Most Famous Foo Fighter Sighting
The best known foo fighter sighting involved the 415th, an American night fighter unit flying out of France.They seem to have been the location of most of the best known 1944 & 1945 reports and were the source of the foo fighter nickname.
Lieutenant Edward Schlueter was going from Dijon on an intercept mission to Strasbourg & Mannheim, flying mostly above the Vosges Mountains.
With him were Lieutenant Don Myers and an intelligence officer, Lieutenant Ringwald.
The sky was clear and the American radar had detected no enemy presence in area.
About 19 miles from Strasbourg, Lieutenant Ringwald spotted towards the West a linear formation of 8 to 10 red fireballs moving at great speed.
Ringwald was an excellent & experienced observer and he had just spotted a freight train miles away from their flight path, despite the fact that its boiler was shielded by blackout and only a plume of steam had given its location away.
The crew debated the lights, were they misconceptions of stars or could they be meteors, perhaps their own aircraft was reflecting off clouds, they dismissed each idea in turn.
Then, as they closed in for the kill, the red fireballs simply melted into nothingness.
Minutes later they reappeared, then vanished again.
It was as if they were playing tag, the crew gave up and got on with their raid.
Many similar sightings followed.
Radar stations and onboard radar in the aircraft showed that nothing was actually there.
Yet the lights climbed up, chased the bombers, matched them for speed and maneuverability and then disappeared instantly.
It is not surprising that the possibility of a secret weapon became popular.