THE FOO FIGHTERS OF WORLD WAR II

Many today are familiar with UFO’s and their accompanied phenomenon. Incidents such as Roswell, Kecksberg, Rendlesham are well known. Yet for many the mention of Foo Fighters will inevitably be considered a reference to the popular rock band of the same name. For Allied airplane pilots of World War II the name had a much different meaning.

In 1941, the entire world was embroiled in a military conflict. Germany and Japan and Italy were the Axis powers and arrayed against them were the Allies, Great Britain, France, Russia and by 1942 the United States of America.

In this conflict air power played a crucial role. Hundreds of thousands of sorties were flown by both sides in the European Theatre, Africa and Asia. In addition to the pilots of these two sides there appears to have been something or someone else in those skies.

In September 1941 the Polish vessel, SS Pulaski carrying British troops across the Indian Ocean saw something very strange. Two British sailors looked up into the evening sky and saw what they described as a green ball of flame. They alerted their superior and the three men watched the object for quite some time.

This incident was followed by two more sightings in the next few months. One was by the crew of the USS Houston, another by Marines in the Solomon Islands. According to Stephen J. Brickner who was a Marine stationed there, he and other Marines saw over one hundred polished silver objects traveling across the sky. They seemed to wobble as they moved at a speed faster than any known airplanes of the time period. The USS Houston reported seeing a large number of yellowish flares which lit up the night sky and sea for miles in every direction.

These objects and others that were quite similar were to be repeatedly seen by military personnel all over the world in WWII and well up into the 1960’s. Instead of being referred to as UFO’s, they came to be known by the term, Foo Fighters.

Foo Fighters was originally a term for Japanese Zero Pilots referring to their erratic style of flying, but as sightings of the glowing green-yellow objects became more frequent they inherited the name. Another term besides Foo Fighter was “Kraut Balls”, used by Allied Airmen in the European Theatre. While the majority of these spheres were seen in Europe and Asia there were sightings in North America as well.

One of the more intriguing incidents was in New Mexico in 1945. In the early morning hours of July 16th the first Atom Bomb was detonated at White Sands Missile Range west of the town of Alamogordo. For countless nights afterwards green luminous spheres we seen by hundreds of people both military and civilian. As a result the US Air Force called in Dr. Lincoln LePaz, an expert on meteorites to attempt an explanation of these objects. The investigation into these UFO’s became known as Project Twinkle.
In the course of his investigation Le Paz determined that the objects did not behave as if they were meteorites or other space debris. They seemed to be propelled by something other than just Earth’s gravity. In a memo to his superiors, Dr LePaz wrote:

"A logical explanation was not proffered with respect to the origin of Green Fireballs, it was however generally concluded that the phenomenon existed and should be studied scientifically until these occurrences can be satisfactorily explained. Further, that the continued occurrence of unexplained phenomena of this nature in the vicinity of classified installations is a cause for concern."

To date almost no photographic evidence exists to documents the Foo Fighter. While only a small handful of pictures shot by pilots shows that these objects exist there are many eyewitness testimonies that have been preserved.

For most UFO researchers and historians the modern UFO era began with the Kenneth Arnold sightings of 1947. A very good argument could be made however that it actually started with the initial Foo Fighters encounter. While not a flying saucer, the Foo Fighter does definitely qualify as an unidentified flying object.

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