Nearly every book about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) suggests that the “Modern Era” began on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold saw nine crescent-shaped objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. But the truth of the matter is that flying saucers, also referred to by many other names, were reported regularly from the beginning of the 1940s. These early manifestations were eventually labeled the “Foo Fighters,” and they were described in ways that made it clear they were much more than just blobs of light seen in the distance.
Though much of the literature about Foo Fighters suggests that they first appeared in the late stages of World War II, and it is true that the name Foo Fighters wasn’t used until 1944, it is also true that the sightings began much earlier than that. On February 26, 1942, just weeks after the American entry into the war, a Dutch sailor in the Timor Sea, near Australia and New Guinea, reported seeing a large, illuminated disk approaching at what he thought was an incredible speed.
According to what the witness told Australian UFO researcher Peter Norris many years later, “It flew in big circles and at the same height … the craft suddenly veered off in a tremendous burst of speed … and disappeared.”
In the European Theater, on March 25, 1942, the tail gunner in a Royal Air Force bomber flying over the Zuider Zee, Holland, returning from a raid on Essen, Germany, saw a glowing, orange disc or sphere following them. He told the pilot, who also saw the object closing in on them. When the object was about 100 or 200 yards from the plane, the gunner fired and hit the object, with no effect. The object finally disappeared.
Paul C. Cerny and Robert Neville, two UFO investigators with the Mutual UFO Network, reported in the July 1983 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal that a sailor with the fleet off Guadalcanal in August 1942 reported sighting a disk-shaped object that circled overhead. According to them, “… a chief at the time aboard the U.S.S. Helm … had an excellent observation of an incredible encounter with an unknown, unidentified intruder. At 10:00 A.M. the fleet received a radar report from one of the cruisers and a little later a visual sighting of the object was made from their destroyer.”
This was one of the first Foo Fighter reports and it began, not with a visual sighting, but with radar contact. The object was then seen by the sailors of the fleet as it approached. According to the witness, because it was not coming from the correct direction known then as the radio beam, the object was assumed to be hostile. When it was still over a mile away, the fleet opened fire.
According to Cerny and Neville, “The unknown then made a sharp right turn and headed south from an approach heading of 320 degrees. The UFO increased its speed and then circled the entire fleet.”
The witness, who refused to let his name be used, said that he had a pair of 7 × 50 binoculars so that he had a chance to see the object quite well. According to him, it was fairly flat, silver in color, with a slight dome in the center of the top.
Having circled the fleet, the object departed to the south. It had been fired upon, but the speed at which it was traveling made it difficult for the fleet to hit the object. The antiaircraft fire seemed to have no adverse effect on the object.
The modern era of UFO sightings starts with aviator and businessman Kenneth Arnold, who, in 1947, reported seeing nine crescent-shaped objects near Mount Rainier, Washington.
Just days later, with Marines on the islands, a sergeant with the 1st Marine Division, Stephen J. Brickner, reported another encounter with a silver object. He said:
The sighting occurred on August 12, 1942 about 10 in the morning while I was in bivouac with my squad on the island of Tulagi in the southern Solomons [Tulagi being near Guadalcanal]…. I was cleaning my rifle on the edge of my foxhole, when suddenly the air raid warning was sounded…. I immediately slid into my foxhole…. I heard the formation before I saw it…. It didn’t sound at all like the high-pitched “sewing machine” drone of the Jap formations. A few seconds later I saw the formation of silvery objects directly overhead.
At the time I was in a highly emotional state; it was my fifth day in combat with the Marines. It was quite easy to mistake anything in the air for Jap planes, which is what I thought these objects were. They were flying very high above the clouds, too high for a bombing run on our little island. Someone shouted in a nearby foxhole that they were Jap planes searching for our fleet. I accepted this explanation, but with a few reservations. First, the formation was huge; I would say over 150 objects were in it. Instead of the usual “V” of 25 planes, this formation was in straight lines of 10 or 12 objects, one behind the other. The speed was a little faster than Jap planes, and they were soon out of sight. A few other things puzzled me: I couldn’t seem to make out wings or tails. They seemed to wobble slightly, and every time they wobbled they would shimmer brightly from the sun. Their color was like highly polished silver. No bombs were dropped, of course. All in all, it was the most awe-inspiring and yet frightening spectacle I have seen in my life.
