When the popular American jazz musician and bandleader vanished enroute from England to France to play for troops in recently liberated Paris, few people knew about it at the time. This is because it happened the same day the Germans launched their last major offensive against the allies in what would be known as the Battle of the Bulge, pushing such news to the back page. What happened to the single-engine Norseman he was riding in over the English Channel some 10 days before Christmas has never been explained, and no trace of Miller or the plane has ever been found. There is speculation a German fighter got it, or that the plane got hit by ordnance being dropped by British bombers on their way back from a canceled bombing mission. (Bombers couldn’t land with unexploded ordnance on board and had to jettison their bomb loads—preferably over the ocean—before they could land.) Whatever the case, Miller’s death was a huge loss to the American musical scene and one that it never quite recovered from.