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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## S-E-O-R-E-T 2nd. W/Ind., 415th. Night Fighter Squadron, 30 January 1945 Don't. Night of 29-30 January 1945 - "At about 00:10 hrs. sighted a Foofighter about half way between Weissembourg and Landau. Foofighter was off to the starboard and rear at Angels 2. Lights were amber and one was 20 - 50 ft. above the other and of about 30 seconds duration. Foofighter was about 1000 ft. away and following. The lights were about a foot in diameter. Lights disappeared when Travel 34 turned into them." 2. In every case where pilot called GCI Control and asked if there was a Bogey A/C in the area he received a negative answer. F. B. RINGWALD, Captain, A. C., Intelligence Officer. * Foofighters is the name given these phenomenon by combat crews of this Squadron.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.