About the same time, on the evening of August 11 and the morning of August 12, bomber crews of the Royal Air Force (RAF), flying near Aachen, half a world away, saw “a phenomenon described as a bright white light” climbing up from the ground. When it reached about 8,000 feet it leveled off for about two minutes.
While all these sightings are interesting, and they show that some sort of unidentified flying objects were seen over major areas of conflict early in the war, they didn’t spark any real official or high-level interest. Some of the sightings were not reported at the time simply because the flight crews didn’t know what to make of them and they didn’t want others to think they were suffering from war nerves or combat fatigue. Others were noted but not passed on in the chain of command because there was nothing of intelligence value in them.
Author and researcher Jerome Clark has written down the accounts of UFO sightings in the 1940s in his UFO Encyclopedia.
These sightings, some reported at the time and others not mentioned until long after the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947, continued in all theaters of the war. According to Jerome Clark in his UFO Encyclopedia, second edition, “Among the relatively rare reports from 1943 is an account from a bombardier who remembered that ‘round, speedy balls of fire’ sometimes followed Allied bombers back from night raids on Tokyo (Wisconsin State Journal [Madison], July 8, 1947).”
Clark also reported on an event on October 14, 1942 as B-17s of the 384th Bomb Group were returning from a mission over Germany. Clark wrote:
[B-17’s] … spotted a cluster of “discs” in front of them. The objects were moving in their direction, and one pilot attempted to evade what he was certain was an imminent collision. As he later told debriefers, his “right wing went directly through a cluster with absolutely no effect on engines or plane surface.” He and his crew heard one of the objects strike the tail section of the bomber, but no explosion or other effect followed. He also said that 20 feet or so from the disc there was a “mass of black debris of varying sizes in clusters of three by four feet.” The fliers had two subsequent encounters with the discs and accompanying “debris.” [Caidin, Martin. Black Thursday. New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1960.]
This sighting and others of a similar nature are important because they were reported in the debriefings and were recorded in government files. But they are also important because they show that some of the Foo Fighters were not solid objects, but glowing balls of what has been called St. Elmo’s fire, though the exact nature of these objects was never determined.
There was official interest in these sightings and British government documents reflect this. On October 12, 1942, Bomber Command, in a memorandum called “Enemy Defenses—Phenomenon,” alerted the headquarters of the eight bomb groups about the sightings. They wrote, “The Operational Research Station at this Headquarters has carried out an investigation into enemy pyrotechnic activity [meaning the glowing balls of light] which has recently been experienced over Germany. The AOC [Air Officer in Charge] has issued instructions that the information contained in this report be brought to the notice of all crews. We would remind you that Consolidated FLO [Flak Liaison Officer] Reports issued by MI14(E) refer to Phenomenon when reported and given possible explanations.”
Essentially, they were telling the flight crews that something was going on, and though they weren’t sure what it was, they wanted information about the sightings reported. They were also searching for explanations for what was being seen.
The phenomenon of St. Elmo’s Fire has been observed for many years, as can be seen in this 1866 illustration of a ship at sea. It is a natural phenomenon resulting from a coronal discharge eminating from sharp or pointed objects, such as a ship’s masts, when there is a strong electrical charge in the atmosphere, usually during a thunderstorm.
British government files reveal that on December 2, 1942, Headquarters of RAF Station Syerston sent a classified memorandum to Major Mullock, who was the Flight Liaison Officer at the headquarters of the No. 5 Group. The memo referenced an object seen by Captain Lever and his crew, members of the 61 Squadron during an attack on Turin on the night of November 28/29, 1942. The government file said, in part:
The object referred to above was seen by the entire crew of the above aircraft. They believe it to have been 200-300 feet in length and its width is estimated to at 1/5 or 1/6 of its length. The speed was estimated at 500 m.p.h., and it had four pairs of red lights spaced at equal distances along its body. The lights did not appear in any way like exhaust flames; no trace was seen. The object kept a level course.
