Foo Fighters of WWII - Repost

Great work on your paper. The world needs more people like you.

Thank you very much, as for the second half of the above quote, I believe that my ex-wife would sternly disagree with you.

Your post is ideal. It is an expression of true mystery and awe. I am purveyed by it's reverence for being and for the splendor of an infinate universe. This deep sence of humility in front of nature and the infinate expanse of space has driven my academic pursuits in the study of folk-belief. Indeed, I'm a Folklorist and while I was studying as an undergrad I was overwhelmed by the vast populations of supernatural creatures in the lower mythologies of the Fairy Realms.

As I began to investigate UFO-lore I began to realize that many of the creatures of the Fairy Realms were resurfacing in UFO beliefs and stories. Again, the Jack-o'-lantern stories seemed to be the most revived legend within contemporary legendry, why? Here is a short list of the varients of the Jack-o'-lantern legend cycle:

Billy of the wisp
Billy-wi'-t-Wisp
Kitty with the wisp
Kitty-wi'-the-wisp
Waller-Wups
Will a' wisp
Will-in-a-wisp
Will o' wisp
Will-o'-the-wisp
Will of the wisp
Will o' the Wykes
Will the wispe
Will with a wisp
William with a wispe
Willy-ba-wisp
Willy wisp
Wull-er-de-Wust
Wull-er-de-wusses
Wull-er-de-Wuts
Jack-o'-lantern
Jack-a-lantern
Jack and lantern
Jack-a-t-wad
Jack i' the lantern
Jack in a lanthorn
Jack in the lantern
Jack-me-lantern
Jack-me-lantun
Jack-muh-lantern
Jack-o'-lantern
Jack-o'-my-lantern
Jack-o'-the-lantern
Jack of the lantern
Jack-o'-lattin
Jack of the wad
Jack o' t' wad
Jack Polant
Jack the lantern
Jack with a lantern
Jack with a lanthorn
Jack-w'-a-lanthorns
Jack with his lantern
Jacker-mer-lantern
Jacket-a-wad
Jacketawad
Jacky lantern
Jacky lanthorn
Jacky-ma-lantun
Jacky-mi-lantuhns
Jac-y-lantern
Lantern-Jack
man-jacky
woman-jacky
Hob with a lantern
Hob-with-a-lantern
Hoberdy's lantern
Hoberdy's lanthorn
Hobbledy's lantern
Hobby lantern
Hob of the lantern
Hobbady-lantern
Hobbady's lantern
Hob-lantern
Hob-lanthorn
Hob-lantan
Hobby Lantan
Hob with the lantern
Hob wi' the lantern
Hob with 'e lantern
Hob 'ithe lantern
Hobbedy's lantern
Hobby lanthorn
Hobany's lantern
Hobany's lanthorn
Hob and his lantern
Hob-puck
Hob and his lanthorn

The Fairy Realms were also populated with these legendary tricksters that would chase night travlers, or be pursued by night travlers. The recurrent theme here is that these fairies also sported a swinging lantern as did the above imps. Here is a short list:

Aw-puck
Bog-sprite
colpexy
Ellyldan (Welsh)
Fenny Campton ghost
Hinky-Punk
Mab
pexy
picksy
piskies
pigseys
pigsies
pixies
poake
pouk
Puck
pwca
pwcca
pwka
Robin Goodfellow
Spunkie
Water-skeerie
Yr Ellyll Dan

Where I differ from most people is that on a stary night they may be filled with the awe and splendor of such a vast universe, sure I am too, but when I see the beauty of the infinite diversity of beliefs which surround a definate structure, such as the above legends, I feel that we know far less about ourselves than we are willing to admit.

I would like to suggest a Biblical controversy about a reported sighting of a Foo Fighter. Those that don't believe a word of the Bible can ignore what I am about to say.

This is about the three wise men who were led by a star to the birth place of Jesus Christ, reported in the Gospels. Some just assume that it was some real star that just appeared in the heavens, that tracked the holy birth of Jesus. The wise men, or astrologers, called it Jesus' birth star, which led them from the east.

