Hello and welcome to the program UFO Warning.
In this episode, we're talking about Foo Fighters and fighter
pilots. That's correct, Foo Fighters and
fighter pilots. Of course.
These UF O's are phenomenon known as Foo Fighters first were
reported during World War 2. It's a very interesting subset
of UF O's. If we go to Wikipedia, we can
learn that the term Foo Fighters was used by Allied aircraft
pilots during World War 2 to describe various unidentified
flying objects for mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the
skies over both Europe and Pacific theaters.
Now, we're going to look at some of these eyewitness testimonies
here in a minute. But it's important to know that
though the Foo Fighters initially were described as a
type of UFO reported named by the US 415th Fighter Squadron,
the term was also commonly used to mean any UFO sighting from
that period. So, formally reported from
November 1944 onwards, Foo Fighters were presumed by
witnesses to be secret weapons employed by the enemy.
And you can imagine why people would think that.
I mean, you're in the middle of this war, No one's really
thinking about ET's, but you are thinking about getting shot down
by the guys that you're in combat with now.
The Robertson panel explored possible explanations, for
instance, and then saying that maybe they were electrostatic
phenomena similar to Saint Elmo's fire, or electromagnetic
phenomena, or simple reflections of light from ice crystals.
But I think you'll hear from these pilots that that's not
exactly what they thought these things were.
Now the word Foo Fighter. It's just a nonsense word Foo,
and it emerged in popular culture during the early 1930s,
first being used as by cartoonist Bill Holman, who
peppered his Smokey Stover Fireman cartoon strips with Foo
signs and puns. And then the term Foo was
borrowed from Smokey Stover by a radar operator in the 415th
Night Fighter Squadron, Donald J Mears, who, according to most
415th members, gave the Foo Fighters their name.
And Mears was from Chicago and was an avid reader of Holman
strip, which was run daily in the Chicago Tribune.
Now, Smokey Stover's catch phrase was where there's food,
there's fire. In a mission debriefing on the
evening of November 27th, 1944, Frederick Fritz Ringwald, the
unit's S2 intelligence officer, stated that Mears and pilot LL
Ed Schluter had cited a red ball of fire that appeared to chase
them through a variety of highspeed maneuvers.
Ringwald said that Mears was extremely agitated and had a
copy of the comic strip tucked in his back pocket.
He pulled it out and slammed it down on Ringwald's desk and said
it was another one of those expletive Foo Fighters and
stormed out of the debriefing room.
According to Ringwald, because of the lack of a better name, it
stuck, and this was originally what the men of the 415 started
calling these incidents expletive Foo Fighters.
In September 1944, a press correspondent from The
Associated Press in Paris, Bob Wilson, was sent to the Four and
15th at their base outside of Dijon, France to investigate the
story. It was at this time that the
term was cleaned up to just Foo Fighters.
The squadron commander, Captain Harold Osperger, also decided to
sanitize the term to Foo Fighters and the historical data
of the squadron. Other proposed origins of the
term have been a corruption of the French Foo FEU for fire and
a corruption of the military acronym FOOBAR actually live up
beyond all recognition. So we kind of get an idea where
it came from. I'm kind of go with the cartoon
situation here. And you mean, I think maybe
sometimes the French are prone to claim things that don't
rightfully belong to them. Just saying.
So I'm going with the cartoon version.
It has a history here says that Royal Air Force personnel had
reported seeing lights following their aircraft from as early as
March 1942, with similar sightings involving RFA bomber
crews over the Balkans. Starting in April, 44 American
sightings were first recorded by crews from the 422nd Night
Fighter Squadron stationed and occupied Belgium during the
first week of October 1944. At the time, these were
erroneously believed to be Metro Smith's ME163 rocket power
interceptors, which did not operate at night.
However, the bulk of the sightings started occurring in
the last week of November 1944, when pilots flying over Western
Europe by night reported seeing fast moving, round, glowing
objects following their aircraft.
The objects were variously described as fiery and glowing
red, white, or orange. Some pilots described them as
resembling Christmas tree lights and reported that they seemed to
toy with the aircraft making wild turns before simply
vanishing. Pilots and air crew reported
that the objects flew together in formation with their aircraft
and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, but
never displayed hostile behavior.
However, they could not be outmaneuvered or shot down.
The phenomena was so widespread that the lights earned a name in
the European Theory of Operations, and they were called
Kraut Fireballs, but for the most part called Foo Fighters,
the military citing seriously suspecting the mysterious
sightings might be secret German weapons.
But further investigation revealed that German and
Japanese pilots had reported similar sightings.