The crew saw the object twice during the raid, and brief details are given below:
(i) After bombing, time 2240 hours, a/c [aircraft] height 11,000 feet. The aircraft was some 10/15 miles South West of Turin traveling in northwesterly direction. The object was traveling South-East at the same height or slightly below the aircraft.
(ii) After bombing, time 2245 hours, a/c height 14,000 feet. The aircraft was approaching the Alps when the object was seen again traveling West-South-West up a valley in the Alps below the level of the peaks. The lights appeared to go out and the object disappeared from view.
The Captain of the aircraft also reports that he has seen a similar object about three months ago North of Amsterdam. In this instance, it appeared to be on the ground, and later traveling at high speed at a lower level than the heights given along the coast for about two seconds; the lights went out for the same period of time and came back on again, and the object was still seen to be traveling in the same direction.
This sighting is important, not because of what the report contains, but because of who eventually saw the report. It was sent through the normal military channels, but six copies were sent to the U.S. Army Air Forces and six to the U.S. Naval Intelligence.
Leonard Stringfield, a well-respected UFO researcher who eventually had his own sighting of the Foo Fighters, reported that up until December 1942 the majority of the sightings had been over Germany and Holland. According to Stringfield, a sighting that didn’t make it into government files showed that these things were seen all over Europe. This sighting came from a submarine patrol craft along the coast of England, where the crew reported spotting a strange craft with no wings.
What is important about this sighting is one of the side effects observed. According to the witness, the aircraft intercom began to malfunction as the object neared. The intercom became a “jumbled mess of incoherent squawks,” while the object was close by. No one could determine any means of propulsion for the craft, but what is clear here is that they were not looking at a glowing ball of gas. It was a solid object.
Three years later, just days after the Japanese surrender, Stringfield, at the time an Army intelligence NCO, was on an aircraft heading for Tokyo. Three tear-shaped objects, in a tight formation and traveling on a course that was parallel to that of the aircraft on which Stringfield was a passenger, appeared. The sighting would have been just one more in the list of sightings reported from the Pacific Theater, except that in this particular instance, the left engine of the transport began to act up.
A few moments later, the co-pilot left the cockpit and told the passengers that they were in trouble. Both engines were sputtering and the pilot was preparing for an emergency landing.
Stringfield, based on his intelligence training, was familiar with the aircraft in the inventories of the world’s air forces at the time. He knew that the three objects in the sky were not jets, and were certainly nothing built by either the Germans or the Japanese. As he watched, the three objects disappeared into a cloud bank. As they vanished, the aircraft’s engines began to function normally. They began to climb again.
In both these cases, neither of which was reported through official channels, witnesses reported some sort of effect on their aircraft. This sort of interference would later be called “electromagnetic effects” and would be reported more frequently after Arnold’s sighting.
Sightings of the balls of fire, of disk-shaped craft, of strange things in the sky in Europe and Asia continued. Some of the sightings were clearly not of any sort of piloted craft or of extraterrestrial origin. They were too small to carry a crew and it seemed that they were an experimental type of anti-aircraft launched by the Germans.
According to the government files, on September 6, 1943, a huge bombing raid was made on Stuttgart, Germany. Captain Raymond P. Ketelson was the 384th Bomb Group leader on that day. They were near the target flying above 22,000 feet when two of the crews reported “objects resembling silver discs about the size of half-dollars” floating down.
Blobs of light like the ones shown here were seen many times by pilots during World War II. They were definitely unusual, but whatever they were was never fully established. (This photograph, while illustrating what the Foo Fighters looked like, is of suspicious origin).
The information was published in a classified document called, “384 BG memorandum, ATTN: A-2 Duty Desk Section ‘A’,” which was updated with “Additional Information On The Observations of Silvery Colored Discs On Mission to Stuttgart. 6 Sept. 1943”:
This observation was made by two crews of the 384th Group and was the only place it was noted. At this time from 2 to 4 FW-190’s or ME-109’s and 1 JU 88 [German fighter aircraft] were flying 2 or 3000 feet above and a little ahead of our formation. These E/A [enemy aircraft] were not seen to drop the material out. It came from above our A/C [aircraft]. As to its shape, it was a mass of material, kept a good pattern, did not dissipate as it streamed down and fell comparatively slow. In one instance, the cluster appeared to be about 8 ft. in length and about 4 feet wide as it streaked down. Another observation stated it was about 75 feet long and 20 feet wide. These dimensions in length being the size from top to bottom as it fell. The cluster was composed of small round objects, silvery in color. In all instances, the objects fell in the path of our A/C. Some was observed to fall on the wing of a B-17 belonging to our group. The wing immediately started to burn. The a/c did not return. No further information available.
