posted on May, 19 2007 @ 09:58 PM
Here is the text of an interview I had with Robert Tierney, a Radar Operator in the 422 NFS who was good friends with Don J. Meiers, a Radar
Operator in the 415th NFS. My question to him was, what did he recall about Don's experiencies with the Foo Fighters.
24Nov.1993
Well, what I can recall was that he was very emphatic about it. Uh...he claimed he saw these lights and that they just intrigued the hell out of
him.They seemed to follow him, follow the the plane he was in...and I think he was in Beaufighters out of Italy at the time.And uh...he told me he
said, you know, originally, "I thought, my gosh, I'm loosing my mind!." But that they began to form on a uniform basis and begin to either follow
him or look like they were trying to accompany him.Uh...they'd fly off of his wing, they'd zoom over and fly off of the other wing.They seemed to
be playing with him.Uh...they couldn't pick up anything, as far as I recall, he couldn't pick up anything on his radar. And uh...the pilot
acknowledged it, they didn't know what in the heck it was.He finally, and it happened ona coupleof night missions, I remember he'd tell me, he
said, "Itreached the point Bob where I said, 'God damn it! I'm going to take a forty-five Thompson sub-machine gun and go up and see if I can
shoot 'em.'" He said, "I was so frustrated," and he said, " I just wanted to see what they were." He said, "I thought that the Germans had
something come on up there." But he said, "That I felt so helpless and that we couldn't get our guns to bear on 'em." I think that his guns were
all forward firing.And uh...I said, "Did you take it up?" he said, "No, I didn't do it." But he said, "But it's intrigued me, sincethen, to
the pointwhere it's something there that I can'treally prove I saw it." And uh...he said uh..."My pilotacknowledged it, but uh...we knew it
was there.We knew that it flew and it...they accompanied us.They were morethan one." I can't recall how many he thought...he said thathe saw
at one time.But as I recall, we're going back fiftyyears now, I would say uh...in the... in magnitude fromthree to five to ten.And there didn't
seem to be anyconsistency as to one night from another night.But uh...he said that uh...he never forgot it. And that frankly, isall I can
remember.I know that he was very excited about itwhen he told me and that was on the way back from Europe.
At this point Mr.Tierney and I discussed the question of what these "foo" fighters might have been. I mentioned the idea of them being UFOs,
German secret weapons or illusions experienced while one is flying at night.I expanded upon the the illusory sensations that have been studied by the
Navy and Air Force and then under this context Mr.Tierney offered this narrative spontaneously:
You know one night we were in the Ruhr valley... over the Cologne valley and this light began to play with us. And uh...I'd get a hold...I'd
get some kind of an image my radar and I'd turn Smitty toward him.And he said, "Now he's coming right over the top of you, head on." And this
thing would zoom over the top of me and I'd uh..."What in the world is it?" Then it would get... it would actually orbit us and I kept watching it
and I thought well it's way out there but it's staying with us'cause we would go in orbit too.But trying to get closed to it...and we found out
later it was one of their first jets.And we talked it over...I said, "Well, it might be a Mosie with the Nav (navigation) lights on."That's a
Mosquito, a British night fighter.No, it was a jet. But I can't imagine truthfully, how anyone would be so disoriented to think that something
celestial would be following it or flying in formation with it.