Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They call
Speaker 3: me Bed. We're joined as always with our super producer
Speaker 3: Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are here and
Speaker 3: that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: We are recording this at the beginning of December twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three. Quick check in, guys, how we feel it
Speaker 3: here at the edge.
Speaker 4: Of the new year, the edge of the universe? Pretty good,
Speaker 4: I think, you know, all in all things considered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, OK, not great, but we'll get through it.
Speaker 3: I'm just being optimistic. You know. It's certainly room for improvement.
Speaker 3: I know this would be where the Internet says, insert
Speaker 3: gift of someone vaguely gesturing at everything. We have a
Speaker 3: bit of a December ish episode tonight, folks, Castro Memories back.
Speaker 3: It's December fifteenth, nineteen forty four. The legendary band leader
Speaker 3: Glenn Miller is flying from London to Paris. Glenn is excited.
Speaker 3: He's bringing his band to the European front. Glenn is also,
Speaker 3: to be honest, massively irritated because it turns out he's
Speaker 3: been trying to catch this flight to France for several
Speaker 3: days and then somewhere over the English Channel his plane disappears.
Speaker 3: Almost eighty years later to the day, people are still
Speaker 3: asking what happened to Glenn Miller? Here are the facts.
Speaker 3: You guys know Glenn. You're musicians, right, Seriously, it's so weird.
Speaker 2: In preparation for this episode, I didn't, I am if
Speaker 2: I would have. If you would have told me, hey, Matt,
Speaker 2: who's Glenn Miller, I would have got halo. But if
Speaker 2: you if you realize who he is, I guess in
Speaker 2: researching him, you're like, dang, this guy had a lot
Speaker 2: of influence on a lot of people, and I think
Speaker 2: music in general. Guys, can we just talk quickly about
Speaker 2: the thing that made his orchestra's sound unique the fingerprint?
Speaker 3: Yeah? The horns?
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's the horn. Because he was he was
Speaker 2: a famous trombonist. I'm sure he was a multi instrument instrumentalist.
Speaker 2: I guess as a way you'd say that, but he
Speaker 2: was known for his trombone work. And when he would
Speaker 2: compose music, he would use the horns section, so like
Speaker 2: we're talking trumpets and trombones, other horns with saxophones and
Speaker 2: what was it. He would play like the same melody
Speaker 2: with both instruments at different octaves to give it a
Speaker 2: very I don't know, just cool.
Speaker 3: Love the clarinet to that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He was born in nineteen oh four in Iowa,
Speaker 3: March first, and for a while he studied at the
Speaker 3: University of Colorado. He did take a music course. He
Speaker 3: got an incomplete, by the way, and he dropped out
Speaker 3: to work full time as a musician. As you said, Matt,
Speaker 3: his primary instrument was the trombone. He was a tromboner,
Speaker 3: a trombonist, no pun left behind.
Speaker 2: Before you go, I think it's so funny you're talking
Speaker 2: about the University of Colorado. When you go to their website,
Speaker 2: they've got a huge page about him. And he literally
Speaker 2: like showed up and was like I'll take this.
Speaker 3: Nah right. He also made a name for himself as
Speaker 3: an arranger, a composer, later a band leader, and as
Speaker 3: we all know, the life of a musician can be
Speaker 3: immensely challenging. So this guy goes from gig to gig,
Speaker 3: from band to band, before he gets hired on to
Speaker 3: play trombone for Ben Pollocks Orchestra in the mid nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: and then after that Fleetwood Max style, he goes his
Speaker 3: own way. He's back to freelancing, and at some point,
Speaker 3: I believe in the late thirties, he says, well, when
Speaker 3: I start a band.
Speaker 2: YEP, And that lasted for about a year. He was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I've got a band, and people loved it, or at
Speaker 2: least people who were influential and important within the music
Speaker 2: industries maybe at the time, but yeah, it lasted about
Speaker 2: a year, and almost immediately he started up with another
Speaker 2: group of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This first one, as you said, was sort of
Speaker 3: a critics darling, not a lot of mainstream notice, but
Speaker 3: people who heard it loved it. They loved what he
Speaker 3: was doing. And his second group really hit the zeitgeist.
Speaker 3: People loved this stuff. They played ballrooms, they played casinos.
Speaker 3: I've never seen a live band at a casino. What
Speaker 3: maybe that's a little bit of a dated thing. Like
Speaker 3: now it's more like stage you know, floor shows or
Speaker 3: you know, like magic or just to lay that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. But back in the day.
Speaker 4: Day, yeah, I mean, back in the day it was
Speaker 4: like I mean, we know, I think from our trip
Speaker 4: to Vegas and learning a lot of the history is
Speaker 4: that a lot of the the rules around who could
Speaker 4: and could not go into casinos pertaining to race had
Speaker 4: direct directly to do with some of these really hot,
Speaker 4: high level performers who were starting to not all be
Speaker 4: you know, white. I think Sammy Davis Junior led to
Speaker 4: a lot of changes or even the formation of a
Speaker 4: very specific casino that did allow black folks to patronize
Speaker 4: it and not just have to be you know, swooped
Speaker 4: in the back door.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and this is my problem as well, with
Speaker 2: just the cultural difference of the nineteen thirties to now
Speaker 2: and everything that I've ever known growing up, they're the
Speaker 2: dance club or a place where you would go out
Speaker 2: to dance with somebody or to meet somebody and dance.
Speaker 2: It's very different than the way we think about it now.
Speaker 2: And probably since we were you know, we've been born.
Speaker 4: I mean officially, these bands were often referred to as
Speaker 4: dance bands.
Speaker 3: You know, that was sort of the term of popular use.
Speaker 3: And this guy is in the thick of it. He
Speaker 3: is a pop star by this point, picture your favorite
Speaker 3: most successful pop star. He is in that sort of
Speaker 3: echelon at this moment in his life. They're all over
Speaker 3: the radio and their sound is, as we said, it's
Speaker 3: considered unique. Everybody loves it. They can't get enough. By
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nine, Glenn is hosting his own radio show
Speaker 3: three times a week. They had all these hits. We
Speaker 3: were talking about it a little bit off air. I
Speaker 3: love Perfidia. Matt, you're a in the mood guy. You
Speaker 3: were talking about that one.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I don't know what it is about
Speaker 2: that song, man, it puts me in the mood.
Speaker 3: Is that I may be wrong.
Speaker 4: I think that's that one tuxedo junction, right, Ye, Sunday
Speaker 4: has Serenade and not to remember, there's also Moonlight Serenade.
Speaker 4: You got your Son Serenade and your Moonlight Serenade.
Speaker 2: But there's something about I don't know. It's that it's
Speaker 2: the ride symbol and the drummer's not doing much at all,
Speaker 2: but like just keeps it going and it just flows
Speaker 2: and again usually with the horn section.
Speaker 3: It's just Oh.
Speaker 4: That band that there is just a very they're they're
Speaker 4: they're kind of like tie disco vibes almost, but like
Speaker 4: it is just a very steady kind of drum uh performance.
Speaker 4: But then you'll have the big old blasty drum solo occasionally. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's neat to watching these cats play because they'll have
Speaker 4: the snare tilted at a weird angle and they'll be
Speaker 4: playing side stick kind of with that ride. Unless even
Speaker 4: the kick drum, it's not a kicky kind of sound.