It is clear from this report that these “Foo Fighters” did not fit the classic definition but may have been some new form of anti-aircraft. It seems, based on this report, that this new form of anti-aircraft weaponry appeared to be successful, though it could be argued that it might not have been worth the effort to deploy it.
That didn’t stop the intelligence analysis. There had been a report sent on to General “Hap” Arnold about the silver discs. On September 16, according to the government files, Major Bauman, the chemical warfare officer, wrote that the discs were “white phosphorous and a sticky substance which would cause it to cling to the plane … Thermite with some sort of igniting compound inherent in a sticky substance … or … Flat round glass containers loaded with either of the above incendiary compounds.”
There were additional sightings of these tiny silver discs on later missions, and of other, similar weapons that included flying doughnuts and pie plates. A large number of reports were generated as the flight crews reported seeing these things during debriefing after their missions. Analysis suggested that these were enemy anti-aircraft weapons dropped from above the bomber formations with the hope of hitting and destroying Allied aircraft, causing them to catch fire.
Investigators doing research into UFOs, and those who were attempting to identify these things during the war, seem to have lumped these events in with all the other Foo Fighter accounts. The Foo Fighters, however, were described as large balls of light, balls of fire, or as large, solid objects that paced aircraft and bomber formations. These silver disks were obviously something else.
There were also sightings that were not of tiny silver saucers, and did not happen during German fighter attacks on Allied bombers. In May 1943, for example, there were a number of such reports. According to the government files, on May 12/13 a flight crew saw a meteor that they called an “object … reddish-orange in color … that emitted a burst giving off a green star.” Ten days later, on May 23/24 a large number of rockets were seen by the flight crews. On May 27/28 near Essen, Germany, a flight crew saw a cylindrical object with several portholes evenly spaced along the side. It hung motionless until it flew off at several thousand miles an hour.
The Pacific Theater sightings weren’t of the little silver disks but of glowing balls of fire. Keith Chester, in his book Strange Company, details these reports of balls of fire. He found, in government files, a document from XXI Bomber Command dated March 29, 1945, which said, “Japs Have A Bagful Full of Tricks, But They Don’t Work! In the European Theater of Operations, the Germans have experimented with a great variety of ‘secret weapons’ and special antiaircraft devices. None of these has proved effective against our bombers. It seems that the Japs—with their usual flare for imitation—have likewise tried a number of weird weapons against B-29’s of the XXI Bomber Command.”
The intelligence officers, in debriefing the flight crews, heard about the balls of fire. The flight crew mentioned that they had seen two orange-red bursts with tails, or three green balls that appeared to float down, and balls of fire traveling at very high speeds. They also described two large red balls of fire that were apparently attached and that were floating down.
Like their counterparts in Europe, these crews called the lights “flares” in some instances. According to Chester, in his examination of government files, one flight crew reported they had seen “three flares” approaching them as if they were radar controlled. The flares turned with and followed the aircraft through a series of maneuvers.
During a raid on the Mitsubishi Aircraft Engine Works on the night of March 30/morning of April 1, 1945, there were multiple encounters with the balls of fire. They seemed to approach the B-29s and then explode. They did no damage, just raised the stress level of the flight crews on the raids as they watched the fire come up at them.
In the government files found by Chester was a report from a B-29 crew that had seen a dark object flying at them. They said that object “disintegrated” before it reached them, falling to the ground and then exploding. This same crew reported that something had followed their B-29 as they approached land’s end. As the object caught up to them, the pilot increased his speed and made a series of turns, which the object followed. There were two long streaks of fire that, at another time, might have been thought of as missiles and then this object exploded.
