Foo Fighters of WWII

I have posted a research paper I have been working on over the last couple of years for publishing. As of yet I don't really know if I want to publish this paper. But since there is very little research that has been done in this area I feel compelled to share it with anyone who may have similar intrests.

The foo fighters have received very little attention from UFO researchers, perhaps it's because of the percieved difficulty in locating official records. That was really the easy part of all of this research, the hard part was in locating and interviewing all of these airmen who had seen these things.

In all, this paper represents about 5 years of intense research and approximately 120 interviews from eye-whitnesses and key figures in the fields of folklore, psychology, areospace medicine and Air Force history. I've also interviewed about 25 Canadians who have flown night missions during the war. As a matter of fact, their unit histories have yet to be mined for their foo-like content. So if anyone lives in Ottawa within walking distance of the National Archives of Canada, let me know and I'll tell you where to start digging.

Please remember, my conclusions are, indeed, my own opinion. I am not a UFOologist, thus I don't feel compelled to conform to theories that are either friendly or hostile to the topical existence of aliens. I am simply an ethnographer, rather, I study humans not aliens.

A Historical and Physiological Perspective of the Foo Fighters of World War Two.



[edit on 15-10-2004 by Rotwang]

That was interesting.
I remember reading somewhere , that the boffins of the day speculated if the foo's were caused by bullet damage on the Flying Fortress airframe causing an optical effect. Their line of thinking was due to reports that many of the planes involved had taken fire, and that the Foo's would hold station regardless of the manouvres the pilot would make to shake them off.
Although they admitted this could not explain the reports of the Foo's closing from a distance, and likewise, disappearing off into the distance at great speed.
Have you seen this site?
www.magonia.demon.co.uk...
And no...it's not a site that claims that the Foo's were Nazi technology.

The best information I have on the origin of the name Foo Fighter is from Jo Chamberlin's article and from interviews with 415th NFS members. The term Foo is claimed to have been borrowed by Donald J. Meiers, a Radar Operator of the 415th, from Bill holman's strip Smokey Stover in the Chicago Tribune. Don Meiers was also from Chicago. Check out my Avatar, this is the only known picture of Don, taken in England by a friend of his who served in the 422nd NFS, Robert Tierny.

Ya, I really enjoyed this piece, I was rather impressed with the way Kevin handled my research. There is'nt really that much out there on Foo Fighters, so I keep some of this stuff alive from time to time. Thanks.

Some of that was your research?
Lol.....yeah..there you are in the references
10] Lindell, Jeff A. 'The Foo Fighter Mystery Revised' I.U. Folklore Institute
Fancy that...giving you a link to your own work

Are you familiar with the Kaikoura, New Zealand UFO flap of December 1978?
Similar sort of occurance, balls of light following, almost toying it would seem with a lone Argosy plane on a mail run. Although rather than being apparitions of tired pilots, these things were tracked by ground radar and the planes onboard radar, plus visually confirmed by witnesses on the ground, and most famously of all... caught on film, by a film crew onboard the argosy.
ufocasebook.com...
I would give better links, but oddly for one of the best sightings ever, not alot of information exits on it.
I was a kid at the time but still remember the flap vividly, as reports of strange sightings occured for several weeks.

HASSALL BLOWS THE LID OFF THE 1979 KAIKOURA CASE

UFO author/researcher Peter Hassall convinced the New Zealand Ministry of Defence to lift the Top Secret rating on documents dealing with the 1979 Kaikoura UFO case. NZMoD had originally sealed all of the documents until the year 2004.

The ministry also gave Hassall permission to reprint the original reports in their entirety in his new book, THE NZ FILES.

THE NZ FILES contains a comprehensive review of all the UFO cases in New Zealand dating back to the 1880s. Hassall, who lives in Upper Hutt on North Island about 75 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Wellington, contacted the ministry and asked to review the Kaikoura file. The ministry gave him permission to "reprint it in its entirety in the book."

In late December 1978, air freight pilots reported seeing unusual bright lights hovering over Kaikoura, N.Z. Two weeks later, in January 1979, the mysterious lights returned and were videotaped by Australian and New Zealand TV news agencies.