So you could just see these things were all over the place,
kind of like today with UFO sightings, these globes, nobody
knows what they are. First reaction is to think that
they're a secret weapon belonging to the enemy.
But then with a little bit of investigation, you find out
pretty soon that the enemy is seeing the same thing that you
are. Now.
We're told that on the 13th of December 1944, the Supreme
Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Paris
issued a press release which was printed in the New York Times
the next day, officially describing the phenomena as a
new German weapon. Follow up stories using the term
Foo Fighters appeared in the New York Herald Tribune and the
British Daily Telegraph. In this January 15th, 1945
edition, Time magazine carried a story titled Foo Fighter in
which it reported that the balls of fire had been following U.S.
Army Air Force night fighters for over a month and that the
pilots had named it the Foo Fighter.
According to the time. Description of the phenomena
varied, but pilots agreed that the mysterious lights followed
their aircraft closely at high speed.
This sounds like the same thing that we're having to happen with
Air Force pilots and all kinds of military pilots today, where
these things are interacting with fighter fighter aircraft,
following them, showing our pilots that, hey, we can
outmaneuver you. So we have an article here
that's an interview with one of these old World War 2 veterans,
the articles from April 2007. You know, we're kind of not a
lot of these guys left. It's written by Abby Weingarten.
The fellow that she's interviewing is Frederick
O'sargent. The title of the article is
Veteran Talks of the Foo Fighters and it's from
heraldtribune.com. She begins by saying Frederick
Sergeant was studying economics at Colby College in Maine when
the draft for World War 2 beckoned in 1942.
The 22 year old joined the 415th Night Fighter Squadron of the
Army Air Forces and studied at a series of radio schools.
For 3 1/2 years he was stationed throughout North Africa, Sicily,
Corsica, Germany and England as a corporal.
He never flew, but his principal job was to take care of the
lights on the landing strips for night fighters.
In 1946, as a story for the group, he wrote an unpublished
account of his units interaction with Foo Fighters titled Foo
Fighters and the 415th Sergeant went on to teach economics at
various US universities before retiring to Sarasota with
Shirley, his wife of 60 years, Quote The British developed
radar and night fighting, so when the US went into World War
Two we had to learn everything from the British.
My squadron was the first one to do that.
Our pilots and cruise ships would go to England and Scotland
to learn from the British. I was in the ground echelon so I
met up with them in North Africa.
Pilots in the 415th encountered and reported Foo Fighters, or
luminous unidentified objects during the night over the German
occupied Rhine River Valley. The sightings were recorded
between November 1944 and April 1945 when the 415th was
operating from landing strips in Digital and Oshea, France.
The sightings posted a baffling question to air war buffs,
scientists and media and the public.
What were they? The pilots could find no
explanation that fit all of the sightings.
The Air Force was in a position to answer the question, as they
had sequestered tons of German air war records, but their focus
was on developing the next generation of fighters and
bombers, not in information dissemination.
The proliferation of sightings or imagined sightings of UFOs
and flying saucers by people everywhere complicated the
search for an answer. When the Allies capture the area
of the Rhine River, the Foo fighter sightings ceased.
Eventually, as the US becomes militarily secure, the Air Force
will probably declassify its records of German World War 2
research. This is stuff from 7075 years
ago, and it's still classified, and it's just tangentially
related to anything going on today.
So what they're saying is probably a lot of stuff there
regarding these Foo Fighter sightings that the military
still is holding his top secret because it might relate somehow
to radar technology or stealth fighters, blah blah blah.
I think that they're just taking this top secret stamp and you're
painting it with a broad brush. Now let's take a look at this
next article. Now, I found this report at the
University of Wyoming. That link is uwyo.edu and I'll
put a copy of the link at the Buy Me a Coffee website.
This is extremely interesting. They've correlated a bunch of
these fighter pilot encounters with these Foo Fighters, and
they've got several of these first hand accounts listed here.
The title of this report looks like Foo Fighter files, and this
one's dated May 10th, 2009. Now they've got these accounts
listed by number and I'll read a few of them off here.
It says Case 3, Summer 1942, Tasman Peninsula, Australia at
1750. A ARF pilot flying on patrol
sided an object looking like a singular airfoil of glistening
bronze collar with a Dome on top.
He described it as 150 feet long and 50 feet in diameter, with a
Dome on top which reflected sunlight.
The object flew alongside the aircraft for a few minutes and
then suddenly turned away at a hell of a pace.
It made another turn and then suddenly dived straight into the
ocean. That's amazing to me.
Just imagine this giant flying saucer just buzzing along next
to this World War 2 pilot. And then he sees it just dart
off and it what's it do? Just dives right into the ocean.