If it was a true star in the heavens, outside our solar system, then it would not make a good marker to identify a specific location on earth. It would be highly subjective in order to get a good target.

Matthew 2:9 "When they had heard the king (Herod), they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was."

If the star was really a Foo Fighter, that was within a few thousand feet of the surface, then the location for the birth place could have been exact.

The controversy of this matter is whether or not the Foo Fighter was an agent of evil or an act of God. That is for another topic all together. I just wanted to point out that astrology was forbidden by the Jews.

[edit on 16-4-2007 by lostinspace]

This is an interesting postulate because this Biblical scene of the Three Wise men following a star very much reminded me of tales about the Jack-o'-lantern. Jack, in occidental folklore, usually refers to a devilish imp or the Devil himself. In these tales of antiquity, Jack would usually appear as a ball of fire or a ball of light which would bewitch a night traveler into following the light to his doom, usually in a swamp or a bog. Within the Fairy Realm there was a cast of evil Bog Sprites which would also mislead night travelers to an untimely death in a bog.

Now, because i'm a Folklorist, I tend to classify stories according to the structure and content of a tale. Again, I do consider the Foo Fighter stories I've collected as being structurally simular enough to the Jack-o'-lantern legend, although the content is markedly different. Thus, I would be more likely to label the Foo Fighters as a varient of the Jack-o'-lantern legend.

OK, so instead of these Allied Airmen chasing an impish Fire Ball or the Devil himself, they are chasing evil Krauts and Japs. One story I collected from the Operations Officer of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, Charlie Horne, goes on to explain that the Germans used these "balls of fire" to mislead Allied Night Fighters over Flak Traps. British Night Fighters who flew night missions over the Po Valley late in the war also told simular tales about "Buckets of Blood" which were believed to be canister flares that the Germans would deploy over hidden flak traps. The cautionary nature of these tales was intended to warn Night Fighters not to chase these things.

Well, back to the 3 Smart Dudes, since the light that they were following was not evil and did not lead them to their demise, I wouldn't classify this tale as a Jack-o'-lantern or a Foo fighter legend. Also, more specifically, these legends generally have finite life spans, more specifically, we don't have evil Germans flying night missions over Bethleham at -33 A.D. So far as the time table I've reconstructed, Foo fighter legends only existed between October/November of 1944 until about mid-way into the Korean War. By this time, the Foo Fighters died out only to be supplanted by a more contemporary sprite, the UFO.

Giving these things labels, like Foo Fighters, Baka Bombs, Me-262s, Me-163s, Scarecrows, Buckets of Blood, Search light fighters, Kamikazes, Robombs, the Planet Venus etc., only serves to confuse the generic classification of these tales. These are all Jack-o'-lantern tales told within the context of World War Two.

This is why I resist to classify any tale about the foo fighters that dosn't lie within this timeframe (very few Korean War sightings) and within the context of nocternal aerial combat. As a Folklorist, I follow a methodology and when we classify objects of culture, such as a tale, we adhear to what is known as an Etic Classification. This system of classification allows us to better group the structures of folktales so that recurrent themes within these structures can be more easily identified. It's a more analytical method of sorting so to say.

But I have personally seen a Jack-o'-lantern-- a headless ghost carrying a swinging lantern, not a carved pumkin. And no I do not believe in ghosts or undead spirits that roam the contryside looking for their heads, this is indeed a seperate topic though. But there is a great deal of diversity within the Jack-o'-lantern legend cycle with a great many versions of the tale. The headless ghost and the ball of fire that chases night travlers are only two versions of this tale.

In short, I believe that these things are flaws in out nocternal mechanism of vision, nothing more.

Hey lostinspace,

Just wondering. Your location says Mt. Hermon. Is that the Mt. Hermon that is in the North of the Golan?

Talk to ya later.

