Were aliens occupying our skies during World War II? Were they secret Nazi superweapons?
What was really behind the surge of UFO sightings of the 1940s and beyond?
When most people hear the phrase "foo fighters," they'll immediately think
of the band led by rock legend Dave Grohl. The phrase, however,
is a lot older than the band. It's actually an old word for UFOs, dating back to World War II.
One of the most prominent early UFO sightings happened during the
latter years of World War II. According to The History Channel, in November 1944,
three U.S. Air Force personnel saw unexplained lights up in the sky.
They were on a night flight over the Rhine Valley in France when a series of 8 to 10
bright orange lights appeared over the hills. They mistook them for enemy fighters at first,
but by the time they'd turned their plane to intercept them, the lights had vanished.
Other pilots soon reported similar strange glowing lights, describing them as white, orange, red,
or "fiery." They could make seemingly impossible maneuvers in the sky before
vanishing without a trace. One in particular mentioned red fireballs off his wing tips,
which didn't leave until he dropped into a dive at 360 miles per hour.
Seemingly, there were a variety of objects reported as foo fighters;
sightings included things like lights flying in formation and
wingless cigar-shaped objects. Rather than moving at random, the lights seen
by pilots appeared to be "under perfect control at all times." With such a plethora of reports,
it was only a matter of time before the term "foo fighter" made it into popular culture.
The name "foo fighter" is purposefully silly sounding. Even Dave Grohl admits as much.
"Foo Fighters is like the stupidest f—ing band name you've ever heard."
But it may have served a purpose in World War II. Trapped in such a deeply stressful situation,
keeping a sense of humor was a coping mechanism for American military personnel during World War
II. The choice of a comical name worked to take the edge off what were no doubt deeply unsettling
experiences for aircrews in the sky. After all, at the time, radar was still a new technology and
U.S. pilots had only been involved in nighttime operations for a few years. The night skies
were still very much unfamiliar territory for American pilots, and the constant chance of seeing
unexplained things while flying would be enough to unnerve even the most steadfast of pilots.
The name itself most likely came from an American comic strip by the
name of Smokey Stover. The nonsense word "foo" was used frequently in the comic,
thrown in at random for the sake of absurdist comedy. The name could
possibly have come from a 1938 book entitled, simply, "The Foo Fighter."
There were multiple foo fighter sightings in Europe, but they were also seen in other parts
of the world during the Second World War, often reported by members of the military.
One account is given in the book, "Bringing the Thunder: The Missions of a World War II
B-29 Pilot in the Pacific." In it, a bomber pilot talks about a mission over Tokyo,
where several people witnessed an unidentified object. They described it as "a large burning
sphere hanging out there in the sky." The sphere appeared aerodynamically incapable of flight and
didn't seem to have any means of propulsion, but it reportedly followed their planes before it was
shot down. Minutes later, a second was seen, also pursuing them and prompting the pilots to flee.
Similar fireballs were reported by crews on other missions too, but when military intelligence heard
about the mysterious fireballs they had no explanation for what they could have been.
While it was the U.S. Air Force who gave the UFOs the name of foo fighters,
reports of strange phenomena in the skies had begun much earlier. After all,
with World War II having begun in 1939, there had been plenty of airplanes in the skies over
Europe for years. The U.K.'s Royal Air Force had been sending out bomber crews regularly,
and several of them had reported lights in the sky, glowing objects, and things that had been
officially dubbed "aeroforms." The reports from British pilots date back to March 1942, and there
were numerous other reports worldwide in the early 1940s. Another incident was in the U.S. in 1942,
when unidentified craft flew over Los Angeles seemingly causing a blackout. Originally assumed
to be Japanese aircraft, there was never any explanation for what the mysterious objects were.
Seemingly though, the majority of sightings were reported in 1944 over Europe. According to
the book "Smokin' Rockets," the sightings were so numerous that many allied soldiers started
assuming them to be German aircraft. Despite the concerns that these were enemy vehicles though,
the foo fighters were never reported to cause any damage to aircraft. Aircrews
began to consider them more of a nuisance than any actual threat,
as they tended to simply follow airplanes. All the same, the pilots remained wary because the unknown
objects were impossibly maneuverable, easily managing to evade entire squadrons of fighters.
In the nerve-wracking grip of the ongoing war, there was no shortage of speculation that the
German Luftwaffe may have been responsible for the foo fighters. Rumors began to simmer,
and people seemingly had good reason for their suspicions. By this point, German engineers
had invented the V-2 rocket, the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. But the V-2
wasn't maneuverable enough to match what pilots had reported seeing in the skies over the Rhine
valley. It also seemed like quite a coincidence that, as The Sarasota Herald-Tribune mentions,
when allied forces captured the East Rhine, sightings of foo fighters in the area stopped.
With all of this on their minds, people began to worry about some kind of German superweapon. The
rumors began to spread so persistently that it was even reported by newspapers. However, as history
can attest, this would later turn out not to be the case. In fact, the book "Smokin' Rockets"
notes that unidentified objects had also been reported by both German and Japanese aircrews.
"Interestingly enough, when you look at the Luftwaffe – so the
German air force – they were seeing them too."
Whatever the strange objects were,
seemingly they were a puzzle to pilots on both sides of the conflict.
