Foo fighters

From November 1944, crews of the US 415th Night Fighter Squadron reported glowing balls of light pacing their Beaufighters at night over the Rhine; similar reports came from bomber crews in Europe and the Pacific. The reports were recorded in mission debriefs and passed up through SHAEF, whose Air Staff files (released through PURSUE) list the encounters sortie by sortie from mid-December 1944 to late January 1945. The British Air Ministry offered flak rockets or Me-262 jets as a tentative explanation, and SHAEF judged the evidence 'sketchy and varied'. No radar, film or photograph tied to the night lights survives; one file includes an unrelated photograph of a cylindrical object taken by a reconnaissance pilot in March 1945.

Several phenomena under one name: flares, tracer and flak bursts, reflections, St. Elmo's fire, enemy jets and fatigue-related misperception

• Document331_120752_Numeric_Files_1944-1945_37153_German_Armament_Equipment_DocumentsRelease 1

  331_120752_Numeric_Files_1944, 1945_37153_German_Armament_Equipment_Documents

  SHAEF Air Staff messages and memoranda, January-March 1945, concerning WWII 'night phenomena' ('foo fighters') reported by the 415th Night Fighter Squadron over the German/French front, and a separate 1 March 1945 sighting of a long cylindrical object photographed by a 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group pilot. Includes a detailed 30 January 1945 report listing sortie-by-sortie foo-fighter encounters from mid-December 1944 through late January 1945. The Air Ministry's tentative explanation was flak rockets or ME-262 jets; SHAEF found the evidence 'sketchy and varied' with no satisfactory conclusion possible.

  Open the original on war.gov

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  Pentagon releases more UFO files as 'Disclosure Day' debuts | Elizabeth Vargas Reports Full EpisodeWatch from 7:46 on YouTube

• Unverified7:46Luis "Lue" ElizondoUnsourced

  The US government has investigated plasma-orb phenomena since the 1940s, when Allied WWII pilots reported them and coined the term 'Foo Fighters'.

  It really started back in the 1940s during the height of World War II where Allied pilots often reported the phenomenon and gave them a name. They called them Foo Fighters.

  Said in Pentagon releases more UFO files as 'Disclosure Day' debuts | Elizabeth Vargas Reports Full Episode

• Wikipedia: Foo fighteren.wikipedia.org