I mean, the stories that we're hearing today from our pilots
are no different than the stories that we were hearing
7080 years ago. Here's one case Ford says August
11th and 12th, 1942 near Aachen, Germany.
On the evening, British bomber crews flying in Aachen area
observed A phenomena described as a bright white light rising
from the ground. It reached approximately 8000
feet. Then it flew on a more or less
level course for about two minutes.
It was brilliant white and color.
Several. Several crews reported that
these rockets were zigzagging along the ground before taking
off in a climbing turn. Some crews said that their
brilliant white periodic burst occurred, which may have caused
a change of course. Other crews reported that it
flew in circular courses. The collar eventually faded to
an orange and the object was last seen heading toward the
ground. Weird.
Here's one case, number 5 August 17th and 18th, 1942, on a spruck
of Germany, ARAF farmer crew flying at 15,000 feet near the
town of Onusbrook observed a rocket with a long white tail of
light on the same altitude of their aircraft.
Three other crews reported the same thing.
No explosive bursts were seen. You see how these guys are kind
of couching their observations in terms of the day, always
seeing a rocket like today? Well, it could have been a
drone. The fact is they saw these UF
O's, they didn't know what they wore and it's almost as if they
had to report these things in code.
That's what I'm saying. Here's one.
November 1942, it says Atlantic Ocean Bay of Biscay, France.
The crew of an aircraft belonging to an anti submarine
squadron was flying over the Bay of Biscay when he reported the
sighting of a huge object which followed and passed their plane.
The tail gunner was the 1st to see this strange aircraft
without wings. The others, including the
assistant engineer confirmed the sighting and the intercom became
a jumble mess of incoherent squawks.
The Sergeant with a K20 camera was shooting pictures by the
time the object was flying behind the aircraft at 5:00
position. It was difficult to determine
its distance and the object, which appeared massive, soon
gained altitude without visible means of propulsion.
In view for about 15 minutes the object finally executed a 180
degree angle turn and disappeared.
Out of a number of exposures taken by the Sergeant, only one
with filter showed details. Well, I wonder who ended up with
those pictures. Probably some of the stuff that
still classified 7580 years later.
Here's one from November 28th and 29th, 1942 turn Italy.
During a night bombing raid on Turin, Capital Lever and his
crew flying a Lancaster of RAF61 squadron saw twice a strange
object. The object was believed to have
been 200 to 300 feet in length and its width was estimated at
1/5 or 1/6 of its size. So imagine this.
This thing is 300 foot long and maybe 60 feet across.
It sounds almost like a cigar shaped or oblong shaped craft.
Its speed was estimated at 500 mile per hour.
It had four pair of red lights spaced at equal distances along
its body. These lights did not appear in
any way like exhaust flames. The object kept a level course.
The object was seen first at 22 hours and 40 after the bombing
while the Lancaster was at 11,000 feet.
The object was traveling southeast at the same altitude
or slightly below the craft. The 2nd sighting occurred at 22
hours and 45 minutes. The aircraft was approaching the
Alps at 14,000 feet when the object was seen traveling W
southwest up a valley in the Alps.
Below the level of the peaks the lights appeared to go out and
the object disappeared from view.
Imagine World War 2, they're on a bombing raid and they see this
massive 2 or 300 foot long UFO traveling at by the way 500 mile
per hour. Amazing.
Now this one is from some estuary France.
It says December 9th, 1942, Early in the evening, BC lumps
and pilot of a RF Hurricane fighter flying at an altitude of
7000 feet saw two bright lights that rose from the ground toward
his craft. He turned and observed the
lights, which climbed slowly and became bigger.
At 7000 feet, the lights stopped climbing and stayed level with
the plane. They positioned themselves
behind the plane at the same altitude.
The pilot made another full turn, but the lights stay behind
him. Then he nosedived down to 4000
feet, and the lights followed his every maneuver, keeping the
same relative position. Finally, they descended about
1000 feet below him, but when he leveled out, they arose again
and resumed pursuit. The first lights maintained an
even distance from each other and varied only slightly in
relative height from time to time, 1 remaining slightly lower
than the other. Finally, the pilot was able to
shake them off. You know, you can imagine why
these guys would feel threatened by these things.
It's just, you know, here they are in the middle of a war and
you've got these UFO's fooling around with them.
Here we go. This is 1943.
It says Atlantic Ocean between USA and England.
One night the pilot says the pilot and the 8 crew members of
a U.S. Navy PB2Y5 observed a single
lighted red orange object which flew in formation off the wing
of the aircraft. The pilot repositioned the
aircraft several times. Each time the object matched the
maneuver. The UAP took off ahead of the
plane and vanished from sight in 30 seconds.
