ACUFO-1944-12-15-ENGLISHCHANNEL-1
On December 15, 1944, on a foggy afternoon, a C-64 plane of the U.S. Army Air Forces carried worldwide star jazz musician Glenn Miller and two other passengers across the English Channel, heading for the “AEF Christmas Show” concert in Paris, France. The plane vanished over the English Channel.
The disappearance of Glenn Miller was announced on December 24, 1944, by the Associated Press.
In 1999, Joe Trainor, an American who published a UFO news bulletin on the Web, said that this “mystery” was solved, the plane crashed into the sea because an RAF Lancaster bomber had jettisoned its bombs on it.
Trainor explained that among the theories that had been put forth about this plane crash, there was:
“(A) His plane was shot down by a “foo fighter” over the English Channel”
... and...
“(B) His plane was halted by a tractor beam and hauled aboard a gigantic flying saucer.”
| Date: | December 15, 1944 |
|---|---|
| Time: | Afternoon. |
| Duration: | N/A |
| First known report date: | 1999 |
| Reporting delay: | Decades. |
| Country: | |
|---|---|
| State/Department: | |
| City or place: | The English Channel. |
| Number of alleged witnesses: | 0 |
|---|---|
| Number of known witnesses: | 0 |
| Number of named witnesses: | 0 |
| Reporting channel: | Joseph Trainor UFO bulletin. |
|---|---|
| Visibility conditions: | Foggy. |
| UFO observed: | No. |
| UFO arrival observed: | N/A. |
| UFO departure observed: | N/A. |
| UFO action: | N/A. |
| Witnesses action: | N/A. |
| Photographs: | No. |
| Sketch(s) by witness(es): | No. |
| Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): | No. |
| Witness(es) feelings: | N/A. |
| Witnesses interpretation: | N/A. |
| Sensors: |
[ ] Visual:
[ ] Airborne radar: [ ] Directional ground radar: [ ] Height finder ground radar: [ ] Photo: [ ] Film/video: [ ] EM Effects: [ ] Failures: [X] Damages: Plane crash. |
|---|---|
| Hynek: | N/A. |
| Armed / unarmed: | Unarmed. |
| Reliability 1-3: | 2 |
| Strangeness 1-3: | 1 |
| ACUFO: | Not UFO-related. |
[Ref. jtr1:] JOSEPH TRAINOR - "UFO-ROUNDUP":
For years the famous bandleader Glenn Miller, whose plane disappeared on December 15, 1944, has been part and parcel of UFO lore.
Miller, whose hit tunes of the 1940s included In The Mood and Chattanooga Choo-Choo, was the subject of many unusual theories, including (A) His plane was shot down by a “foo fighter” (mid-1940s name for UFOs - J.T.) over the English Channel.
(B) His plane was halted by a tractor beam and hauled aboard a gigantic flying saucer.
(C) He was abducted by small aliens from his hotel in the Montmartre section of Paris.
(D) His distinctive eyeglasses, with the monogram GM, were among the debris found in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947.
The truth, however, is much more mundane than that. Miller's plane crashed as a result of a horrifying military mishap over the Channel.
The night of December 15, 1944, Miller boarded a single-propellor-engine Norseman D-64, which was to fly him to Paris for a band concert.
Meanwhile, a four-engine Royal Air Force Lancaster bomber -- one of the hundreds sent to Germany that night by RAF Bomber Command -- developed engine trouble over France and was granted permission to return to their base in East Anglia, UK.
Aboard “M Mother” was airman/navigator Fred Shaw. Once the Lancaster was over the Channel, the pilot told the bombardier to jettison their load of 4,000-pound Grand Slam bombs. The bombardier hit the toggle, adding, “Bombs gone!”
Shaw watched as the “stick” of Grand Slam bombs began their 22,000-foot drop into the sea. Then he spotted the Norseman approaching from the northwest.
“I watched the plane flying south,” Shaw wrote, “Around it, the sea bubbled and blustered with the exploding bombs. As each bomb burst, I could see the blast wave from it radiating outward. It was obvious the airplane was in trouble, so I watched intently.”
“Just before it went out of sight, I saw it flip over in what looked like a spin. Eventually I saw it disappear into the Channel.”
(Editor's [J. Trainor] Comment: Sounds like the blast vibration shattered the Norseman's ailerons.)
“'Dad was an aviation buff, and he knew what Miller's plane looked like,' Shaw's daughter Cheryl Fillmore tells Globe. 'He told me he saw the Norseman at exactly the same time Miller went missing.'”
“The (M Mother's RAF) logbook, along with letters and photos of Shaw and his bomber crew are being auctioned this month by Sotheby's.” (See the Globe for April 5, 1999, “Solved! Mystery of Glenn Miller's Death,” by John Bell.)
The plane was a Norseman D-64 was a 10-passengers small plane used between 1935 and 1954.
It was also called Noorduyn Norseman, and in the U.S. Army Air Forces, it was designated C-64 (photo below) - the C meant “Cargo”.
|
Whereas Jospeh Trainor suggested that there were theories that...
“(A) His plane was shot down by a “foo fighter” over the English Channel”
... and...
“(B) His plane was halted by a tractor beam and hauled aboard a gigantic flying saucer.”
... I did not find, so far, any ufology book, article or website who claimed one or the other above theories.
It is true that there are countless articles, including Web articles, where Glenn Miller's disappearance is called “mysterious” or “unsolved”, but those I read did not claim that any UFO or alien were involved or may have been involved. Generally, descriptions of the “mystery” were:
Of course, a number of well-informed articles explain that there is actually no mystery about Glenn Miller's disappearance:
At the time, the U.S Army 8th Air Force investigated the disappearance and wrote a classified report on January 20, 1945, declassified later. They concluded the C-64 went down over the English Channel probably due to pilot disorientation, icing leading to carburetor heater failure. The claim by one airman that an RAF Lancaster accidentally caused the C-64 the crash by bombs jettison is not evidenced, except that it is possible, given the date, that the Lancaster crew saw a “kite” or small plane going down, an it may have been the C-64 in which Glenn Miller traveled. And even so, another airmen on the same raid said this was impossible because the cloud cover resulted in “almost nil visibility”.
Also, in 1987, a captain of a fishing trawler radioed the coast guards that his nets hooked on a small aircraft with World War Two markings. The coast guards told him it may be a war grave and asked him to get rid of it. He did this, taking a note of the location and thought nothing more of it until several years later when he became convinced he had hooked Glenn Miller's plane.
This was later considered possible but improbable because the fisherman said the aircraft was mostly intact when he it was pulled up, whereas the lightweight C-64 would most likely have been put to pieces when hitting the water.
The bottom line is, there is a) no reason at all to see any relation between this aircraft loss and UFOs, and b) no mystery in the aircraft's loss and c) I found no evidence so far that any ufologist ever thought UFOs were involved in the aircraft's loss.
Not UFO-related.
* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.
| Main author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editor: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Create/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | July 6 2024 | Creation, [jtr1]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | July 6 2024 | First published. |