Speaker 4: It's a very The ride is everything, and everything comes
Speaker 4: with the bass upright bass, so they're not doing a
Speaker 4: big banging kick. That's not the sound of this type
Speaker 4: of music at all.
Speaker 3: Is beautiful, very cool. It is beautiful. If you have
Speaker 3: not had the pleasure of listening to the Glenn Miller
Speaker 3: version of Perfidia, do check it out. It's astonishing. So anyway,
Speaker 3: what we're saying is, yeah, the dogs get it, let's
Speaker 3: leave it in. These are all bangers, and in a
Speaker 3: very real way, this guy's work begins to define the
Speaker 3: era of what we call swing music. He's at the
Speaker 3: top of his game. He's thirty eight years old, and
Speaker 3: the Western world is shocked when he suddenly disbands his orchestra,
Speaker 3: which was very successful, and he enlists in the US
Speaker 3: Army to help with World War Two. We have a
Speaker 3: little bit of his correspondence with Uncle Sam right.
Speaker 4: On August twelfth, nineteen forty two, he wrote this letter
Speaker 4: arguing that he could in his band could possibly be
Speaker 4: a morale booster for you know, the Boys in Blue,
Speaker 4: that's the cops, what do you call it?
Speaker 3: Anyway, it was exclusively boys at this time for the
Speaker 3: trump the choices of Red White vis go.
Speaker 4: And this is largely the foundation of what led to
Speaker 4: things like the USO, which is you know, comedians, musicians,
Speaker 4: influencers that come and you know, give special performances, you know,
Speaker 4: for the troops. But Glenn kind of took this upon
Speaker 4: himself and it was sort of like his idea. He
Speaker 4: wanted to quote, put a little more spring into the
Speaker 4: feet of our marching men and a little more joy
Speaker 4: into their hearts.
Speaker 3: Like the end of Ghostbusters too, just a little love
Speaker 3: in your heart.
Speaker 2: Well it is, oh, and it's quite I think it's
Speaker 2: quite inspiring actually, because this solidifies him not only as
Speaker 2: a pop star right and an important figure in that way,
Speaker 2: he becomes kind of an American hero just for deciding
Speaker 2: to do this and making it happen.
Speaker 3: M M, yeah, one hundred percent. And so from October
Speaker 3: of that year all the way to December of nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four, he is he's got he gets the rank
Speaker 3: of a captain. He's leading an outfit called the Army
Speaker 3: Air Force Band. This is huge. Forty two people in
Speaker 3: this orchestra, a nineteen piece swing band at its core,
Speaker 3: so they've got the classics and then got the you know,
Speaker 3: the stuff he cut a rug to. There were no
Speaker 3: chumps in the squad. Had this band continued with Glenn,
Speaker 3: we have no idea how many more contributions he would
Speaker 3: have made to the musical canon of America and indeed
Speaker 3: the world overall. Why don't we know what would have happened? Well,
Speaker 3: because his flight never arrived in Paris. Shades of missing
Speaker 3: in Alaska. Shout out to our pal John Waalzac. Shout
Speaker 3: out to Paul Decktt, who also works on that show.
Speaker 3: To date, in twenty twenty three, no trace of this
Speaker 3: plane has been discovered or at least officially confirmed. So
Speaker 3: we have to ask ourselves what happened to Glenn? How
Speaker 3: did one of the world's most popular musicians simply disappear?
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Let's keep going. I mean,
Speaker 3: think about it. Taylor Swift, very popular musician. What if
Speaker 3: Taylor Swift one day hopped a flight to the Middle
Speaker 3: East and just vanished.
Speaker 4: People would commit suicide on mass that is would happened. Well,
Speaker 4: the Swifties would find her, They would find her, there
Speaker 4: would be a million amateur detectives spawned overnight, or.
Speaker 3: They would at least find a scapegoat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's weird because in this case, because of
Speaker 2: the time period, right, because the world was at war
Speaker 2: when this occurred. Because planes are getting shot down all
Speaker 2: over the place, right and in different at the edges
Speaker 2: of battlefields, you know, across Europe. It is very weird
Speaker 2: that it occurs, right, with this very popular person on
Speaker 2: a flight that is military related, but it's not. It's
Speaker 2: not like a military mission in the same way, right
Speaker 2: mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could call it a casual flight, which several
Speaker 3: researchers have. Let's stick with the facts one moment longer
Speaker 3: before we get into the theories. Let's look at the
Speaker 3: provable stuff. With help from the author Dennis Spragg in
Speaker 3: his book Glenn Miller Declassified, which is considered by far
Speaker 3: the most exhaustive investigation. He notes a couple of weird things.
Speaker 3: Miller's flight, the one he actually made it on, was
Speaker 3: booked on short notice. He had already tried to get
Speaker 3: like it was booked the night before, because he had
Speaker 3: already tried and failed to get on several other flights.
Speaker 3: And he basically took a really small airplane with help
Speaker 3: from a military buddy, an acquaintance that we'll get to
Speaker 3: and it's there were only three people aboard, and he
Speaker 3: was just done waiting. He was so pissed that he
Speaker 3: had to be beyond standby and his first light got canceled,
Speaker 3: and then he had another one that got canceled. I'm
Speaker 3: Glenn m fing Miller.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about why. So his band was going to
Speaker 2: have to be in Paris, right and they were going
Speaker 2: to perform there? What on Christmas?
Speaker 3: State?
Speaker 2: Yes, And what Glenn had to do as the leader
Speaker 2: of the brain behind that stuff was all the things
Speaker 2: that like an executive producer would have to do, right,
Speaker 2: You've got to figure out how do I actually get
Speaker 2: where are all of my people going to stay? What
Speaker 2: food are they going to be eating? You know, like
Speaker 2: all of the logistics. I guess that was on him
Speaker 2: to figure all of that out, which is why he
Speaker 2: wanted to be there before the rest of the band,
Speaker 2: at least according to a lot of the writing, right,
Speaker 2: that's that's been put into the record, which is why
Speaker 2: he felt a real need get whatever I have to do.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get there early.
Speaker 3: Consummate professional. He only got a seat on this tiny plane.
Speaker 3: Is it's a nord Dune you see sixty four a Norseman.
Speaker 3: You can see a picture of this and it looks
Speaker 3: almost like a biplane, you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's a unique cool aircraft. Don't you think?
Speaker 3: Oh? Unique cool? Would you say easily identifiable? I might.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Miller, being a military man himself at this point, he
Speaker 3: has a little bit of juice with the eighth Air Force.
Speaker 3: He has an acquaintance, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Bessel, who is
Speaker 3: headed that way. He's like, oh, I'm going to France,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Why just hop with me.
Speaker 3: I'm already headed there. This was ad hoc, This was
Speaker 3: a phone call. This was can you do me a
Speaker 3: favorite type stuff? Not necessarily secret, but not necessarily official.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, not official at all, because let's talk about
Speaker 2: why the planes kept getting delayed. The weather was so
Speaker 2: terrible that the military was like, na, we can't fly
Speaker 2: anything across the English Channel right now, as dangerous as hell. No, absolutely,
Speaker 2: we're not going to send our big aircraft over there
Speaker 2: that you could get a flight on. Glenn Miller and
Speaker 2: these guys are like, eh, but what if we took
Speaker 2: a baby plane.