In September 1945, World War II came to an end, but the sightings of mysterious objects
in the skies continued. It's uncertain whether they were related to the foo fighters seen
by wartime pilots, but 1946 saw Scandinavia inundated with sightings of strange objects
dubbed "ghost rockets." At least one incident, per The New York Times, almost caused casualties
as a ghost rocket crashed into a lake. They were believed to originate from somewhere near Germany
and fragments were reportedly recovered, but specific details remained elusive.
The Swedish military investigated, finding that the rockets could fly as far as 800 miles — an
unprecedented distance for a ballistic missile at the time, with the German V-2 rockets having a
maximum range of just 220 miles. They wouldn't release their files on the sightings until 40
years later, when it was revealed that Sweden had classified more than 1,500 ghost rocket reports.
Over the following months, there was a spate of sightings of these ghost
rockets. As The Deccan Chronicle mentions, they were even seen over the Finnish capital
of Helsinki. One passed over the city, making a thunderous noise and leaving a
trail of luminous smoke that hung in the air for around 10 minutes. Even as the
ghost rockets over Scandinavia started to taper off around the end of 1946,
sightings of similar objects were reported further south, in Hungary, Greece, Portugal, and Morocco.
The foo fighters were well documented during wartime,
but it wasn't until later that the term UFO would enter popular consciousness.
"Whoa!"
The sighting which would kick off the cultural phenomenon of UFOs, per The History Channel,
happened in 1947 — but the event itself seems eerily similar to the reports of foo fighters.
A businessman by the name of Kenneth Arnold was flying a private light aircraft near Mount
Rainier in Washington when he reported seeing nine glowing objects in the sky. He described
them as crescent-shaped and traveling at what he estimated to be several thousand miles per hour.
A newspaper report would later mistakenly report these objects as being "saucer-shaped," leading
the flying saucer to become part of our vocabulary. The same year,
the Roswell Incident would capture the imagination of the world,
with the U.S. Military initially reporting that they'd recovered the wreckage of a "flying disc."
The objects seen by Arnold were reportedly flying in an echelon formation, much like the
foo fighters reported by World War II pilots. The idea of flying saucers was put on a crash
course with pop culture, starting in mid-20th century sci-fi movies like "Earth vs. the Flying
Saucers" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space," persisting until more recent fiction like "The X-Files."
"Take a look for yourself." "What in the
world?" "That's nothing from this world."
A declassified CIA report from 1953 discusses the foo fighters, making a point to note that,
"if the term 'flying saucers' had been popular in 1943-1945,
these objects would have been so labeled."
With so many UFOs being reported by aircrews, the U.S. Military began a serious investigation
into possible causes. They had to consider the possibility that something might be affecting
the perceptions of the people involved. Wartime had forced militaries to move quickly, meaning
there were plenty of potential gaps in knowledge about the physical rigors to which air force
members were being subjected. One thing military scientists investigated was aviator's vertigo.
According to an article in Skeptic Magazine, this is a feeling of disorientation caused
by the motion of an aircraft, which can have a number of effects on a flight crew. Essentially,
it covers any sensation or perception which doesn't match the objective reality
of the environment. One effect of aviator's vertigo is a sensation known as autokinesis,
an optical illusion that gives the impression that stationary objects are
actually moving. The result is that points of light can appear to move.
This study followed up an earlier idea that the foo fighters were hallucinations
seen by aircrews suffering from "battle fatigue," a condition brought on by the
stress of spending time in active warzones. Soldiers suffering from battle fatigue can
experience hypersensitivity to light and movement, suggesting that it could
combine with aviator's vertigo to give the illusion of moving lights in the sky.
However, as Smithsonian Magazine notes, the crews themselves disagreed with this
assessment. Simply, it didn't match what they'd experienced.
There was a lot of speculation among scientists about what the foo fighters might actually have
been, and one likely culprit was some kind of atmospheric phenomenon. Earth's
atmosphere is home to a wide variety of optical effects, like reflections off of high-altitude
ice crystals which can cause light to play tricks on observers. Additionally, in 1945,
Time reported that the foo fighters might have been St Elmo's fire, an optical effect
where an electrical discharge can emit light. St Elmo's fire has been well-known for a long time,
often seen on the masts of ships out at sea. With the right weather conditions,
it can also be seen on church steeples and aircraft. But as seasoned military pilots,
many of those who reported seeing foo fighters were familiar with St Elmo's fire.
"St. Elmo's fire?"
"I don't think so. It's not moving the way it should."
Another possibility, which seems like a better match, is ball lightning. This is
a mysterious and poorly understood electrical phenomenon, usually seen during thunderstorms,
where a sphere of glowing light can appear in the air. Ball lightning can have varying colors,
from blue to yellow to orange, and even now in the 21st century, little is known about it. However,
this doesn't seem to fully explain the foo fighters reported by pilots either. Whatever
they really were, the foo fighters were seemingly unlike anything else seen before.
Unfortunately, eyewitness accounts were essentially all investigators had to go on.
None were ever confirmed by radar either — though, granted, radar was still a new
technology at the time, being first used to detect aircraft in 1938. All kinds of
explanations have been explored, but nothing has ever been able to adequately explain what
the foo fighters were. They remain a mystery to this day, and maybe they always will be.