The 29th Bombardment Group is shown here in Guam in 1945. Government file reports reveal the military thought the Japanese were using some kind of silver disks to, ineffectively, attack these bombers.
A different crew, according to the government files, saw something coming up off the ground. It was a long, red streak of flame, observed by everyone on the aircraft. The object climbed steeply, turned right, and came around the front of the aircraft, but well ahead of it. Circling around the plane, the UFO now approached from the rear, and then it exploded without doing damage to the B-29.
Two days later, on April 3, according to the XXI Bomber Command’s Tactical Report, flight crews mentioned “Balls of Fire” as the only enemy opposition. According to Chester, the best of these reports came from a crew of the 73rd Bombardment Wing. Chester wrote:
According to Lt. Althoff, they had just completed bombing the secondary target and were approaching land’s end. Their altitude was 9,000 feet at the time when he first saw the “ball of fire” coming in on his B-29 at about the five o’clock [position]. It was about 300 yards behind his B-29 and the “ball of fire was about the size of a basketball.” Immediately, evasive action was taken, but the ball of fire cut to the inside of the plane and continued to follow. Lt. Althoff said that it appeared that the ball of fire could not keep up with the B-29’s evasive maneuvers, weaving turns, but when the bomber was flying straight, the ball of fire caught up to them. One of the other crewmen said he saw a “streamer of light behind the ball of fire, which was faint and not steady.” The light faded as it turned with the B-29, but increased in intensity on the straightaway.
Playing cat and mouse, the B-29 and its pursuer were over the Pacific Ocean. Diving to 6,000 feet, the B-29 was able to obtain additional air speed, and the ball of fire fell behind, eventually turned around, and gave up its pursuit, heading back to the coast. Watching the object retreat, Lt. Althoff noticed a “streamer of light,” but then the light “faded abruptly.” The blister gunner thought he had seen a “wing in connection with ball of fire; and it had a navigation light burning on left wing tip.” But now the chase was over. It had followed them for approximately six minutes.
Lt. Schmidt was in another B-29. His plane had departed the target area, which they bombed from 6,100 feet. Gaining another 900 feet, he noticed a ball of fire, emitting a “steady phosphorescent glow,” following him. Immediately the B-29 took evasive action, “gaining and losing 500 ft. and also changing course as much as 35 degrees and varying airspeed from 205 to 250.” Flying into the clouds, they thought the maneuver had worked, but as they emerged, the ball of fire was right on the B-29’s tail. Twice more the pilot steered his bomber into the clouds and twice more when he came out, the ball of fire was right there behind his plane. Then, over Tokyo Bay, the ball of fire “disappeared” not too far behind the fleeing B-29.
These sorts of reports would continue throughout the Pacific Theater and throughout the rest of the war. As had been noticed in Europe, the aircraft were not damaged by the encounters. The aircrews reported them, as they would anything else that might affect future missions. As in Europe, intelligence officers and the command staffs were worried about the deployment of a new type of antiaircraft weapon. They investigated carefully, but they could find nothing to explain these balls of fire or what they might be.
It wasn’t until late in 1944 that the term “Foo Fighter” was used for the first time. The reports of these objects, in late 1944, were made by members of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. On November 23, one of the squadron’s aircraft, commanded by Lieutenant (some sources identify him as a captain) Edward Schluter (sometimes spelled Schlueter), took off from Dijon, France, for a night patrol. Near Strasbourg, the intelligence officer, Lieutenant F. Ringwald, glanced out of the aircraft and spotted eight to ten balls of red fire moving at what he thought of as a “great velocity.”
Both ground radar and airborne radar showed nothing. In the aircraft, Lieutenant Donald J. Meiers (identified in other sources as Myers) told Schluter that he had no enemy fighters on his radar.
The light blobs of the Foo Fighters can been seen here, vaguely, above the plane on the right. The Foo Fighters had the ability to appear and disappear suddenly. Like many of the pictures of Foo Fighters, the provenance of this photo is clouded.