Speaker 3: Just a tiny, tiny plane once in a while as
Speaker 3: a treat.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so, because this is ad hoc, the story
Speaker 3: goes that the Allied Command in Northwestern Europe, the Supreme
Speaker 3: Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force or CHAFF, they didn't know where
Speaker 3: he was. And so Miller and this lieutenant colonel and
Speaker 3: their pilot, a very young guy, it's twenty two year
Speaker 3: old named John Morgan, they crossed the channel, and or
Speaker 3: they attempt to cross the channel. The Eighth Air Force,
Speaker 3: the Allied authorities, they don't even know the plane is
Speaker 3: missing until three days later, on December eighteenth. Like you said, Matt,
Speaker 3: the rest of the band and flew on separate planes,
Speaker 3: on much larger planes.
Speaker 2: They got cleared when they were supposed to go, basically
Speaker 2: when the weather cleared up, and uh, we're going to
Speaker 2: get into but that's why the communication was so poor
Speaker 2: because of the ad hoc nature of this that you're
Speaker 2: talking about. So we can't stress that enough. The reason
Speaker 2: why nobody knew until the eighteenth, three days later, is
Speaker 2: because they kind of just winged it.
Speaker 3: Ah, worth it, worth it, the NILP I'd left behind
Speaker 3: it winged it. Oh, he's going to need a parachute.
Speaker 3: And so Miller's own wife, this is heartbreaking. His wife, Helen,
Speaker 3: doesn't learn that her husband has disappeared until December twenty third,
Speaker 3: making this the worst Christmas ever. On the twenty fourth,
Speaker 3: the next day, the United States government informs the press
Speaker 3: and the public and everybody is asking what actually happened.
Speaker 3: We have to remember this is before the age of
Speaker 3: ubiquitous social media, right, so your access to information is
Speaker 3: limited to radio and print and books and film right
Speaker 3: at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard, guys, we were talking about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2: I've heard it compared to if the Rolling Stones got
Speaker 2: on a flight just in their regular you know, touring
Speaker 2: the world kind of thing, and they just went down
Speaker 2: and we didn't know for weeks that the Rolling Stones
Speaker 2: had disappeared. The only reason we find out is, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like and imagine it having right around Christmas too,
Speaker 2: But like, just the impact basically that the stones had
Speaker 2: when they were coming up is what this guy had
Speaker 2: on the world. And just to lose him like that
Speaker 2: and for it to be a mystery, I think is
Speaker 2: the craziest thing.
Speaker 3: That's definitely wild. That's a great comparison. And let's pause
Speaker 3: for a word from our sponsor. When we return, will
Speaker 3: dive into the official explanation and the theories. We're back,
Speaker 3: so what officially happens? We want to give a shout
Speaker 3: out to our pal friend of the show, Jordan run
Speaker 3: Talk Legend in his time. He wrote an article for
Speaker 3: People magazine in twenty nineteen about this and we quite
Speaker 3: like the way he put it.
Speaker 4: Also did a really cool podcast called Stoness Touring Party
Speaker 4: that has got a lot of stones on private planes
Speaker 4: and you can use your imagination and imagine what might
Speaker 4: have happened given the fervor around that US tour that
Speaker 4: the podcast goes into. But Jordan points out that in
Speaker 4: the article this the official explanation is the most obvious.
Speaker 4: Miller and crew fell victim to bad weather, and then
Speaker 4: goes on to talk about some meteorological terms that are
Speaker 4: probably of a.
Speaker 3: Particular interest to aviators.
Speaker 4: Something called the cloud ceiling had fallen to fifteen hundred feet,
Speaker 4: which is just a little bit more than four hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty seven meters, if that's your bag. In twin
Speaker 4: Wood Farm, which is the British point of departure for
Speaker 4: Basil and Miller's.
Speaker 3: Flight, And according to the story, France wasn't having great
Speaker 3: weather either. They were already dealing with similar meteorological conditions
Speaker 3: let's call it fog of war plus you know, regular
Speaker 3: fog and French air traffic control. I'm still not sure
Speaker 3: on this one. Apparently French ATC denied the pilot Morgan's
Speaker 3: request to take this flight over the Channel, and they
Speaker 3: flew the plane anyway. But you can find other people
Speaker 3: arguing it was not foggy, or that the flight was
Speaker 3: not unauthorized. Curious or and curious.
Speaker 2: It's so weird because everything I've seen in researching for
Speaker 2: this shows that it is like may I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's just the official story that
Speaker 2: was put out there has been repeated so many times,
Speaker 2: you know, as we encounter some of these some of
Speaker 2: these other stories like that, it just becomes a part
Speaker 2: of the record that everybody points to when they're going
Speaker 2: to write an article. But it does seem like most
Speaker 2: people agree whether was at least a factor in the flight,
Speaker 2: if the flight timing at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because again, for two days before the flight, he
Speaker 3: couldn't get on the plane because of the weather, So
Speaker 3: it makes sense. Jordan also notes that this particular craft
Speaker 3: these three men were on had a couple of known issues.
Speaker 3: One of them was an issue with the engine carburetors,
Speaker 3: and the other wind was the fuel lines. Fuel Lines
Speaker 3: can freeze if the temperature is low enough, and it
Speaker 3: turns out that's bad for planes.
Speaker 2: Okay, serious question. Isn't this a Canadian created, crafted plane,
Speaker 2: like you are correct, some pretty cold weather, right, you know,
Speaker 2: that's just weird that the fuel lines would be an
Speaker 2: issue in a plane, you know, with creative the Yeah whatever.
Speaker 3: I did a Casino de Niro shrug since we're audio
Speaker 3: on that. So yeah. So if you go to a
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen episode of History Detective where in the interview
Speaker 3: Dennis Sprague, you'll see that he argues the aircraft got
Speaker 3: over the channel, it hit those freezing temperatures, that eighty
Speaker 3: six is the engine and this UC sixty four A
Speaker 3: goes nose down, face first into the water, and Dennis
Speaker 3: Sprague argues that this happened very quickly, like within the
Speaker 3: space of eight.
Speaker 2: Seconds after taking off.
Speaker 3: No, not after taking off, sorry, you know, in the
Speaker 3: air things go wrong. Eight seconds later they hit the water,
Speaker 3: and he believes that all three people died near instantaneously.
Speaker 2: Wow, I guess that makes sense, because the reason you
Speaker 2: get cloud cover right like that is because of two
Speaker 2: different walls of temperature right that are smashing up against
Speaker 2: each other. I can imagine that there would you you know,
Speaker 2: you hit that threshold near the channel or something, you
Speaker 2: hit really cold temperatures, and then that's it.
Speaker 3: That makes sense to me logically. Yeah, it's a plausible explanation.
Speaker 3: It's still the official explanation of the US. It's it's
Speaker 3: just true. Planes are subject to a tremendous amount of
Speaker 3: variables in every single flight. Apologies for any of our
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists who are listening to this on a plane.
Speaker 3: Now you're going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Well, my dog doesn't think so.