That's just an amazing speed. This one here is from March
13th, 1943. It says the 376 bomb group, US
9th Air Force observed twice Roman candlelights.
The first sighting came up from the water and glowed in the sky
for a few seconds. About 30 seconds after leaving
Naples, the 2nd sighting, a bright, very large red light
appeared at the air at the aircraft altitude of 17,000
feet. According to the crew, it looked
like a huge irregular mass of neon and it was steady light,
not a reflection. Turning away from the light, the
crew said it remained motionless in the place or first seen, just
putting itself out there to be seen.
Let's go on down here a little bit, There's a bunch of these
cases. I mean, like I said, go over to
the Buy Me Coffee website, click on the link or, you know, you
can go to Twitter, find these links.
These are these cases are absolutely amazing.
Here's one. May 23rd and 24th 1943 Dortmund,
Germany during a night raid on Dortmund, several REF bomber
pilots reported to have observed these rockets not only in the
approaches to the RUR and RUR and the target area, but also
Overhaulen. These phenomena appear to have
been similar to the meteor projectiles recently reported,
but on this occasion they were flying at lower altitudes, some
quite close to the ground and mainly in horizontal direction.
Doesn't sound like a meteor to me.
Flying in horizontal direction close to the ground.
Here's one from October 1943. Swanford, Germany Returning from
a bombing mission over Germany, several B17 crews from the 384th
Bomber Group observed a group of luminous disc flying straight on
them. One of the pilots had to
maneuver to avoid a collision. His right wing went through the
group of disc without any effects.
One of the discs collided with the rear part of the B17 with no
damage. At 20 feet behind the disk there
was a mass of black degree of varying size and cluster 3 by 4
feet. So amazing something happened
where they flew through this object, this disk.
No damage to the plane, but they reported this massive debris
that they left in the wake. Here's 1 from 1944 S Atlantic.
At night, 4 pilots of military air transport aircraft observed
2 bright lights which came toward the plane, separated and
went around the aircraft, then turned and flew along the side
for 4 to 5 minutes. Just toying with these guys.
See if we can find some more down here.
This is that there's just a ton of these reports.
Here's one from February 4th, 1944, Frankfurt, Germany.
During a massive raid on on Frankfurt, the crew of the three
or third bomb group cited the stationary object of teardrop
shape, resembling a balloon, just above the clouds at 16,000
to 17,000 feet. During the same raid, the crew,
the 92nd Bomb Group, saw it 10 miles from their aircraft.
One object that appeared. Yeah, they're seeing these
things, but you can tell they're not wanting to talk about them
too much. Here's one.
March 1944, a pilot observed 7 Pebble shaped, 10 foot diameter
objects flying in V formation. That's over Yakima, WA, it says
Now. Here's one March 1944 Carlsbad,
NM Before Roswell, right, Roswell 47, Okay Captain Rita, a
US Air Force B29 pilot observed a bright spherical green object
with a flare Flying at great speed.
It made abrupt turns and disappeared above the horizon.
April 11th and 12th, 1944, Germany.
It says an alleged air fire projectile was seen to follow
for about one minute and to be gaining on the observer.
When the Corkscrew turns were made, it pursued the aircraft at
first, then losing altitude, curved away to the ground.
On the same time, a similar sighting took place in the same
area. Both reports are believed to be
the same phenomena. The 2nd observer in a different
aircraft saw one object approaching from a distance of 6
miles to starboard and two to three miles in front.
A large orange glow was emitted, leaving a smoke trail.
The projectile was then observed to make a turn of approximately
120 degrees toward the aircraft, lose height and disappear into a
cloud. The odds described in these two
reports may have been glider bombs and what they weren't
effective if they were. Here's one from April 26th, 1944
and we'll finish up here pretty quick.
This is Essen, Germany. While returning from a night
mission over Essen, Arthur Horton, pilot of the RAF622
Squadron, and his crew were flying at 20,000 feet, about 50
miles from their target. Both Gunners alerted the pilot
that they were followed or chased by 4 orange glows at some
short distance eastern. The glows were traveling
extremely fast and gaining on the aircraft.
The four objects had short stubby wings and were following
them in pairs, 2 from portside and two from the starboard side.
Bernard Die, my upper gunner says thought the objects had a
fire like glow with sparks emitting from their tail looking
like large oranges about the size of footballs.
The pilot immediately reacted to the objects aggressive nature
and dropped the aircraft out of the sky.
He began a series of corkscrews and turns with the things
following everything the pilot did, but making no move to
attack them. One of the glows faded out,
disappeared. By this time most of the crew,
except the pilot and the bomber amer, had seen the objects.
