Existing comment:
Big bandleader Glenn Miller was lost over the English Channel on December 15, 1944. There's some thought that he was killed by friendly fire.
Allied bombers returning from the mainland sometimes didn't use them all up. (Either they had trouble finding enough targets to bomb or maybe the mission was aborted early for some reason.) For safety reasons, they couldn't land back in England with live bombs so they had to dump them. I have a friend whose civilian town in Hungary was bombed by one such mission. She talks about running down main street while houses blew up on either side of her. Their town had nothing in it to make it a military target and that was the only time it was bombed. If the bombers couldn't find land targets, they would drop their explosives over the English Channel.
The thought advanced by one documentary is that the bombers might have dumped their cargo on the single-engined Noorduyn Norseman aircraft flying below them. It was carrying Glenn Miller on his way to a performance in Paris. (See http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/dec/15/humanities.research )
The stone at Arlington Cemetery is an in memoriam marker. The stones are usually on steep sections of the cemetery where body burial would be difficult so the plot would be unusable. Miller's body -- never recovered -- is not here but this allows him to be commemorated anyway.
Glenn Miller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – missing in action December 15, 1944) was an American big band musician, arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known big bands. Miller's notable recordings include "In the Mood", "Moonlight Serenade", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "A String of Pearls", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", and "Little Brown Jug". While he was traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Glenn Miller's aircraft disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel. |