Speaker 3: Be careful. So obviously not everyone accepts this explanation. The
Speaker 3: news goes nuts and then it dies down and fast forward,
Speaker 3: the world still spend, other crazy things are happening into
Speaker 3: China conflict, the Cold War immediately starts after World War Two,
Speaker 3: and it's not until the late nineteen eighties that there
Speaker 3: is a renaissance in speculation. In nineteen eighty five, a
Speaker 3: British diver named Clive Ward found what he thought might
Speaker 3: be the Norseman, the wreckage of it off the coast
Speaker 3: of France. He found, according to the story, no crazy
Speaker 3: damage to the plane, no signs of the plane's serial
Speaker 3: number registration, and no human remains on the craft. As
Speaker 3: we record, this has still yet to be officially confirmed
Speaker 3: as Miller's plane, and so the speculation only grows.
Speaker 2: And in that speculation there's some wild stuff. There's some
Speaker 2: wild stuff, there's some pretty convincing. There's even a deathbed,
Speaker 2: not a confession, but like a deathbed realization almost was recorded.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of theories, right, and some of
Speaker 3: these touch upon, dare we say, the runway of conspiracy.
Speaker 3: But how many of those take off and how many
Speaker 3: actually land? Oh no, So let's talk about the first one.
Speaker 3: Friendly fire? What is friendly fire?
Speaker 4: Oh man, It's when you accidentally get kicked in the
Speaker 4: nuts during a game of dodgeball.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, maybe yeah. I think it might have to
Speaker 2: do with your team accidentally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, by your team, sorry, yeah, but maybe not kick,
Speaker 4: maybe hit with the ball. So I just I don't
Speaker 4: know why I had that on the brain. For sure,
Speaker 4: it's a thing. It sounds fun, friendly fire. No, it
Speaker 4: happens in like video games too. Certain games disable that
Speaker 4: where you can't accidentally shoot your team member or your
Speaker 4: party member. But I do believe there are some online
Speaker 4: type games where you you definitely can and then that's
Speaker 4: very bad, very bad for you. But in war, the
Speaker 4: fog of war is a term that we we know
Speaker 4: happens very often. People are freaked out, they're on edge,
Speaker 4: they're keyed up. Something might go aw pop out at you,
Speaker 4: and you just you shoot first and ask questions later,
Speaker 4: and then only to realize that it was your buddy,
Speaker 4: you know, Steve.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, classic Steve.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's also it's a horrifying thing that occurs to
Speaker 2: every military. Yes, and it happens way more than you think, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and it is it. It's why things.
Speaker 3: Are enough that they made a term for it, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it's why things like official, buttoned up
Speaker 2: flight plans that are communicated between like three or four
Speaker 2: different entities, right, are so important. It's what was that
Speaker 2: chef thinks something you mentioned earlier, Ben, It's a they
Speaker 2: had a weird acronym to it, but it was like
Speaker 2: special Yeah.
Speaker 3: Supreme Supreme Headquarters. It rolls off the tongue the Supreme
Speaker 3: Headquarters ally Expeditionary Force Shaief's all right, now, rock the CASBA.
Speaker 2: But that's why that's so important, because they are monitoring
Speaker 2: where specifically like pretty relatively small avenues of travel that
Speaker 2: are permitted for different different types of aircraft at different
Speaker 2: times every day, and it's all to prevent friendly fire mostly,
Speaker 2: I think because if you can't identify an aircraft, as
Speaker 2: we all know, if you're in a hot war time
Speaker 2: and there's some unknown aircraft flying around your airspace, you're
Speaker 2: probably not going to take too kind to it.
Speaker 4: And I mean, these are all meant to be sort
Speaker 4: of covert flight plans in the first place, so you know,
Speaker 4: the good guys need to know exactly where you know,
Speaker 4: good guys in quotation marries where they are so they
Speaker 4: don't accidentally mistake them for somebody else trying to be
Speaker 4: sneaky because everyone's trying to be sneaky in these situations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, how do you get the correct information out
Speaker 3: to people without that information being collected by rivals or
Speaker 3: enemy forces. Let's go to a guy named Fredshaw. At
Speaker 3: the time, Fredshaw was the navigator of a Lancaster plane
Speaker 3: that was based in Methwold, not meth World. That cost
Speaker 3: me the resource style in Jersey. Yeah, I was like
Speaker 3: meth worlds crazy. And on the day that Miller's plane disappeared,
Speaker 3: there were a bunch of Lancaster bombers, one of them
Speaker 3: was Shaws, Fredshaw's, and they were returning from Germany because
Speaker 3: they were sent on a bombing raid. But the bombing
Speaker 3: raid had to be aborted because they didn't have the
Speaker 3: again to comms, right to structure, They didn't have the
Speaker 3: stuff they needed in place to successfully conduct that raid.
Speaker 3: So they go all the way out there, they turn
Speaker 3: around and the squadron says, crap, we can't land with
Speaker 3: all these bombs on these planes. Somebody get these MFN
Speaker 3: bombs off this MFM plane and they had a redundancy.
Speaker 3: They had a contingency for this, I should say, the
Speaker 3: jettison one hundred thousand bombs into a place called the
Speaker 3: South Jettison area. This was a known place right to
Speaker 3: the idea of mapping out safe places to do things.
Speaker 3: This was where you were supposed to go. It's like
Speaker 3: the public restroom for bombs.
Speaker 2: Isn't that crazy? Over the English Channel? Like dropping one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand bombs and it's like that blows my mind
Speaker 2: because it has to do with weight, right, and fuel reserves,
Speaker 2: like how much fuel you have to get in certain places,
Speaker 2: and then being able to land the vehicle the plane
Speaker 2: safely like that. It's crazy to me that you would
Speaker 2: drop a waste that many bombs because those things what
Speaker 2: I mean, my god, we talked now about how expressed
Speaker 2: are and everything, and I know those have way more
Speaker 2: sophisticated components on them. But dang man, I.
Speaker 4: Really wanted to make a George Jettison joke, but it
Speaker 4: didn't present itself there it is. That's the best you
Speaker 4: can do, and you can't actually make the joke. You
Speaker 4: just say what the pune was going to be. We
Speaker 4: just leave it at that.
Speaker 3: So these bombs, like you said, no, they get George
Speaker 3: jettisoned from four to five thousand feet above right from
Speaker 3: that elevation, and at this time, our buddy Fredshaw, who
Speaker 3: has never seen this occur before, he looks down and
Speaker 3: out the window of his craft, and according to him,
Speaker 3: he sees these bombs exploding above the surface of the sea,
Speaker 3: and at the same time he sees a plane about
Speaker 3: twenty five hundred feet below. This plane is flying south,
Speaker 3: which would have been the same direction of Miller's plane,
Speaker 3: if this was indeed Miller's. And so he let's treat
Speaker 3: him as an eyewitness here, and let's take a couple
Speaker 3: of his quotes that occur far after the fact.
Speaker 4: By the way, absolutely this is what he noted years later.
Speaker 4: And as we know, eyewitness accounts you and on the
Speaker 4: best day close to the event.
Speaker 3: Can be a little sketch. But this is years later.
Speaker 3: Just pointing that out.
