History | Page 68

Foo Fighters "Foo fighter" is a name given to a small, round flying object which followed Allied bombers over Germany during the latter phases of the air war. There are also some reports of foo fighters in the Pacific theater of the war. Sometimes they would appear singularly but more often in groups, sometimes flying in formation. By day they appeared to be small metallic globes. By night they glowed with various colors. These object attempted to approach Allied bombers closely which scared the bomber crews who assumed they were hostile and might explode. Upon taking evasive maneuvers they found the foo fighters would keep pace with them in some instances. Besides the name foo fighter this device is sometimes called "Feuerball", its German name or its English translation, fireball. More about names later. For those readers who have not been exposed to foo fighters before, following is an American flight account found in Intercept UFO by Renato Vesco: "At 0600 (on December 22) near Hagenau, at 10,000 feet altitude, two very bright lights climbed toward us from the ground. The leveled off and stayed on the tail of our plane. They were huge bright orange lights. They stayed there for two minutes. On my tail all the time. They were under perfect control (by operators of the ground). They turned away from us, and the fire seemed to go out". Vesco goes on to say: "The rest of the report was censored. Apparently it went on to mention the plan's radar and its sudden malfunctioning" (1). Flying saucer books of the 1950s usually mentioned foo fighters and recounted the sightings of Allied servicemen. Later, due to the extraterrestrial hysteria, publications tended to omit descriptions of foo fighters, preferring to begin the tale of flying saucers with Kenneth Arnold in 1947. In modern times, if they are mentioned at all by mainstream UFO magazines or books, an attempt is sometimes made to confuse the issue of the origin of foo fighters in one of three ways. First, they say or imply that both sides in World War Two thought foo fighters were a weapon belonging to the opposite side. They may cite as a source some German pilot obviously "out of the loop" who claims the Germans did not know their origin. Second, they attempt to advance the idea that foo fighters are still unknown and a mystery or possibly a naturally occurring phenomenon. Third, they advance an extraterrestrial origin. It is difficult to imagine a vast bad faith plot, extending over years, which attempts to discredit or confuse the issue of foo fighters. Perhaps the authors of these UFO magazines and books 69