So he trusts the government’s explanation. Got it.
From what he describes, wouldn’t the flight have been certain doom? And wouldn’t the Brits, at least, know if it was too cold to fly over an ocean?
I’m not sure the crazy stories are true but I’m not entirely sure this one is either.
In 1944, after the Allies recaptured Paris from the Germans, Eisenhower asked Miller to head up a joint British-American radio production team, to perform for troops and to record for broadcast back home. Miller was agitated by complications in Paris and when weather grounded normal transport flights, he hitched a ride on a small C64 Norseman with his friend Lt. Col. Norman Baessell and a 20-year-old pilot.
“He was mad, he was in a rush. He was a type-A personality with the intestinal fortitude of a general,” Spragg says. “He was a leading celebrity in America and he got his own way.”
Contrary to popular myth, the flight was not unauthorized, and conditions were not foggy, as depicted in the film “The Glenn Miller Story.” It was a “casual” flight in a plane whose model had been recalled due to defective carburetor heaters, but it was at the end of the triage line behind combat planes and bombers. Heavy clouds aloft had the pilot flying on “visual flight rules” relatively close to the water and the temperature was below freezing.
“The guy flew right into freezing conditions,” says Spragg, who strongly believes fuel-line freezing, engine overheating and circumstances doomed the plane.