Documents / Official release
This file from SHAEF Air Staff, dated between January and March 1945 and closing with an 18 March 1945 letter, collects wartime correspondence about "night phenomena" that 415th Night Fighter Squadron crews called foofighters. It includes the squadron's sortie extracts from December 1944 and January 1945 describing lights that followed aircraft near Strasbourg and elsewhere, plus a report of an aluminum-colored cylinder that pilots attacked. The Air Ministry suggested Me 262s and flak rockets as explanations but admitted the matter remained a mystery.
From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: 3/18/45, Germany. NARA Record Group 331, catalogue id 120752. This file contains SHAEF messages and memorandums related to "night phenomena (foofighters)," flak rockets, unidentified cylindrical objects, and blinking lights. The documents include multiple references to the observations of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron.
“Air Ministry intelligence”2 pages
:- A. $ \cdot $ D. $ \cdot $ I. $ \cdot $ (K), Air Ministry. To:- A/Cdr, Grierson, S.H.A.E.F.Main, (Air Div. ). Copy to C.I.O. 2nd T.A.F. Date: 17th February 1945. Reference your SHAEF AIR/S.37153/A.2 dated 14th February 1945 with the attached CX report, this probably refers to "Flak Bombe" mentioned in A.D.I.(K) Report No.562/1944, paragraphs 128 and 129.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.