Originally posted by Rotwang
Hey lostinspace,

Just wondering. Your location says Mt. Hermon. Is that the Mt. Hermon that is in the North of the Golan?

Talk to ya later.

Why yes it is? You're the first person to inquire of my location. Do you think I'm really up there? I chose it because of its connection with the Book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch tells of the legend where 200 angels decended on Mt. Hermon, materialized and took human women as wives, before the Flood of Noah's day.
en.wikipedia.org...

So you believe that the "balls of fire" are manifestations of the human mind?

The one common thing I see from what you said is that the Foo Fighters or Willow-Wisps distract and confuse their audience most of the time. Could a human project a manifestation if they wanted to? Such as a witch, warlock, wizard, voo-doo doctor or Hitler? The fighter pilots of WWII didn't project them, or did they? If someone did, I would say it was more likely the Nazis pilots who did it. Hitler was involved in a strange craft and probably blessed his pilots with it. It seems that the balls of light were projected to deceive, if that's how it was done. Would I consider the Foo Fighters to be intelligent? I would say yes. They seem to appear without provication at different times. I noticed that with the Concord video clip (the video that was in spanish.) The orb was curious with the Concord air craft and wanted to take a peek. It looked like he had to do it fast so he wouldn't be noticed. I don't understand their rules of engagement, but it seems like they were highly excited during WWII. Why not WWI?

Well, I'll try to tackle some of your questions, but I need to say that what I believe about the existance of UFOs, aliens, spirits, ghosts, fairys, etc.; I don't believe that any of these things are real. I collect and catalog these beliefs in order to study human belief structures.

OK, why no foo fighters in WWI? Foo fighters were only spotted at night by combat aviators. No one flew night missions during the First World War. Simple enough. The Jack-o'-lantern also only appears at night. So, this is why I began to study nocturnal vision (which is only in black & white) and visual illusions which are experienced in the dark.

I don't believe that these illusions (foo fighters) are manifestations of the human mind so much as I believe that they are produced within the visual cortex of the brain. How these illusions are produced within the visual cortex seems to be rather complex. Imagine the visual cortex of the brain as multi-input signal processor receiving signal inputs from two paired (4) receiver sets - the left ocular and vestibular inputs and the right ocular and vestibular inputs. The ocular inputs convey visual-optical information such as color, relative angular positioning as a mean deviation from the central focus, size, shape, texture and conture. Distance of an object is the resultant of the angular offset of the two ocular inputs which is known as stereoscopic vision. This blending of two seperate 2 dimentional images with a slight angular displacement creates the sensation that objects are 3 dimentional. Here is an interesting link on the evolution of stereoscopic vision in predators.

Now the vestibular system within the inner ear is tied to the visual loop and provides information to the visual cortex such as yaw, pitch and roll (rotary movement along the x,y,z axes.) This information is critical to the visual cortex if it is to navigate the body in 3 dimentional space.

Since the eyes and the vestibules of the inner ears act as receivers we need to understand some very basic attributes about receivers. All receivers have what is known as a noise floor when no signals are being collected by the receiver. This is a state known as - infinity (-∞). With the visual loop that noise floor can be demonstrated in two ways with the autokinetic illusion. In the dark it was origanally called "Sternswanken" or swinging stars, in the light it was originally called "Punktswanken" or swinging point. Today these two sensations are fundamentally understood as two dimentional autokinesis. This is where either a solitary point of light in a pitch dark room or a solid point within a clear white background are gazed upon. After staring at these points for about 30-60 seconds, one will notice that the point begins to hop around and swing back and forth. This illusion fully demonstrates the random noise that is present at the noise floor of the visual-optical loop. In a 0 G environment the illusory sensations of roll, pitch and yaw can be experienced in the same manner due to the effects of the noise floor present within the visual-vestibular loop.

Now, put an airman in an aircraft on a pitch dark night pursuing a point of light in a free-fall dive. Not only will he visually experience the illusory two-dimentional autokinetic movement of the point of light, but he will also experience the illusory rotary sensations of autokinetic roll, pitch and yaw.

