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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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December 15, 1944, Bedford, Sheringland.

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Glenn Miller, the most popular musician in the world, is serving as commander of the Army Air Corps Band.

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Determined to fly to France to prepare for a concert, he accepts an invitation to make the journey in a small plane.

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Poor weather has already delayed the flight for several days.

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Despite personal misgivings, he is unwilling to wait any longer.

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The plane is now ready to take off.

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The plane is ready to take off.

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The plane is ready to take off.

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Contact with the plane lasts only a few minutes.

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Glenn Miller will never be seen again.

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Long been believed the plane iced up and went down in the English Channel.

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Yet recent information raises some disturbing questions.

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What were the circumstances around the disappearance?

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And why was there never a search made for the aircraft?

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After nearly four decades, is it possible the wreck of that plane can be found today?

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The Battle of Britain brought aerial warfare into the lives of every citizen of England.

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For six years, countless forays were flown and always death was in the sky.

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The children's hills near London.

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During World War II, pilots called their men to the ground.

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The men were sent to the ground to fight for their lives.

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The men were sent to the ground to fight for their lives.

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The men were sent to the ground to fight for their lives.

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The children's hills near London.

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During World War II, pilots called this area the graveyard.

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Hundreds of planes shot from the skies over Great Britain crashed here.

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Today, relics of those planes are being excavated.

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Parts of American P-38s, British Spitfires and German Messerschmitts are found regularly.

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One plane that left from this airfield is sought more than any other.

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Finding the remains of this plane will explain the mystery that clouds the life of a man who stood for an era, Glenn Miller.

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An entire generation grew up idolizing Glenn Miller.

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America's youth danced, romanced and marched off to war to the beat of his music.

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Glenn Miller was an unlikely Pied Piper.

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He was a perfectionist.

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Moody, a loof, a loner.

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He remained a mystery man to even his closest band members.

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In 1942, he shocked everyone with a fateful decision.

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On September 27th, 1944, Glenn Miller was the most experienced Pied Piper.

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He was a great Pied Piper.

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In 1942, he shocked everyone with a fateful decision.

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On September 27th, 1942, at the Central Theater in Versailles, New Jersey, Glenn Miller announced that he would disband his orchestra and volunteer for the American war effort.

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Many believe that this move, more than any other, marked the beginning of the end of the big band era.

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He became Major Glenn Miller, leader of the Army Air Corps Band.

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He and the military were at odds over jazz innovations he wanted to make in traditional military music.

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After more than a year of heated confrontations, the generals gave in.

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Military music would never be the same.

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By 1944, he was stationed in England.

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Even the luxury of staying here at Milton Ernest Hall had paled for Miller.

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On the morning of December 15th, 1944, as recreated here, he left for France with Colonel Norman Bissell.

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Miller had promised American GIs a Christmas concert from Paris.

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Bissell arranged for him to travel ahead of the band in a small plane.

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Miller knew the flight would be hazardous. Poor weather had already delayed it for several days, and now flying conditions were marginal at best.

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Miller was undergoing the worst period of his life.

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During the Blitz of London, he had spent night after night huddled in air raid shelters.

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His battle with the military to change air corps music had taken a toll on his health.

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He had lost nearly 20 pounds. He was tired and depressed.

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Friends say Miller had an exaggerated fear of flying. It's always been a mystery why he risked this particular flight.

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Is it possible that his wartime experiences, his deteriorating health and constant pressure caused him to make an irrational decision?

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Don Haynes, the band's administrative officer, drove Miller and Bissell to the airport.

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He later reported that Miller asked, where are the parachutes? Bissell answered, what's the matter, Miller? You want to live forever?

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Haynes was to follow later that week with the band.

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What happened during the next hour of flight would produce tragedy and controversy.

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Military sources claim the plane went down in the English Channel.

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Yet conflicting reports concerning this doomed flight continued to cause debate.

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Something different had happened to Glenn. Something which was...

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Herb Miller, Glenn's brother, doubts the official explanation.

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I feel that we were told. I feel that we were fed a story and that we were completely misled.

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I have here a missing aircraft report. All kinds of things on here are irregular.

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The inquiry was not properly handled. As a matter of fact, there was no search and no officer in charge of this search.