Speaker 4: It was obvious to me that the aeroplane below was
Speaker 4: in trouble, so I watched intently. Then just before it
Speaker 4: went out of sight under the leading edge of the wing,
Speaker 4: I saw it flick over to port in what looked.
Speaker 3: Like an incipient spin. I don't quite know what that is,
Speaker 3: but it's cool word.
Speaker 4: I guess I'm confusing with incipid, which would be a
Speaker 4: really stupid spin. This is an incipient spin, which is
Speaker 4: something different, which we'll find out about in a minute.
Speaker 4: And eventually I saw it disappear into the English channel.
Speaker 3: Ban, I saw you giggling. It was an incipient spin.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, I was checking to make sure the
Speaker 3: etymology was right before I said anything. It just means
Speaker 3: nascent beginning emergent. Oh, like he sees the plane beginning
Speaker 3: to spin. Got it. And I was actually looking up
Speaker 3: port yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh, front, So let's I don't remember. I usually didn't
Speaker 4: realize they used nautical terms as well for airplanes.
Speaker 3: I think one, there's port, there's starboard, starboard, and stern,
Speaker 3: right yeah, yeah, and uh they're used for spacecraft as well. Guys,
Speaker 3: we have to figure this out before we go into space.
Speaker 2: Do it well, before we do that, let's get another
Speaker 2: quick quote from mister Shaw, because I again it's it's
Speaker 2: terms that we're unfamiliar with. He said, Uh, I crawled
Speaker 2: from my navigator seat and put my head in the
Speaker 2: observation blister, which I've seen some World War two, you
Speaker 2: know stuff, some films where they used actual aircraft and things,
Speaker 2: and I think that's actually it looks kind of like
Speaker 2: a bubble window right that you can look out more
Speaker 2: from the bottom, not even from the side.
Speaker 3: Right, mm hmm, yeah, because you needed that visual acuity, right.
Speaker 3: And it also reminds me of that terrifying poem. It
Speaker 3: goes like this, the death of the ball turret gutter
Speaker 3: from my mother's sleep. I fell into the state and
Speaker 3: I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze
Speaker 3: six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life.
Speaker 3: I woke to Black Flack and the Nightmare Fighters. When
Speaker 3: I died, they washed me out of the turret with
Speaker 3: a hose. God. So okay, So other people on the
Speaker 3: craft Pershaw, They confirm this. The bomb aimer reports the
Speaker 3: same sighting. Someone goes over the intercom and says they've
Speaker 3: seen something go down. But apparently this downed plane observation
Speaker 3: doesn't get reported because the bombers are not an enemy
Speaker 3: territory and because the raid that they were set time
Speaker 3: was cut short. They never actually bombed it, so there
Speaker 3: wasn't an official operation and it got lost in the bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: At least that's the story Shaw doesn't. Shaw writes this
Speaker 3: down in his log book, but he doesn't link this
Speaker 3: sighting to the disappearance of Glenn Miller until nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: six because he sees a film called the Glenn Miller Story. Yep.
Speaker 2: And of course we've seen this over the years, right,
Speaker 2: some big piece of media gets released and then other
Speaker 2: people come out of the woodwork to say, oh, I
Speaker 2: saw this or I saw that, which means then it's
Speaker 2: on everybody else to vet that story, right, because none
Speaker 2: of us want to believe we're I mean, we all
Speaker 2: want to believe in a compelling story like that and
Speaker 2: someone's bringing truth to light for the first time, but
Speaker 2: we also don't want to be suckers. So when when
Speaker 2: Shaw first comes out, he's looked at in that way, right,
Speaker 2: he's kind of dismissed.
Speaker 3: Right, like, is this guy just after publicity?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Is he doing some sort of macabre play for attention?
Speaker 3: But he checks his old log book, and the logbook
Speaker 3: is real, and he does have this writing of this
Speaker 3: observation that he definitely didn't make in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3: He made it after this flight. And the problem is
Speaker 3: that it gives us a couple of prominent questions. First,
Speaker 3: could Miller's plane have strayed into that South jettison zone.
Speaker 3: We know that, as you said earlier, there were approved routes,
Speaker 3: There were airways through which these craft were allowed to
Speaker 3: fly at certain times, and apparently the approved shuttle route
Speaker 3: to France was pretty close to that south Jettison area,
Speaker 3: close enough that there's a margin of error. So if
Speaker 3: the weather is bad, if you're maybe an inexperienced pilot
Speaker 3: and you don't have the best grasp of navigating by
Speaker 3: instruments alone.
Speaker 2: Which might know his pilot, right was not, at least
Speaker 2: he didn't have the extra certification you needed.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So it is possible then, with all these
Speaker 3: factors that they could have gone off the trail a bit.
Speaker 3: He would have been morgan, the pilot would have been
Speaker 3: using a compass, and it may have been human error.
Speaker 3: And when they stray into this jettison zone, if they did,
Speaker 3: then maybe they got hit by as you said, no
Speaker 3: friendly fire. Shaw's not the only one saying this though.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, guys, just quickly, I have this image
Speaker 2: of bombs falling from bombers like that right several thousand
Speaker 2: feet above you. If you're in a noisy little plane
Speaker 2: like they're in, right, I don't think you would hear
Speaker 2: a thing. You know, we're so used to the sound
Speaker 2: of bombs falling from popular media, you know, and all
Speaker 2: of that. Maybe there is something there. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Experience, it seems for a fact, honestly, and depending on
Speaker 4: the size and the distance, perhaps, but yeah, maybe the explosion.
Speaker 2: But again, but if you're on that plane and that
Speaker 2: type of bomb explodes just above where your heads are
Speaker 2: on that plane, I don't know if you even hear
Speaker 2: anything it would if it happened, I think it would
Speaker 2: just be over.
Speaker 3: Aren't bombs sometimes attached to parachutes? I think we talked
Speaker 3: about in a previous episode. We talked about a couple
Speaker 3: of different like crazy World War two bombing schemes. But
Speaker 3: I these would be unguided bombs right at this time,
Speaker 3: So that's right, Yeah, so they could have had parachutes perhaps,
Speaker 3: definitely to your point, World War two bombs did have parachutes, right.
Speaker 2: It would increase visibility. You know, you're in a heap
Speaker 2: of trouble if you're flying along that path, right and
Speaker 2: you can see that either in the distance heading towards it,
Speaker 2: or just alongside you maybe parallel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now let's introduce a guy named Victor Gregory,
Speaker 3: who captained the plane that Shaw was on. He later
Speaker 3: confirmed Shaw's account and he said, look, our bombardier spotted
Speaker 3: the plane, called the navigator over to have a look,
Speaker 3: and then, according to the story, fred Shaw identified the
Speaker 3: plane as a Norseman as this UC sixty four A,
Speaker 3: which good. I I guess that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from what what are we saying over two thousand
Speaker 2: feet away? Aroun a thousand feet away? Because the Norseman
Speaker 2: theoretically is flying underneath that cloud cover, right, which is
Speaker 2: very low in the sky. And just to be all
Speaker 2: like what, but here's the other thing we did talk
Speaker 2: about how it's a very unique plane.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There were only a couple dozen that were operating during
Speaker 2: the war, right, So like maybe.
