T
he National Air and Space Museum’s Sikorsky JRS-
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the rarest aircraft in existence. Stationed at Ford Island,
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of reconnaissance squadron VJ-1 that went out search-
ing for the Japanese carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor.
It has since endured the decades as that fateful day’s sole sur-
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selage, black undersides and green tail, with a red fuselage band
and VJ-1’s diamond-shaped squadron insignia under the cock-
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the museum will be able to make out hints of both guises.
Jon GuttmanBRIEFING
8 AH JULY 2018
O
n December 15,
1944, superstar
bandleader
Glenn Miller was
lost when the Noorduyn
UC-64A Norseman in
which he was a passenger
went down in the English
Channel. Perhaps only
octogenarians will remem-
ber Miller, but his big band
had more number-one hits
than either Elvis Presley
or the Beatles. He was on
his way to Paris to arrange
appearances of the U.S.
Army Air Forces Band that
he had established.
The fate of that Norse-
man, a USAAF utility hack,
has remained a mystery
ever since. It was a minus-
cule episode in an enor-
mous war, and would have
been forgotten long ago ifFinding Glenn Miller
World War II mystery
Big-band leader Glenn Miller
was lost when a Noorduyn
UC-64A Norseman like the
one above went down in
the English Channel in 1944.TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; INSET: THE EVERETT COLLECTION/ALAMY; BOTTOM: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUMnot for Miller’s fatal role.
Like the Amelia Earhart
saga, Miller’s disappear-
ance has been the subject
of conspiracy theories, wild
guesses, spurious witness
reports and even some care-
fully plotted theorization.
And like Earhart, Miller is now
the focus of an investigation
by TIGHAR, The International
Group for Historic Aircraft
Recovery. True to its title, the
controversial organization
may soon attempt a recovery
of Miller’s Norseman as well.
An English commercial
fisherman trawling in the
Channel in the mid-1980s
snagged his net on some-
thing that, when he winched
it to the surface, turned out
to be the battered remains of
a single-engine airplane with
the dim shadows of two largestars on its silver wings and a
port-side aft cabin door. The
fisherman happened to be an
R/C modeling enthusiast, so
he was familiar with airplanes
and later made a careful
sketch of what looked much
like a Norseman (which hap-
pened to be the only small
U.S. utility aircraft in use in
the European theater with
such a door).
Not knowing anything
about the Miller mystery,
the trawler captain cut the
wreckage loose and redepos-
ited it in Davy Jones’ Locker,
if only because mariners con-
sider it unlucky to mess with
wrecks that might contain
human remains. The fisher-
man did make a note of his
position, which in those pre-
GPS days relied on Decca, a
Loran-like system accurate to
within about 50 yards at the
wreck’s location.When the fisherman
recently read the story of
Glenn Miller’s disappearance,
he took his tale to a UK air
museum curator, who in turn
contacted TIGHAR Executive
Director Richard Gillespie. If
TIGHAR determines that the
fisherman’s story checks out
and that his position report
is usable, Amelia Earhart will
soon have a companion amid
the legends of the lost.
Stephan Wilkinson