The research of these illusory sensations was pioneered by Dr. Ashton Graybiel during the later part of WWII and later as the Director of NASA's Areospace Medical Division.

Rotwang ,although your material is very thorough and well researched your comments that UFOs could be all in the mind of the observer seem only partly feasible as a great many objects are captured and plotted on radar.
Id be interested to know if your aware of any pilot eyewitness reports of Foo fighters of WW2 or Korea being corellated with radar evidence.
Cheers Karl

It's really hard to keep the confusion between UFOs and Foo Fighters seperate. As I had stated in my research paper and in other areas in this thread, there was absolutely no Radar contact by either the Airborne Radars or the Ground Control Intercept Radars. I really did go to great lengths to verify this in my interviews. Anyways, I really don't deal with UFOs, sure, I don't believe that there are aliens visiting our planet in spacecraft, but that dosn't change the fact that people see things that they can't explain. That will always be the case. As long as human beings have eyes they will always see things that they can't explain. To me this line of reasoning does not prove anything other than that we all are shaped differently. There is a myrid of cultural differences, beliefs that are so varied that we could never index them in a 1000 years. To me this all points straight to culture and the process of enculturation.

I only researched sighting of "balls of light" that were sighted on night missions during the Second World War. I wanted to interview these airmen to see if the story structures of the Jack-o'-lantern legend were still intact within the context of WWII nocturnal aviation and they were. These tales sucessfully made the transition from spiritualist beliefs to that of technological beliefs in secret weapons. These story structures, which revolve around this legend type, posess almost a magical immunity to the most drastic changes in cultural belief systems. That because there is such continuity in these story structures throughout time points to the thesis within the study of Folklore that many tales are polygenetic in their origins. Polygenetic tales are tales which are not diffused by oral or written traditions, they just appear for no reason with a remarkable and unfailing affinity to other story structures.

This was what I was after, to see if the Foo Fighters were of a polygenetic origin. After interviewing many of these airmen I had found out that many of them were already familiar with the Jack-o'-lantern story structure and that many of them had seen Jack-o'-lanterns prior to their entry into the Army Air Corps. I was able to track the oral diffusion of this tale from bases in the Netherlands, to bases in France, Italy, Tinian and Guam. So, early in my research I began to question the possibility that these may not be polygenetic tales. After about three years into my collections I began to realize that both diffusion and polygenisis were at play in the formation of the Foo Fighter legend cycle. As the tale diffused it would act as a seed and then it would begin a process of bifurcation, which would branch out into all the versions of the standard legend type. To me this was incredible, if the tale served as a seed of sugestion than the processes which it was initiating had to be universal to all observers.

Eventually I began to explore the processes of nocternal visual and that's when I discovered the autokinetic illusion. And to my suprise, the impact of suguestion on the autokinetic illusion had been studied for over 60 years. This was the gene of the folktale -- suggestion. As the folktale was planted into new Night Fighter and Bomber units, the branches of the tale would begin to grow along similar lines.

To me, this is utter beauty in all of it's splender.

Originally posted by Rotwang
I tracked down and interviewed the pilot of Don's Beaufighter, Edward Schleuter. Ed was on every single mission that Don sighted these foo fighters on, and they were several, and Ed could not verify one single sighting that Don had. These men were in the same aircraft and on every occasion these men had completely different experiences.

Very telling.

Thanks for elaborateing on your research.

Much appreciated.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Perhaps the single greatest inspiration I had for becoming a supernatural sluth (Folklorist) was after reading a book by Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. After reading Feyerabend's works I then moved on to Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. These two men's works have profoundly influenced my own methology in research. Check them out, they are perhaps the best two books I've ever read.

[edit on 20-4-2007 by Rotwang]

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.

At the beginning of this thread you solicit help from other "Orb" researchers. How can you do this when you have already come to your conclusions?