Speaker 3: Maybe it stuck out, you know, maybe it was like
Speaker 3: when Tesla first came out, you would notice a Tesla
Speaker 3: immediately on the road. I don't know, it's it's a
Speaker 3: good argument, and I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 3: we're the three of us in that situation. We almost
Speaker 3: definitely could not randomly identify a small Canadian aircraft. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and especially all the pictures I'm seeing it's in
Speaker 2: black and white.
Speaker 3: I'm just chiking.
Speaker 2: I'm just jogging. I'm just I was gonna make a
Speaker 2: joke about fog and it would be really hard to
Speaker 2: see those colors.
Speaker 3: All right, that's warre you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything's in black and white.
Speaker 3: And so Gregory was asked, well, why didn't you come
Speaker 3: forward until later? And there's there's a ton more about this.
Speaker 3: Folks were just giving you the high level stuff, not
Speaker 3: an altitude joke. Gregory says, in part, Look, my own
Speaker 3: concern was getting my airplane home safely. We're fighting a war.
Speaker 3: We lost thousands of planes. And then he adds, we
Speaker 3: had some pretty grim raids after that, and they didn't
Speaker 3: announce Miller's death until later. It had gone completely from
Speaker 3: my mind, which is believable. And you know, he is
Speaker 3: he appears to be giving an honest, good faith explanation,
Speaker 3: right and saying, you know, clearly he's also aware of
Speaker 3: the danger of memory and eyewitness recollections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the kind of thing you want to believe, right,
Speaker 2: You want to believe that humans are going to be
Speaker 2: honest about that, and that they could recall something like
Speaker 2: this with that kind of clarity and wouldn't want to,
Speaker 2: you know, pull the wall over anybody's eyes. It's tough
Speaker 2: because this isn't even close to the only story that's
Speaker 2: out there, not at all.
Speaker 3: This story where he does inspire the Royal Air Force
Speaker 3: to carry out an investigation, but there's no raid report
Speaker 3: on record because the raid was aborted. And because of this,
Speaker 3: there are so many branches of speculation, especially on the
Speaker 3: friendly fire concept. Look the author we cited earlier, Dennis Spragge,
Speaker 3: he himself considers the friendly fire theory untrue, and he
Speaker 3: does a lot of forensics here. He points to a
Speaker 3: about an hour to an hour and a half discrepancy
Speaker 3: between when that Jennison of bombs occurred and when he
Speaker 3: believes Miller's flight would have been in that area potentially.
Speaker 3: But like you said, Matt, this is far far from
Speaker 3: the only theory, all right. This is the deep water,
Speaker 3: This is the more fringe theories there. There's a genre
Speaker 3: of alternative explanations about Glenn Miller's dem or disappearance that
Speaker 3: point to deep conspiracy. One of them comes out in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven. A German journalist named udof Quote helped
Speaker 3: me with that one. Oh, I think he did a
Speaker 3: fine job.
Speaker 5: I was gonna say ohta perfect perfect. You have to
Speaker 5: yell when you say like that, waiting to do it.
Speaker 5: It's like Clayton, Yes, now look, I'm being flippant, No district.
Speaker 5: The German language is a beautiful language. I just have
Speaker 5: a fun time with over enunciating and saying in a
Speaker 5: bit of a yelly fashion.
Speaker 4: What did this guy do though, Well, he was a
Speaker 4: as you said, a very talented and intelligent German journalist
Speaker 4: who really threw himself into the research and looking through
Speaker 4: just you know, hundreds of pages of American and German
Speaker 4: intelligence that he was able to get access to, documenting
Speaker 4: wartime efforts for a book that he was writing on
Speaker 4: German intelligence Age Sees in particular. And uf Quota supposedly
Speaker 4: did find some evidence to cover this whole thing up,
Speaker 4: and he argued that Glenn Miller arrived in Paris on
Speaker 4: December fourteenth, alive and well, but later died under some
Speaker 4: chipilating and scandalous circumstances, perhaps, let's just say, in the
Speaker 4: company of a lady who was paid to keep his company.
Speaker 3: Right, and was a professional at keeping company, such that
Speaker 3: she made his heart go pitter patter, and he died.
Speaker 2: Put pitter peta caput. I want to Maybe this isn't necessary,
Speaker 2: but in my mind, guys, I just wanted you to
Speaker 2: know I'm separating this theory into two very distinct things, sure,
Speaker 2: which is he actually made it there in some kind
Speaker 2: of cover up situation, right, and then that there was
Speaker 2: this other thing potentially with a sex worker, but also
Speaker 2: just in general that he was working in some other
Speaker 2: capacity for an intelligent side too, because there's stuff in there.
Speaker 2: There are other theories I don't think we're really going
Speaker 2: to touch on, but that he was actually on some
Speaker 2: covert mission almost of diplomacy with Germany.
Speaker 4: Well factor negotiations. This is not out of the question though.
Speaker 4: We know things like this did happen, and we have
Speaker 4: examples of folks who were able to use their status,
Speaker 4: whatever it might have been, to help their government. There's
Speaker 4: actually a really cool podcast, not a fictional, like a
Speaker 4: scripted type podcast that my heart is developing right now.
Speaker 3: The should be out soon.
Speaker 4: Spoiler alert slightly, just a little bit of a tip
Speaker 4: about this guy named Fodor who was the founder of
Speaker 4: this very influential travel guide and because he was always
Speaker 4: traveling around and doing scoping out new things for these guides,
Speaker 4: he was a perfect can to be a covert agent,
Speaker 4: and he very much was, and that is what the
Speaker 4: series is about it. But believe there's actually a documentary out
Speaker 4: there or out about it too. This is definitely something
Speaker 4: we should talk about photo on the podcast some time,
Speaker 4: maybe a little closer to when the show comes out.
Speaker 3: And to be honest, not only is that kind of
Speaker 3: stuff possible and plausible, like friendly fire, it may occur
Speaker 3: more than we think, right, but it's also not necessarily
Speaker 3: James Bond glorious type stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, let's have a conversation off the record in
Speaker 3: a way that the official powers can plausibly deny things
Speaker 3: happened if that conversation doesn't work out. And we know,
Speaker 3: by the way, to this point, we know that Miller
Speaker 3: was involved in propaganda, many Allied figures, many access figures,
Speaker 3: people note, celebrities, entertainers, They were involved in propagandistic exercises. Right.
Speaker 3: Miller made broadcast to Germans in the German language where
Speaker 3: it was attempting to persuade them like, you know, guten
Speaker 3: tag guys, it's your buddy Glynn, give up the war,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, be on the right side
Speaker 3: of history. And that may have been a factor in
Speaker 3: what it was doing. But for that to be the explanation,
Speaker 3: then we're asking a lot, We're ascribing a lot of
Speaker 3: talent to whomever would cover that up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Well I mean, well, do you guys
Speaker 2: remember when you found out Julia Child had some operations
Speaker 2: with the what is it, oh, the thing before the
Speaker 2: CIA oss that one, Like, I remember learning that and
Speaker 2: just being dumbfounded. But it's what, it's exactly what you're
Speaker 2: speaking to Ben being able to use that celebrity and
Speaker 2: almost universal appreciation to get messages across. So it is
Speaker 2: almost psychological stuff and operations more than anything. But it
Speaker 2: does seem like an enemy would not want to take
Speaker 2: him out. Maybe for those same reasons.