The pilot maneuvered the aircraft toward the lights and they seemed to vanish. A minute or two later, the lights reappeared, but they were much farther away. They seemed to be reacting to the night fighter and after five or six minutes, they began to glide, leveled out and finally disappeared—this time for good.
During their debriefing, according to one version in the government files, Meiers called the objects “Foo Fighters” for the lack of a better term. Due to the unusal nature of their report, Schluter and Meiers began to take all kinds of ribbing from their fellow flight crews, at least until others made similar sightings.
On December 15, 1944, according to an operations report in the government files, another flight crew reported that they, “Saw a brilliant red light [that appeared to be 4 or 5 times larger than a star] at 2000 feet going at 200 MPH in the vicinity of Ernstein. Due to AI (Air Intercept radar) failure could not pick up contact but followed it by sight until it went out. Could not get close enough to identify object before it went out.”
Another Foo Fighter report was found in the Operations Report for a December 23, 1944 mission. It said, “In vicinity of Hagenau saw 2 lights coming toward A/C from ground. After reaching the altitude of the A/C they leveled off and flew on tail of Beau [their aircraft] for 2 minutes and then peeled up and turned away. 8th mission—sighted 2 orange lights. One light sighted at 10,000 feet the other climbed until it disappeared.”
There were other sightings in which it seemed that the lights or objects paced the aircraft, following them through turns, climbs, and dives; in fact, they seemed to be observing the bombers. Government files from the Pacific Theater on May 2, 1945 reveal the following:
The crew of plane #616 over FALA ISLAND, TRUK ATOLL, at 021802Z [May 2 at 6:02 P.M. Greenwich Mean Time] observed 2 airborne objects at their 11,000 foot altitude, changing from a cherry red to an orange, and to a white light which would die out and become a cherry red again. These objects were out on either wing and not within range of caliber .50 machine guns. Both followed the B-24 thru [sic] all types of evasive action. A B-24 took a course for Guam and one of the pursuers dropped off at 021900Z [May 2 at 7:00 P.M.] after accompanying the B-24 for an hour. The other continued to follow never approaching closer than 1000 yards and speeding up when the B-24 went through the clouds to emerge on the other side ahead of the B-24. In daylight it was seen to be bright silver in color.
Because the Foo Fighters only seemed to show up over enemy territory in Europe and over the Pacific Ocean in areas that were controlled by neither the Japanese nor the Allies, it suggested to intelligence officers that the Foo Fighters represented some sort of enemy technology. In some of the cases it seemed that the Foo Fighters were new enemy anti-aircraft weapons rather than some sort of advanced fighter, but in most of the cases intelligence officers had no real answers. They assumed that the flight crews, even under the stress of combat missions that lasted for hours, after repeated attacks by enemy fighters, flak over targets, weather that created problems, horrible flying conditions, and equipment failures, would be providing accurate information. They certainly wanted to learn more about these strange lights and weird objects.
While they did not know exactly what the objects were, intelligence officers did know that the aircrews were reporting some very strange things. Since it was more than one crew, and since it happened with greater regularity as the war continued, it became imperative for them to discover if there was a sudden increase in the enemy technologies.
In 1944 the Allies formed the Combined Intelligence Objectives Committee (CIOS), which met for the first time on September 6. Some of those in attendance who would later figure in the study of UFOs were Howard Robertson and the Chief, Air Technical Section, Colonel Howard McCoy, whose name would surface in many other UFO-related activities. According to the government files, their mission was to coordinate intelligence field teams and their handling of reports, including those of the Foo Fighters. They referred, at the time, to these objects as “pirate bodies.” The CIOS had other activities, but it is interesting that one of the main functions was to discover the nature of the Foo Fighters, and that some of those involved would appear in later, other UFO investigations.
Various commands at various levels created numerous documents and reports about the Foo Fighters and the balls of fire that have been examined in today’s world. Government files suggest, and in fact, a later investigation into UFOs supports this assumption, that thinking about the Foo Fighters went beyond just the enemy and new technologies. In January 1953, the CIA sponsored a review of the material that had been reported to the Air Force Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book, which studied UFOs and UFO sightings. Known as the Robertson Panel after the leader, Dr. H. P. Robertson, it noted, “If the term ‘flying saucers’ had been popular in 19431945, these objects would have been so labeled.”
