and go back. And they went different routes back, some over North Sea, some over the Channel. But they had these big monster 4,000-pound bombs on them. They couldn't land the plane with the bombs on them. So they were required to, for safety purposes, jettison the bombs unfused, meaning they wouldn't blow up when they hit the ground. Now, you didn't want to be under it and have it hit you.

because it would smash you, but it wouldn't blow up. It would just go into the water. They were supposed to jettison at certain coordinates that were set aside by the American and British air forces for that purpose. Of course, anything that had to do with aviation in those days was not a precise thing. And over time, the American and British bomber commands were receiving a lot of complaints from British fishermen and naval vessels saying, "Hey, somebody just jettisoned something over me. How come that happened?"

In 1982, Fred Shaw tells a radio announcer in South Africa what he saw the day Glenn Miller went missing. We were jettisoning bombs over the channel and we saw a small plane pass below us. A C-64 Norseman flying near the blast range of the bombs. Our bombs hit in the water and splashed and they didn't explode, but we saw this plane flip over and go in. Into the English Channel.

Shaw makes this announcement 38 years after Miller's disappearance. According to a 2014 docu-series episode on Glenn Miller, Shaw's memory resurfaced after rewatching "The Glenn Miller Story," a 1954 movie starring Jimmy Stewart. That's when he put two and two together. It must have been Glenn Miller's plane he saw that day. Shaw's flight captain goes on to corroborate aspects of his story.

He says he remembers hearing radio chatter about a plane going down in the jettison zone. Then, a British aviation historian named Roy Nesbitt plots out the paths of the plane Miller was on and the Lancasters, meaning the RAF bombers. Roy's conclusion? It would have been close. But so long as Morgan flew a direct route across the English Channel, he says there would have been a short window there.

when the two overlapped. "By 2009 or 10, when I started the work on Glenn Miller Declassified, if you looked online in the internet, the bomb jettison theory was the number one cause of Glenn Miller's disappearance." Miller was killed by the RAF and the secrecy made it look like the government covered it up. It all but becomes the official story.

So when Dennis gets involved in 2009, he sets out to test the theory. His journey takes him from the National Archives in London to the Air Force Historical Research Agency in Montgomery, Alabama, to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and more.

He works with the support of members of the Miller family, and after seven years of research, poring over paperwork, old logs and records, he finds: "These guys are geniuses on World War II aviation history. But they got this one really wrong." First, the calculations that allowed for Miller's plane to pass underneath the RAF bombers only worked if Morgan, the pilot, flew a direct route over the channel.

In 2012, nearly 70 years after Miller's disappearance, a flight logbook appears on BBC's television series Antiques Roadshow. It belonged to a British man named Richard Anderton who worked at an airfield in Woodley, England. On December 15th, he recorded an aircraft that fit the description of a C-64 Norseman shortly after the time we know Miller's plane took off.

soaring through the sky about 15 miles away from what would have been a direct path to Paris. Why the detour? Because transport flights were prohibited from flying over London. They had to go west of London and then south. That's not all. Dennis learned there was another problem with the calculations. The plane Shaw was on took off from Feltwell at 11 a.m. They were recalled at 12.30 a.m.

They jettisoned their bombs, all the bomb jettisons by every squadron. All eight of them that flew that day was between 1.05 and 1.20 p.m. By 2.09 p.m. That plane Shaw was on is logged as on the ground, engines off, back at its base. Miller's plane took off at 1.55, less than 15 minutes earlier. By the time Richard Anderton saw the aircraft near Woodley,

Shaw's plane already would have been grounded. Roy and his team's calculations were so off because they used the wrong time zones. All the times were BST, not GMT. Right away I know, okay, guess what? They're way off. These guys are like 90 minutes off. The Lancasters didn't do it. The Royal Air Force was not accidentally responsible for Miller's

To Shaw's credit, Dennis found evidence that there were other planes flying within jettison range of the RAF bombers that day. So Shaw might have seen a plane crash into the water. It just couldn't have been Miller's. So after all this time, there's a new prevailing theory.

