Foo Fighters Recalled.

[Terry W. Colvin]

SUBJ: Foo Fighters Recalled

U.S. airmen called them "foo fighters." These still-unexplained
luminous phenomena seem to have been filed away and forgotten by
science. It is not that good evidence is lacking. Perhaps the foo
fighters cannot be encompassed by recognized laws of physics! We
last reported on them in 1992 (SF#83), when some old Air Force
records turned up. We now re-resurrect the foo fighters with an
Associated Press Bulletin from 1945.

"AMERICAN NIGHT FIGHTER BASE. France, Jan. 1. --
The Germans have thrown something new into the
night skies over Germany -- the weird, mysterious
"foo-fighter," balls of fire that race alongside
the wings of American Beaufighters flying intruder
missions over the Reich.

"American pilots have been encountering the eerie
"foo-fighter" for more than a month in their night
flights. No one apparently knows what this sky
weapon is.

"The balls of fire appear suddenly and accompany
the planes for miles. They appear to be radio-
controlled from the ground and keep up with planes
flying 300 miles an hour, official intelligence
reports reveal.

"There are three kinds of these lights we call
'foo-fighters,'" Lieut. Donald Meiers of Chicago
said. "One is red balls of fire which appear off
our wing tips and fly along with us; the second
is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly
in front of us; and the third is a group of about
fifteen lights which appear off in the distance --
like a Christmas tree up in the air -- and flicker
on and off."

.....

"A 'foo-fighter' picked me up recently at 700 feet
and chased me twenty miles down the Rhine Valley,"
Lieutenant Meiers said. "I turned to starboard and
two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the
port side and they turned with me. We were going 260
miles an hour and the balls were keeping right up
with us."

(Anonymous; "Balls of Fire Stalk U.S. Fighters in Night Assaults
over Germany," New York Times, January 2, 1945. Cr. M. Piechota.)

From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998. (C) 1998-2000 William R. Corliss
BT