General Hap Arnold, shown here, commanded U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, and he was the one who ordered David T. Griggs to investigate the Foo Fighters.
Jerome Clark, in his massive UFO Encyclopedia (second edition), reported that Dr. F. C. Durant, a member of the Robertson Panel, in his Report on the Meetings of Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects Convened by Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA, wrote that:
Instances of “Foo Fighters” were cited. These were unexplained phenomena sighted by aircraft pilots during World War II in both European and Far East theaters of operation wherein “balls of light” would fly near or with the aircraft and maneuver rapidly. They were believed to be electrostatic (similar to St. Elmo’s fire) or electromagnetic phenomena or possibly light reflections from ice crystals in the air, but their exact cause or nature was never defined. Both Robertson and [Luis Alvarez] … had been concerned in the investigation of these phenomena, but David T. Griggs is believed to have been the most knowledgeable person on this subject.…
The David T. Griggs mentioned above was a scientist who had been “drafted” from MIT to work on radar during World War II. Griggs was sent into the European Theater in 1942 where he worked under Generals Hap Arnold, Jimmy Doolittle, and Carl Spaatz, meaning he was at the highest levels of the Army Air Forces’ command structure. He flew both training missions and combat missions and was in a position to hear the stories of the “anomalous” phenomenon, or Foo Fighters. Although Griggs was a scientist, the air crews trusted him because he was there with them and he flew missions with them. He was the guy to unravel the mystery of the Foo Fighters, and given their apparent interest in the Allied bombing campaigns in all theaters of the war, it was something that needed to be done quickly.
While the government files do not document an official project, groups of committees dedicated to learning the identity of the Foo Fighters were formed and there were various individuals who were tasked with finding more about the Foo Fighters. Griggs was part of one of these groups. As he worked to improve the radar systems in the European Theater, and as he traveled around to Europe, he had an opportunity to investigate the Foo Fighters at the request of Hap Arnold. He later told Dr. James McDonald, a scientist with a deep interest in UFOs that he, Griggs, had written reports about the Foo Fighters, but he had no copies of those reports and he didn’t know where they might be located in the government files.
According to what Dr. Michael Swords wrote in UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry, Griggs told McDonald in the 1960s….
[about] his musings about jet exhausts being misinterpreted, about dark nights with no background leading to tricks of perception, about war nerves, and all that. He then related how he and a crew had been temporarily fooled by the Moon rising under just the wrong (or right) conditions. [This referred to a mission on the night of June 19/20, 1945. Griggs was in the navigator’s position on a B-29. One of the waist gunners yelled, “Fireball coming in.” The problem was that the crew had been so anxious to show Griggs a fireball that they had misidentified the moon.] But Griggs did not really believe that such things explained all the foo fighter reports.
Which, when you think about it, is exactly what nearly everyone says about UFO reports. There are widespread and long lists of solutions for UFO sightings that range from astronomical phenomena, to misinterpretations of manmade objects, to hysteria, and psychological problems. Nearly every sighting of a UFO is explained by careful research, but there is a residue which has no conventional explanation, no matter how thorough the investigation might be. Griggs had confirmed, for McDonald, that he had found the same sort of thing for the Foo Fighters some years before anyone was talking about UFOs and flying saucers.
Griggs said that he didn’t think that every sighting was explained or explainable. He thought there was something to the real, as opposed to imaginary, sightings, but he just didn’t know what that might be. According to Swords, Griggs said, “The air observers’ reports were all over enemy territory—never over our ground. Anxiety that the enemy might have something we needed to know about kept the checking under way. [And], there were reports of engine disturbances over [what could have been the “Reich,” meaning Germany].”
When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Griggs was sent to the Pacific Theater with a similar assignment. European sightings of the Foo Fighters described a variety of different types and shapes, but in the Pacific, the majority of descriptions seemed to describe mainly “balls of fire.” Griggs was part of the Compton Scientific Intelligence Committee, and he wanted to specifically to track down Japanese military technology with an eye to finding more about their electromagnetic beam experiments. There had been some discussion that these beam weapons could interrupt the smooth function of engines, as had been reported in some of the European Foo Fighter cases and, of course, was what Len Stringfield would report about his sighting at the very end of the war in the Pacific.
