2 – Foo Fighter UFOs
During World War II, Allied pilots used the term ‘foo fighter’ to describe the unexplainable aerial phenomena they encountered over the skies in European and Pacific theaters of conflict. The United States 415th Night Fighter Squadron was the first to encounter and report these unusual sightings, and it originally coined the term ‘foo fighter’ to describe a specific UFO. These sightings were reported from November 1944 onwards, and the phrase was used to describe anything in the skies that couldn’t be explained.
At first, witnesses believed foo fighters were secret enemy weapons. One of the first reports of a foo fighter came from three members of a Bristol Beaufighter crew in November 1944. They were flying along the River Rhine north of Strasbourg when suddenly; they witnessed 8-10 bright orange lights flying at high speed off their left wing. Oddly enough, neither ground control nor the airborne radar picked up anything. The lights vanished when one of the pilots turned his plane towards them.
Another recorded incident happened on December 22, 1944, when an Allied pilot was flying at 10,000 feet in enemy territory. The wary pilot was expecting to see a German plane at any moment, but instead, two giant orange balls started flying towards him in the darkness. The pilot’s radio operator also saw them and couldn’t figure out what they were. The balls leveled off and followed the plane. The pilot desperately tried every evasive maneuver in the book to shake off the glowing balls, but they kept pace for several minutes before suddenly disappearing.
After World War II, a former member of a Germany army technical unit, Rudolf Lusar, released a book outlining the various German war inventions such as the V1 and V2 rockets. The book also had a chapter entitled ‘Wonder Weapons’ and Lusar claimed the Germans had created a series of small aircraft which were automatically guided and jet propelled. They carried klystron tubes to give off electrostatic discharges which would interfere with the electrical systems of Allied plane engines.
While Lusar’s detailed description is similar to the foo fighters reported by the Allies, the fact is, no shots were ever fired during any encounter. If the Germans developed planes capable of automatic flight that could track enemy planes, they would have armed them with something other than klystron tubes. The American military has offered a number of possible explanations.
One suggestion is that the oddities were caused by St. Elmo’s fire. This is a term used to describe a weather phenomenon which can result in the formation of an electrical glow around the tips of planes. However, St. Elmo’s fire is not known to create spherical objects. Ball lightning is another theory as it does form a sphere, but it only lasts a short time and would not be capable of following planes. A simpler explanation is that the tired and nervous witnesses of the lights imagined the whole thing. Whatever the reason, no one has yet come up with a satisfactory theory that fully explains foo fighters.