Foo Fighters of World War II

Foo fighters were never one event. Between 1941 and 1945, Allied aircrews over Europe and the Pacific reported glowing balls of light that paced their aircraft. September 1941. The Polish merchant ship S.S. Pułaski, in the Indian Ocean, reported a light "about half the size of the full moon". March 1942. A Polish-crewed Wellington over Essen saw a light "about the size of the Moon". "Several projectiles seemed to enter the luminous disc, but without result."

November 1944. The Rhine valley north of Strasbourg. The US 415th Night Fighter Squadron flew Beaufighters out of Dijon. Intelligence officer Lt. Fritz Ringwald described "eight or ten of them in a row", orange balls of fire "moving through the air at a terrific speed". Pilot Lt. Edward Schlueter turned toward them. They disappeared. Then they reappeared far off.

According to Ringwald, radar observer Lt. Donald J. Meiers pulled out Bill Holman's Smokey Stover comic strip at the debriefing on 27 November. Its line was "where there's foo, there's fire". Now the lights had a name. Foo fighters.

The war diaries filled up. Near Speyer, Lt. Henry Giblin and Lt. Walter Cleary saw "a huge red light 1,000 feet above them, moving at 200 miles per hour". In mid-December came "five or six red and green lights in a 'T' shape". Then the night of 22 to 23 December, near Hagenau. Two lights came up from the ground, levelled off and flew on the Beaufighter's tail. "After staying with the plane for two minutes, they peeled off and turned away, flying under perfect control." Throughout, ground radar picked up nothing.

2 May 1945. Fala Island, Truk Atoll. A VII Bomber Command B-24 crew watched lights cycle "from a cherry red to an orange, and to a white light". "Both followed the B-24 thru all types of evasive action." July 1945, over Sasebo. Maj. Paul A. Duich saw a "big ball of fuzzy orange-red light" that "appeared to join us and fly formation abeam our left".

The reports climbed the chain of command. XII Tactical Air Command told the First Tactical Air Force: "We have encountered a phenomenon which we cannot explain." The question went to SHAEF in Paris, then to the British Air Ministry. On 14 December 1944 the New York Times ran the headline "Floating Mystery Ball Is New Nazi Air Weapon".

The Air Ministry answered on 13 March 1945. A few of the lights may have been Me 262 jets. For the rest, it named flak rockets as "the most likely explanation". It also admitted the matter was "still something of a mystery". In 1953 the CIA's Robertson Panel suggested electrostatic effects like St. Elmo's fire, or light reflected from ice crystals. But their "exact cause or nature was never defined."

The crews had already weighed the usual answers. Jo Chamberlin, writing in the American Legion Magazine in December 1945, recorded their objections. A flare "does not dive, peel off, or turn". His conclusion: "no explanation stood up". Later came aviator vertigo, in Edgar Vinacke's 1946 report for the US Navy. Then in 2024 came a theory of plasmas drawn to an aircraft's electrical charge. Impey, one of its authors, added: "This does not mean these plasmas are alive, or engaging in intelligent purposeful behaviour."

The Robertson Panel put it plainly. "If the term 'flying saucers' had been popular in 1943-1945, these objects would have been so labeled." Foo fighters were the first unidentified lights to travel through official military channels, from squadron war diaries all the way to SHAEF. The 1945 papers are now declassified. And the name lives on, in a rock band.