Good story, Deltapike, that tracks very closely with the documented history (except for the safe landing in France - would that it had been true): the mark of good historical fiction.
Yes, it would make good "faction". Max Allan Collins' fictional detective Nate Heller could do it justice. However, as the recording secretary of the WWII 315th Troop Carrier Group Assn., a post I inherited for the aforementioned "Doc "Cloer,
this Miller hypothesis has never been denied by the group nor the 34th TCS, especially.
I do not have the Modelcraft model or decal sheet, but I notice an image of the instructions on the Internet (
http://d2ydh70d4b5xgv.cloudfront.net...6cc7854ceb.jpg ) that shows and OD/Gray model with D-Day invasion stripes on the underside of the fuselage only. It is not clear if this is the "Glenn Miller" aircraft or not.
Not the Miller a/c which is kit #48-002. Kit #48-003, however, does show under-fuselage invasion stripes on its Norseman. BTW, these 1/48 scale Modelcraft Canada kits were scaled-up 1/72 Matchbox offerings.
What does the actual kit material say, Deltapike? I have long speculated that the aircraft carrying Glenn Miller might well have had the vestiges of the D-Day markings as late as December 1944.
Certainly possible. My father's C-47 in Operation Varsity on 24-25 Mar., 1945, still had remnants of its lower fuselage stripes.
Another apparent anomaly: in Dennis Spragg's book,
Glenn Miller Declassified (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), he consistently refers to 44-70285 as a C-64C. I thought that the C model was the floatplane version, but am far from an expert on this topic. What do you say, Deltapike?
A quick-wicki by me turned up no USAAF suffixes beyond "A" to designate float, ski, or landing gear fitments. I imagine those items were offered as field kits, however. Certainly, in civilian use this would have contributed to the type's success as a bush plane.
My impression, without actually having tried to track down his sources or compare the book with other accounts, is that Spragg did a thorough job of research. He convinces me (as was the case with Murph)
that the story of the Norseman being struck by jettisoned bombs from a Lancaster is
improbable (which does cast a shadow on Joe Baugher's information).
Concur.
You clearly know more about this issue than I do, Deltapike, and I look forward to hearing more from you (but please differentiate the documented history from the creative writing - you do it so well that I can't differentiate the two in your writing).
Sorry, I'm not that clever. But based on my past conversations with group members(sadly, no longer with us) who were closer to this thesis than I, I find it possible and worthy of serious study. Just sayin'....
Meanwhile, I will continue listening to
String of Pearls.
Don