Did Glenn Miller have any bearing on the start of the Battle of the Bulge?

Answer 1

None whatsoever. In spite of being a major in the Army Air Force his role was entirely musical, not military. In addition the first shots in the Battle of the Bulge were fired on December 16, 1944, the day after Miller's plane went down.

However, the Battle of the Bulge could be said to have been partially responsible for his death. The Allies knew about increased Wehrmacht activity and had diverted a lot of airplanes on December 15, 1944. That combined with bad weather made it difficult for him to find a non-combat flight to Paris so that he could prepare for the orchestra's planned Christmas concert.

The final pieces of the puzzle included Miller's own lapsed judgement about flying in bad weather, the questionable skills of his plane's pilot, and a balky carburetor that may have failed somewhere over the English Channel.