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Throughout the years, the Glenn Miller mystery has thrived on half truths and innuendo,

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much of which was unwittingly brought about by a lack of effort on the part of authorities to find the plane.

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Let's examine what steps were taken after it disappeared.

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These previously classified papers have never been publicized before.

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They are the Air Force official reports on the incident.

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The most curious aspect of these papers are the dates on them.

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Miller's plane was not officially confirmed as missing until the 20th of December, five days after the takeoff.

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He said, Al...

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Yet Alan still will. Miller's civilian valet recalls that military police didn't wait five days.

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It might have been one day, two days, but two security officers came and put strap in over his belongings and sealed it.

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And then they were transported away. And that was the last I saw or heard of anything of him.

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Investigators have always been puzzled by this move.

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Officials claim this action was taken to protect Miller's belongings, yet his family reports never receiving them.

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Nor as often happens in wartime where they shared amongst his comrades.

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It was certainly against normal practice to remove a man's personal effects before his death was confirmed or before he had been missing a full week.

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This incident led some to believe the military was holding back information.

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Official aircrew reports would have been compiled within 48 hours of the time an aircrew member was reported missing.

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Yet this report was not completed till the 23rd of December, eight days after the doomed flight.

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Why the delay?

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Other questions are left unanswered by the report.

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Why wasn't there an extensive search for the plane, especially when the disappearance concerned a world famous celebrity?

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Radar antennas that searched the skies over the English Channel never detected the plane.

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Many of the rumors surrounding the disappearance of Glenn Miller's plane could have been silenced by the findings of a court of inquiry.

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Yet no official investigation was ever made.

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The question is, why?

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December 15, 1944. In search of examines the circumstances of that day, what we do know for sure is that Glenn Miller's plane took off and was never seen again.

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Any thorough investigation of a Miller mystery must start with the military and its lack of effort to search for the plane.

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We have assembled participants as well as investigators.

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Royal Fry, curator of the United States Air Force Museum, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

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You know, much has been made of this in the past, the idea of having a military court of inquiry.

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But we had fellows who disappeared on flights every day.

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I had a very good friend disappear on a flight out of my squad and we were flying fighters.

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I remember another instance where we had a major take off on a flight five minutes after the squadron had headed out.

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He should have done it, he disappeared, never came back.

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At that time, the Battle of the Bulge had just started, or started a couple of days afterwards.

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The Germans were marching through Western Europe. We had to worry about that.

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Every day that we sent missions out there were Americans who didn't come back.

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Every bomber that went down had ten Americans on board.

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And although I don't personally believe this, you know, I don't feel this in my own heart because I've always been a Miller buff.

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But let's face it realistically, that airplane disappeared with three men on board.

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A flight officer who was the lowest ranking pilot you could have, a Lieutenant Colonel who was not a pilot, we call them ground pounders,

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how valuable he was to the war effort, I don't know, and a third fellow on there, a major who played a drum bone.

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Now that's cold-blooded, but you have to look at it in the context of the time.

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I don't imagine they sent out search aircraft. I imagine the search consisted of checking with air bases and checking with grounded Dervet cores,

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checking with radar sites, checking with possible places they may have landed and failed to report in.

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But I don't think they launched any sort of a large search like they did for a Milgaerhardt back in the mid-1930s.

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Again, they had a war to fight, and every airplane and boat they used for search was one they didn't use to fight the Germans.

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What did happen to Glenn Miller? The more we uncovered, the more complex his story became.

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Some friends claim that after Miller joined the service, he became fatalistic.

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Legendary tenor sax man and vocalist for Miller's civilian band, Tex Benikey, explains what England was like when Miller arrived in 1944.

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And this was about the time that the Germans were throwing so many of those buzzbombs at London and cities all around that he was scared.

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He was scared to death of those V-bombs. But he did get the band out of Bedford, England just a day before the whole town was obliterated.

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And he actually felt at that time, according to some of the boys that were with him, that he would never get back.

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One chilling indication of Miller's fatalism was sent to his brother.

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Two weeks or so before he disappeared, he wrote a letter to his brother, Herb, in California.

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And on the back page of that two-page letter, he wrote,

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By the time you receive this, we shall all be in Paris, barring, of course, a nosedive into the channel.