Speaker 3: Right you would ideally you would want to turn the
Speaker 3: piece right in the game. But I mean, okay, if
Speaker 3: if this stuff about the if the diver finds this
Speaker 3: plane right in eighty seven, if there is truth of
Speaker 3: any sort to a conspiracy, if the guy is acting
Speaker 3: as more than one of the world's most popular musicians,
Speaker 3: then why why cover it up? Was it embarrassment on
Speaker 3: behalf of the allies or the access powers they were
Speaker 3: speaking with? And if you planted a plane. That's crazy.
Speaker 3: You'll see people arguing the plane was planted in the channel.
Speaker 3: How are you going to go to all that trouble
Speaker 3: and then forget to add bodies. It feels like a misstep.
Speaker 2: Because they think it's going to be found in the
Speaker 2: eighties and the bodies would just be disintegrated by that.
Speaker 3: Okay. So famously inefficient governments are the folks who can't
Speaker 3: figure out how to get people to pay the taxes
Speaker 3: every year. They're the same ones going in me out
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty seven, they will be playing found and
Speaker 3: this will put the whole Glenn Miller debacle to bed.
Speaker 3: And everybody's like, oh, chuff, chuff chuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's weird to me because there are human
Speaker 2: beings that have devoted most of their lives to researching
Speaker 2: this stuff, right, kind of similar to the Zodiac researchers
Speaker 2: who maintain things and just like that's their thing, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna find out every piece of information that
Speaker 2: ever comes up, every interview. They've got it and they're
Speaker 2: gonna analyze it. There are human beings out there that
Speaker 2: look at the Glenn Miller story and do the same
Speaker 2: thing like Rick Gillespie of Tiger I think is how
Speaker 2: you would say it, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.
Speaker 3: And that's a cool blackronym.
Speaker 2: Well, they look at stuff like this and often it's
Speaker 2: almost like not skeptoid, but what's the one where the
Speaker 2: uh snoops, snap spe Yeah. It reminds you of those
Speaker 2: where you you almost look at anything new and you
Speaker 2: automatically say no to it unless you can prove it right.
Speaker 2: And I do wonder if there's almost too much skepticism
Speaker 2: even in myself right now when I'm considering this, because
Speaker 2: there's it's got to be a possibility, right.
Speaker 3: And we don't know enough to say that did not
Speaker 3: occur exactly. And that's this gets us to the next
Speaker 3: genre of theories surrounding Glenn Miller, the weird stuff. What
Speaker 3: if he was a spy, What if he stepped the
Speaker 3: wrong way and Old Ike was like get rid of him?
Speaker 3: Or what if he what if he was taken by
Speaker 3: enemy forces? What if he was sent to make some
Speaker 3: sort of backroom negotiation and things went sideways for him?
Speaker 3: I mean, I also probably one of the craziest ones
Speaker 3: I read, and I don't know much about this one guys.
Speaker 3: But I read this idea that factions of the US
Speaker 3: military decided to kill Miller off the record because he
Speaker 3: was threatening to expose quote a cabal of gay US officers,
Speaker 3: which sounds nuts until we realized that, you know, legendary
Speaker 3: heroes of World War Two like Alan Turrey were prosecuted
Speaker 3: or persecuted and then prosecuted for their sexual orientation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and have their lives ruined. I mean really, at
Speaker 4: the time of the time, that was tantamounts to, you know,
Speaker 4: being tried for witchcraft. I mean, it's really serious business.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the accusation, whether whether we have any details
Speaker 4: that would actually tie Miller to something like that or
Speaker 4: to have any kind of I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 4: I bet a lot of band leaders were probably pretty
Speaker 4: famously homophobic back then.
Speaker 3: Maybe that in and of itself, but that's a little
Speaker 3: bit of a stretch. Bro House.
Speaker 4: Also, the idea maybe that he faked his own death,
Speaker 4: we don't really have any detail to support that. The
Speaker 4: guy was absolutely at his peak, you know, he was
Speaker 4: monstrous celebrity. We know that it at least we feels
Speaker 4: that his sentiment for wanting to do this USO esque
Speaker 4: stuff was coming from a place of goodness, a place
Speaker 4: of like, you know, really wanting to help.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really that that angle doesn't really make any sense.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Ben, if you found any anything, any
Speaker 4: breadcrumbs on that one.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately not at this point, because it kind of like
Speaker 3: we're talking about the long game of telephone that is history.
Speaker 3: We take a couple of things we know to be true, right,
Speaker 3: the homophobia, the persecution of that, which was very much
Speaker 3: real also continues today, of course, and we take the
Speaker 3: fact that this immensely popular with close ties to the
Speaker 3: US government disappeared, and then people are trying to kind
Speaker 3: of like red string get together, and unfortunately that's that's
Speaker 3: not enough. I think we can say, now, look, if
Speaker 3: it turns out that one is the truth, then we're
Speaker 3: going to be the first people to come on on
Speaker 3: the show and say, hey, here's what actually happened. There's
Speaker 3: also the idea never even got on the plane.
Speaker 2: But Ben, what would it take to to convince you? Cause,
Speaker 2: like I right now, I'm skeptical that I could be convinced.
Speaker 3: I don't think Glenn Miller is real.
Speaker 2: No, But what I mean, it's like, even if somebody
Speaker 2: brings a document like this is definitely a CIA document
Speaker 2: that proves that this is actually what occurred, you know,
Speaker 2: or something. I would be crazy skeptical simply because of
Speaker 2: where we are with technology and you know, the way
Speaker 2: we are with human interest in just doing something like
Speaker 2: that that might get us a little what cloud or
Speaker 2: something on social media. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I was talking to my kid about something
Speaker 4: kind of similar to that. They were just really fed
Speaker 4: up with the whole like being bullied into having a
Speaker 4: position on Palestine and Israel. Like my kid, my fourteen
Speaker 4: year old kid, like just fed up with this, and
Speaker 4: literally it was like I couldn't possibly have a stance
Speaker 4: or an opinion on it that would be a value
Speaker 4: to the point where I'm just I don't feel the
Speaker 4: need to just talk about it all the time because
Speaker 4: I don't really have anything to say. But then you
Speaker 4: have so many people flooding with all of this information
Speaker 4: slash misinformation, and that's they're fed up by that too,
Speaker 4: because it's just so much stuff out there that it's
Speaker 4: almost like it makes your head spin and like, am
Speaker 4: I trying to Are people trying to play me?
Speaker 3: They're bullying me?
Speaker 4: And we know it's like so many different sides of
Speaker 4: things that it is stymying. You know, it really does
Speaker 4: kind of make you give you pause, and it's like,
Speaker 4: can I trust anything? Can I trust any of this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't know. We also know that committing pseudo
Speaker 3: side faking one's death is is incredibly difficult, like even
Speaker 3: back then. And I think you guys are making great
Speaker 3: points about the post truth environment, right, Like evidence can
Speaker 3: be faked now quite effectively. By the way, especially if
Speaker 3: we're talking about you know, just a screen grab of
Speaker 3: apparently blurry document. You can make that stuff. You can
Speaker 3: make it at home, try it out yourself. I'm kidding,
Speaker 3: don't it's probably a crime on some level.
