Foo Fighters Over Germany
Moving on to the period of World War Two, we find the most notable event, ufologically speaking, was the widespread appearances of small disks and spheres of unknown origin which were at the time nicknamed Foo Fighters.
Their first official appearance was on October 14, 1943, during a bomber raid on the German industrial complex at Schweinfurt.
As the bombers of the 384th Group swung into the final bomb run, the fighter attacks fell off.
This point is vital, and pilots were queried extensively, as were other crew members, as to the the position at that time of the German fighter planes.
Every man interrogated was firm in his statement that at the time there were no enemy aircraft above.
At this moment the pilots & top turret gunners, as well as several crewmen in the plexiglass noses of the bombers, reported a cluster of disks in the path of the 384’s formation…
The planes ran into a formation of scores of small, silvery disks, about 1" thick and 3" in diameter, flying toward the bombers.
The startled exclamations focused attention on the phenomenon, and the crews talked back and forth, discussing and confirming the astonishing sight before them.
The disks were easily seen, gliding down slowly in a very uniform cluster.
And then the impossible happened, B-17 number 926 closed rapidly with a cluster of disks, the pilot attempted to evade an imminent collision, but was unsuccessful in his maneuver.
He reported at the intelligence debriefing that his right wing went directly through a cluster with absolutely no effect on engines or plane surface.
The intelligence officers pressed their questioning, and the pilot stated further that one of the disks was heard to strike the tail assembly, but that neither he nor any member of the crew heard or witnessed an explosion.
He further explained that about 20' from the disks the pilots sighted a mass of black debris of varying sizes in clusters of 3' by 4'.
The secret report added that also observed 2 other A/C flying through silver disks with no apparent damage, observed disks and debris 2 other times but could not determine where it came from.
No further information on this baffling incident has been uncovered, with the exception that such disks were observed by pilots and crew members of missions prior to, and after, Mission 115 of October 14, 1943.
Official investigations by worried intelligence units, particularly with the American forces based in Europe.
One disk struck the tail of one aircraft, but without effect, reported Major ERT Holmes in a secret memorandum dated October 24, 1943.
The British believed that foo fighters might be an Axis power’s secret weapon.
However, following the end of the war documents revealed that the Axis powers had themselves encountered foo fighters and believed that they might have been Allied weapons.
There were also sightings reported from the Japanese aircraft in the Pacific.
Later foo fighter reports told mainly of fireball like lights and glowing spheres.
Because the UFO phenomenon had not yet been officially born and because these reports came in soon after the first foo fighter reports, they were understood at the time to be further examples of the same phenomenon.