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And it almost brings the hair up in the nape of your neck to stand there and read that letter.

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And realize this was written by the great Glenn Miller, and he apparently did nosedive into the channel.

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Finding the remains of the aircraft would begin to answer some of the questions surrounding the Glenn Miller mystery.

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Two key participants in the flight itself were never even questioned by the military.

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Arnold Bruns was the aircraft's maintenance crew chief on that day in December 1944.

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In search of found Bruns living today in Manawa, Wisconsin,

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he recalls pre-flighting Miller's aircraft with its pilot, John Morgan.

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Mr. Morgan and I went over the maintenance forms on the aircraft, we pre-fired the aircraft,

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we found everything to be very much tip-top as far as the maintenance portion of the aircraft was concerned.

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We checked out the anti-icing and de-icing equipment to the best of my knowledge,

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and it was well equipped with that phase of equipment.

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And I'm sure that had the aircraft encountered icing, the capabilities of Mr. Morgan

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were such that he definitely would have taken evasive action immediately,

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or had he started to cross the channel under icing conditions and found that they did exist,

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he definitely would have turned back to base.

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Despite Mr. Bruns' claim, some officials say the plane was not equipped with de-icing gear.

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Until the plane is found, we may never know if such equipment was aboard.

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Dixie Clerk was the radio operator at Twin Woods Field who cleared Miller's plane for take-off.

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She now resides in Surrey, British Columbia.

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Mrs. Clerk remembers that shortly after the plane took off, it was not responding to radio calls from the airfield.

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I forget at the time, well, there has to be one or two things.

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Either the radio's gone out, or they've gone down.

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But generally, well, if the radio had gone out, the pilot wouldn't continue not to go over the drink

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with such an important person as well on it.

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I called several bases, including Coastal Command and places like that,

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to see if any of them had heard about the aircraft, and they said no.

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And from then on in, I assumed, and I've always assumed, they went down on land.

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They had to have gone down on land. I can't see how anybody can think any different,

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because they didn't clear the circuit. They had to have gone down on land.

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Now, since then, I've learned how rugged the Tilton Hills are,

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and I've also been told that several aircraft have gone down in the Tilton Hills that they've never found.

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I forget if they have to search once, twice, three times, even a dozen times, and they don't find it.

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I still think that in the end, that's where they're going to find the aircraft.

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Could the plane lie buried somewhere in the Tilton Hills?

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There is one unconfirmed report.

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A farmer in this area told officials he heard a plane crash after Miller's plane took off.

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Miller would have flown southward over this area and route to France.

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Could wreckage of the Miller aircraft still be found here?

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The children aircraft group is a body of aviation enthusiasts who spend their weekends digging up wrecks of aircraft that crashed in the hills.

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Their leader is Peter Halliday.

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Around the Tilton area is a real burial ground of the crashed aircraft.

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Many of them weren't recovered during the war, and were buried in the ground,

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and this is what our group is actively doing at the moment, is recovering the ones that were never recovered.

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We have a large number, I should think, the last count. We had about 120 in the Buckinghamshire area, which does cover the Tilton area.

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This one, for example, was dug up from about 16 feet into the ground after 34 years in the ground.

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It crashed in 1941.

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Every week, airplane parts are dug up in the children's.

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Pieces to puzzles that have remained unsolved for nearly four decades.

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In light of the growing belief that Miller's plane crashed on land, these airplane archaeologists may soon uncover the final fate of the great band leader.

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It's the twin woods airfield today.

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The answer to the Miller mystery lies somewhere between here and Paris.

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Once, this field echoed with the roar of spitfire fighters and the cadence of marching troops.

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Millions of men departed from here for the battlefields of Europe.

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Many of these men were touched by the music and the memory of a fellow soldier who never returned.

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There were millions of casualties during World War II.

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Every death affected someone.

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But the disappearance of Glenn Miller affected us all.

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It ended an era.

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The crew ship Aquililaro and other terrorist acts against Americans.

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Then Weapons at War takes you into battle with combat engineers.

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And log on at veterans.com, a new website brought to you by the History Channel.

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Veterans.com, a place where veterans, their families and others can connect, share stories, and pass on the legacies of all American veterans.