Speaker 2: Is kind of fun, like, get some photoshop time in.
Speaker 3: It's fun. It's a good basic skill to have, right,
Speaker 3: especially in this gig economy. But the thing is there.
Speaker 4: I read in my mind, I read that as gig economy.
Speaker 3: There we go, yeah, okay, let's let's do you know what,
Speaker 3: Let's be the first three person Ted Talk gig Academy
Speaker 3: and then we'll just sort of yes and through it.
Speaker 2: Right sick. It so so much synergy in that Ted Talk.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. We're really we're really leveraging our senergy. Look
Speaker 3: as far as we can tell, folks, and there is
Speaker 3: a lot of work that's gone into this. Miller does
Speaker 3: not appear to have faked his death, or there's no
Speaker 3: proof that he did. So it does appear that he
Speaker 3: did leave on that plane, was leaving on a jet
Speaker 3: plane and never landed in Paris. So you can find
Speaker 3: more and more stuff. Like a doctor Chris Valenti is
Speaker 3: probably one of the more famous or infamous people with
Speaker 3: alternative theories about what happened to Miller. And he he's
Speaker 3: got some problems. It's a story for another day. Maybe
Speaker 3: he claimed that he got a phone call from a
Speaker 3: government official who was threatening him and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: harm is going to come to your family and to
Speaker 3: you if you reveal the truth about Glenn Miller. And
Speaker 3: then he said he could not reveal his findings as
Speaker 3: a result.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, of course, no, I'm just joking. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's I don't know the I think. It's still astounding
Speaker 2: to me that in May of twenty twenty three, CBS News,
Speaker 2: like a local channel in Tampa, can put on an
Speaker 2: entire story that only lasts a couple of minutes, right,
Speaker 2: But there's a there's an actual reporter out in the
Speaker 2: field talking to this guy, doctor James DiAngelo, who says, yes,
Speaker 2: I was an oncologist, but now I'm obsessed with searching
Speaker 2: for Glenn Miller and I think I know where he is.
Speaker 2: They do the whole story on it, tell it again, right,
Speaker 2: and then at the end of the story it's basically like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we think we know the serial number for the engine,
Speaker 2: so if we did find the engine, we could prove
Speaker 2: that it was the correct one, which is something but
Speaker 2: just something, but it's also nothing.
Speaker 3: It's kind of Oak Island esque.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh, this is the truth though sadly, people disappear every day.
Speaker 3: And if we go back to Dennis Spratt and I
Speaker 3: believe our pal Jordan agrees with him, this guy who
Speaker 3: did the best investigation so far, the most credible one.
Speaker 3: He believes it is a perfect storm of bad weather,
Speaker 3: human error, and defects in the Norseman aircraft and that
Speaker 3: brought the plane down. But until there's conclusive proof, until
Speaker 3: there's that engine with the serial number or human remains,
Speaker 3: then these alternative explanations are going to proliferate. So it's
Speaker 3: a pickle m h.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again huge shout out to Jordan who does
Speaker 4: great work on all kinds.
Speaker 3: Of history mysteries, specifically.
Speaker 4: Ones that involve musicians and rivals. Was a cool show
Speaker 4: still out there that it ended, but there's some there's
Speaker 4: a good catalog out there. Please do check out Stone's
Speaker 4: Touring Party it ended as well, and there's some great
Speaker 4: bonus content in there, and we're just really.
Speaker 3: Proud of that show.
Speaker 4: And I think it's a really interesting history of a
Speaker 4: band and of the United States and what it was like,
Speaker 4: you know, to be a kid going to a concert
Speaker 4: in the South, you know in the nineteen early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: you know, where the atmosphere was definitely a little bit fraud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys, gotta just shout out a website really quick
Speaker 2: because I found it to be fascinating and research here
Speaker 2: t I g h R dot org. There's like a
Speaker 2: five I think it's more more than this, but a
Speaker 2: five part series of just words, you know, written on
Speaker 2: a web page, but it gives you some of the
Speaker 2: most detailed information about flight logs and times and you know,
Speaker 2: what communications were supposed to occur when that flight was
Speaker 2: going to take off on it was on the fifteenth
Speaker 2: of December, right, nineteen forty four. But it just I
Speaker 2: really enjoyed the way I could see a full picture
Speaker 2: right of military personnel that are supposed to log certain
Speaker 2: things with certain groups, and it didn't seem to happen
Speaker 2: that morning, or at least officially it didn't happen, which
Speaker 2: makes you wonder.
Speaker 3: We can't wait to hear your thoughts, folks. Is this
Speaker 3: a case of tragic death compounded by interest in a
Speaker 3: public figure or is there more to the story something
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know? Tell us and also
Speaker 3: tune in later, because fans of JD. Salinger, the time
Speaker 3: has come. We're gonna have our pal Jordan over on
Speaker 3: air in the near future to talk about the catcher
Speaker 3: and the Rye and whether it was a trigger for assassinations.
Speaker 4: That's what a bomb sounds like when it's falling in
Speaker 4: a cartoon. Anyway, Sorry, this is a nose flue, you guys.
Speaker 4: I found this plastic thing laying around my studio, and
Speaker 4: then I was at a music store and I saw
Speaker 4: the same one and I was like, what the heck
Speaker 4: is that music story? That's a nose flut. I'm like,
Speaker 4: how did this end up? In my studio and then
Speaker 4: I looked at a video on how to play it.
Speaker 4: It's a stupid instrument, but you can't make that whistle
Speaker 4: sound like a like a cartoon bomb falling. What do
Speaker 4: you think the stupidest instruments are? How do you feel
Speaker 4: about the trombone? Got any theories about Glenn Miller and
Speaker 4: then how he may have disappeared?
Speaker 3: Let us know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find us all over the place. Hey,
Speaker 2: we are conspiracy stuff on YouTube. That is primary, right now,
Speaker 2: go back to YouTube. Make sure you've got your what
Speaker 2: is it notifications? Now, guys, hit the bell button. Make
Speaker 2: sure you've got that. We're gonna be putting up videos
Speaker 2: and more videos with our faces. Hopefully at least three
Speaker 2: of you are interested in that.
Speaker 3: Well, there's three of us, so that'd be one.
Speaker 2: Apiece exactly, and then we'd be in business. You can
Speaker 2: find us on x on Facebook, also conspiracy stuff, Instagram
Speaker 2: and TikTok conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 3: And there's other ways to get in touch with us,
Speaker 3: aren't there. That's right. You can call us any old
Speaker 3: time day, any old time of night. We've got a number.
Speaker 3: We keep it simple. Say it with us at home.
Speaker 3: One eight three three std wytk. You'll hear a hopefully
Speaker 3: familiar voice. You will hear a beep like so beep
Speaker 3: or maybe a nose flute effect. Kidding, it's a beep.
Speaker 3: And when you hear that, you'll have three minutes. Those
Speaker 3: three minutes are yours. Go nuts, Tell us what's on
Speaker 3: your mind, Give us leads to new episodes. Let us
Speaker 3: know if we can use your name and or message
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Speaker 3: we got your back. Send us the link, send us
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Speaker 4: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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