The remaining three objects stayed with them, duplicating
their every move until they had crossed the coast and were
heading to the sea. The event lasted about 10
minutes. The crew had traveled over 50
miles and had lost some 14,000 feet of altitude.
They were at 6000 feet when they disappeared.
According to the Gunners, they just faded out, but returning to
the basic crew was interrogated by intelligence officers who
made fun of their report. Here's one from Anzonio, Italy,
April 30th, 1944. It says between 2100 and 2200,
the pilot and the radar officer of a Bristol bow fighter of the
RE F600 Squadron sighted in the orange red glow following their
plane. All evasive maneuvers, even
going into clouds did not stop the object from pursuing them.
Finally, a dive into a cloud bank lost the object.
No radar contact. This one here says October 29th
and 30th 1944 Munich, Germany, 12B Seventeen's 400 and 19th
Bomber Squadron, 15th Air Force, 5th Wing.
Definitely. Our guys, operating on 15
millimeter on 15 minute intervals took off separately on
a lone wolf operation to arrest the enemy.
Their target was in Munich area at 01451 of the B17 pilots
William A Schultz, flying at 26,000 feet and approaching
Innsbruck, when suddenly the upper gunner reported that a
boogie was heading toward them. Looking like an apparent twin
engine J U88, the pilot dropped to a lower altitude and
maneuvered his plane to the thick clouds.
When they had broken the high scattered clouds, a strange
phenomenon occurred. According to Schultz, a light
blue collar ball of fire approximately 3 feet in diameter
appeared about 40 feet off our right wingtip.
It actually flew along with us for about 30 seconds with
streams of fire trailing down, but it was too large to be a
plane. Man, that's just amazing, it
says October 30th to 31st, 1944 at 2125, leaving Cologne.
Maurice Jubilee, flight engineer, and the crewmen of
Halifax, 3R, E, F600 and 40th Squadron have just completed the
bomb mission, flying at 19,000 feet above the clouds.
Suddenly the rear gunner reported that a ball of fire was
following the aircraft that was on a heading of 107 degrees.
It described it as a circular pale orange, clean edge, light
dead, astered and which appeared to be closing.
The pilot took evasive action, a crook, a Corkscrew to port, and
the crew lost contact with the light.
A few seconds later, a British aircraft flying nearby caught
fire. You kind of wonder if there was
maybe some kind of a collision right there, or maybe the same
was just there to watch. So this is the last one I'll do
here. This is December 28th, 1944, it
says. Germany at night Major Harold
Osberger, commanding officer of the foreign 15th NFS, and his
radar operator, Lieutenant Austin Petry took off in his
Bristol Bow Fighter nightmare from France and flew between
8000 and 10,000 feet. After crossing the German border
they lowered their altitude to 500 to 1000 feet looking for
targets of opportunity, searching for any signs of life
and anything that had a light. Their low level hunt went on for
about 90 minutes and proved to be an uneventful mission.
But moments later, while they were still over Germany,
something else was flying up there with them and its lights
were on. Major Ozburger was looking up to
find something flying parallel with them.
Suddenly, his attention was focused on a white light out off
to the starboard, right off the wing.
Trying to understand what was flying with the slide on, he
asked his radar operator if his radar screen had remained clear.
Lieutenant Petrie looked up and saw it too.
Major Osberger was not able to estimate his distance and size.
He said it was a big light far away, or a small light close in
to us. H first thought it was a flare
or maybe an aircraft, but was unsure.
It gave him the impression that was pacing them, possibly
keeping them under surveillance. He decided to have a closer look
and try to pick it up on radar. He turned in toward the strange
white light the bow fighter was bearing down on his target,
heading straight towards it and getting closer.
Lieutenant Petry reported nothing, was showing up on his
radar screen and could not understand why because it was
working just fine. Then about 30 seconds later the
target just took off and went straight up, climbing straight
up at a tremendous speed for a couple 1000 feet until the light
vanished, simply disappearing. Total duration 4 to 5 minutes.
So many great encounters these World War 2 pilots had, you
know, 7580 years ago. Everything from balls of light.
What purity. Balls of flame cigar shaped UF
O's with these evenly spaced red lights on the side, traveling
500 mile an hour. These encounters I think are of
the 1st order because they're taken from military pilots in a
time of war. These guys didn't have time to
mess around. They are automation.
Their lives were at stake. They weren't.
They're trying to get attention for themselves.
And these were American and, you know, UK heroes that were doing
a job. And the fact that they took the
time to report these societies is a is really it's it is a
treasure left for all of us. Until next time, this is UFO
Warning. Over and out.