Griggs did find, according to the government files, some information about this electromagnetic “ray” technology. The ray was something primitive, but “[They could] stop the engines at short range … and one massive device could kill a rabbit….” The document is somewhat difficult to decipher, but it seemed to suggest that the ray killed a rabbit at a distance of about three feet. Apparently the device was discovered and captured, complete with its thirty-four foot dish. According to Swords, the dish and its equipment were shipped to the U.S., but there is no record of it arriving in the country and there seems to be no follow up about what happened to it.
Throughout the war, the Allies in all theaters were interested in these objects, lights, Foo Fighters, and balls of fire because they might represent an advance in the enemy ability to control the air. They were seen as a threat to air operations, though the Foo Fighters didn’t seem to engage in aerial combat and the balls of fire did no damage to Allied aircraft.
There are reports where enemy fighters dropped some tiny silver disks, which were some kind of anti-aircraft device. These cases are clearly describing some sort of weapons system, and these reports do not belong in the category of Foo Fighters.
In other cases, the Foo Fighters were small “balls of fire,” sometimes referred to as St. Elmo’s fire. The thought being that they were some sort of ionization of the air around the aircraft but that simply doesn’t work. Why were sightings of these balls of fire only reported over enemy territory, and why are they not reported today around airports? While there are certainly times when the air is electrified in some fashion in the world today, the area does not glow, and the phenomenon are extremely rare.
The exception to this seems to be the Japanese experiments into electromagnetic radiation and weapons. They seem to have been able to develop a beam weapon that could stall an engine, but the range was only two or three feet so there was no practical military application for it. Had they been able to extend the range to several thousand feet, it might have become a significant weapon. Interestingly, all information about this has disappeared.
When all of the explanations were considered and applied to the various sightings, there was the small residue left that seemed to be inexplicable. There were sightings, such as one on 19/20 June by a B-29 crew in which the crew shot at the object. According to the government files, the gunners fired on it, but either missed or they hit it with no apparent results.
Griggs, in his investigation of the balls of fire, learned of one other such incident. Wanting to see one of the balls of fire himself, Griggs accompanied an aircrew on an operational mission. They told him that they had fired at one once but they didn’t tell him, or he didn’t report, the results of that incident in any official document. Griggs did note the report in a telephone interview with Dr. James McDonald, as described to UFO researcher Jan Aldrich.
In Europe, a B-17 crew flying over the North Sea toward Berlin on the morning of April 7, 1945, saw something very strange. The navigator, Captain Louis Sewell, thought they were being attacked by a German fighter. According to the government files, Sewell said that the fighter dived at them, leveled and then rolled under the B-17. It did not attack and they realized it wasn’t a fighter but something that looked more like a V-2. It was maneuvering intelligently, but it didn’t seem to have any wings.
Importantly, the object, which held its position relative to the B-17 for a short time and then accelerated to “two thousand miles an hour,” was seen by others in the formation. The radio operator in Sewell’s aircraft took several pictures of the object. Once on the ground, the film was taken away and the crew heard nothing more about it, which, according to Sewell, wasn’t all that unusual.
In 1945, Captain Louis Sewell, piloting a B-17 much like this one over the North Sea, saw something that looked like a V-2 but it was maneuvering intelligently.
Here was something that was seen in the daylight, was seen by others in other aircraft, and which was photographed. Like the Japanese “beam” weapons, those photographs disappeared into the great maw of the military machinery.
There is one point that needs to be made. In all the reports, documents, and government files available about Foo Fighters and the balls of fire, no one was thinking of the extraterrestrial. Everyone involved thought that these things were something that the enemy was developing, and that thought worried all concerned. If the Germans, or the Japanese, had developed aircraft or anti-aircraft weapons with the capabilities observed, then that could tilt the war in their favor and prolong the fighting.
There was almost no discussion of the Foo Fighters as spacecraft in the government files. In the end, no conclusions were drawn about the Foo Fighters or the balls of fire. It was just one of the strange things that happened during the war.