For years, no one could get their hands on an official report by the military about what happened. No record of their investigation, nothing. Miller's brother Herb tried and failed until the day he died, which led some to believe an official report didn't exist, at least until Dennis came along. He may have become one of the first people to ever get his hands on the now declassified report.

After their investigation, the US military completed it back in January 1945, just about a month after Miller disappeared. Turns out, the military hid its existence for so long in an effort to protect Miller's reputation. He'd broken protocol by getting on that plane and on some level likely died because of incompetence. So the report was kept quiet.

But the secrecy had the opposite effect. Conspiracy theories filled in the gaps that were far worse than what the military, and Dennis, believe most likely happened. Remember when I said that shortly before Miller disappeared, he wrote his brother a letter that now feels like a premonition? Well, in the first half of December... He writes a letter to his brother Herb.

and he basically says i'll be in paris in two weeks but adds a caveat he says barring a nosedive into the english channel the c-64 norseman was a notoriously difficult plane to fly it was small and built to be versatile that day after morgan took off the cloud ceiling was around two to three thousand feet in england

But in Paris, the conditions were already too cloudy to land. "It's a classic perfect storm of human error, weather and mechanical failure." Morgan was a young and relatively inexperienced pilot following the orders of a higher ranking official. He didn't have the qualifications to fly by instrument alone, so he probably flew by sight, keeping the ground in view at all times.

which, as the cloud ceiling got lower and lower over the course of the day, would have been nearly impossible. Dennis says at the end of the day, One of two things happens. One, Morgan becomes disoriented and just flies the thing into the water. Spatial disorientation is a common cause of fatal plane accidents. Think John F. Kennedy Jr. off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Or two, The most likely scenario is the carburetor

seized up because it was, he might not have been operating the carburetor heater properly or they were broken. See, the C-64 Norseman had well-documented mechanical issues. This exact airplane was in the shop on Monday the 12th. For a plane designed to be flown in the Canadian wilderness, it didn't excel in cold weather. The carburetor, which feeds gas into the engine, had a habit of freezing up.

To combat the problem, the engines were designed with special heaters. But the heaters malfunctioned enough that they'd been recalled. Morgan's plane was in line to have its replaced, but presumably was far down the list. Combat planes received first priority, and Morgan was a transport pilot. And whether it was disorientation or a carburetor that sent the plane into the water,

Miller and the rest of the passengers wouldn't have lasted long. "The air temperature is anywhere between 32-33 degrees Fahrenheit to about 36 degrees Fahrenheit. If that plane had gone into the water intact and somehow miraculously all three people had survived in a raft, the survival time in a water was 20 minutes." Hypothermia would have kicked in. It's not a happy ending.

Dennis imagines Bazell and Morgan in the front seats arguing. And here's Miller sitting in the back in the cabin going, why did I ever get on this thing? You can smell the fuel. You can't really, you know, go to the bathroom. It's very uncomfortable. It's very loud. It's probably really turbulent. And then it's over. Of course, no one can be 100% sure until we find the plane, but that could happen soon enough.

Dennis says there are two different initiatives run by aviation archaeologists that are in talks. He also says the Miller family is relieved he was able to put to rest so many wild conspiracies that have haunted their family's legacy for so long. But Dennis' work hasn't squashed all the legends entirely.

At the end of that movie, the Liberty Valance with John Wayne and Lee Marvin, Jimmy Stewart says, you know, I didn't really kill him. John Wayne did. I became this heroic figure. I was just I was a coward. And a reporter who's doing his life story crinkles up paper and throws it away. And he says, Senator, when faced with the legend versus the truth, we will print the legend. Yes, the legend is more interesting than the truth. There was no cover up.

It's not like UFOs, right? I'm teasing, I'm teasing. Thanks for tuning in to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. Episodes release every Wednesday. We'd like to give a special thanks to Dennis Sprague for lending his expertise to today's story. You can catch Dennis emceeing the annual Glenn Miller Festival that happens in Iowa every June.

In addition to Glenn Miller Declassified, he's the author of American Ascendant, about the rise of American exceptionalism. And he's currently working on a third book about the history of Britain and America's alliance, which he says will travel as far back in time as the days of Caesar. And remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth.

Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Connor Sampson, researched, edited, and produced by Connor Sampson and Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau, our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy.

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