Following the sightings, the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RZNAF), the police and the Centre Observatory in Wellington cooperated in an investigation, the results of which were stamped Top Secret and lodged in the National Archives in Wellington.

Calling the report "a whitewash," Hassall was quoted by the New Zealand Press as saying, "They discussed how to deal with the problem of (UFO) reports and they all agreed to cooperate and investigate... but not tell the public they were exchanging information. Secretly they were trying to figure it out. No one wanted to deal with the problem of UFO reporting. They didn't know what to do about them, partly through a lack of resources to adequately investigate them."

The NZMoD report concluded that the Kaikoura UFOs were caused by Venus or reflections of light from a squid boat offshore or a train or a passing car.

"Venus had not risen over the horizon when most of the sightings were made," Hassall said "No one knows for sure what the Kaikoura sightings were. It could have been a natural phenomenon. They just made a complete shambles of the whole affair." (Many thanks to Errol Bruce-Knapp for forwarding the original news story.)


[edit on 12-10-2004 by Zero Point]

Somewhere I do believe that I saw an interview with Bill Startup where he discrided this encounter he had with these lights. I was not impressed at all with the video, it was very hoaky. But this still does not detract from the value of Cpt. Startup's narrative. Sure it could have been a Squid boat or Venus rising, but if you were able to interview Cpt. Startup you would find out that neither of these two things can move like the light he saw.

I interviewed a tailgunner from the 505th Bomb Group flying over Tokyo during the war who claimed to have opened fire on the Planet Venus. There are many very humorous tales of this sort in 20th Air Force news letters. But anyway, when I interviewed this tailgunner I asked him why he opened fire on Venus. He believed it to be an aircraft because it was moving and appeared to be threatening the bomber. Later when their crew reported the incident back at Tinian Air Base in a debriefing they were told that it was Venus. The crew was told by a S-2 Intelligence Officer who had never been on a Combat Mission what it was that they were seeing. Then I asked this tailgunner again if he still believed it was Venus, he said he didn't know but he was sure it was an aircraft because it was moving or else he would not have opened fire on it.

This is quintisential information about this sighting and it was never documented. After the big incindiary raids on Tokyo in late May of 1945 this phenomonon drops off to nothing in almost all of the Bomb Group records in 20th Air Force, but many narratives I've collected about these "balls of fire" were sighted after this period. One Intelligence Officer who was assigned to 20th AF Head Quarters told me that it was determined that these guys were shooting at Venus and not to report these things anymore.

One story I collected from a gunner was just after this order to cease fire on Venus had been issued to the Bomb Groups. Their Bomb Group commander had issued an order that if any gunner opened fire on Venus than they would be court-martialed. Well this BG Commander decided to fly a mission and was the Aircraft Commander of this Gunner's aircraft. Several hours into the mission the BG Commander ordered the gunners to open fire on a aircraft that was approaching the bomber. None of the gunners opened fire. The Commander became enraged and ordered them to open fire, again nothing. Finally, one of the gunners broke in on the intercom and told the Commander that that was Venus and that they had orders not to fire.

The situation got so bad in late May that General Curtis LeMay ordered that all of the B-29's be stripped of their guns. This pushed the aircrews to a point of a full blown muntiny. Many crews and even Bomb Group commanders refused to fly missions without armaments. Finally, after LeMay realised that he had a full blown mutinay on his hands, he allowed the crews to reinstall the guns but were only to be allowed 500 rounds of ammo per gun. Man, you should have seen the size of some of those lunch boxes these gunners were taking onboard the aircraft before a mission.

I've collected so much vital information about what was going on during these missions but almost none of it is documented in the official Bomb Group records. LeMay didn't want to deal with these sightings so he decided to punish them by taking away their guns and forcing them to fly missions without them. He stoped the reporting of these incidents, that is all. The Flap did not end in May, only the reports ended.

As a Folklorist I feel that it is indispensible to work directly with the first-hand observer, not one line descriptions of these events written in a record by a pencil pushing S-2 who majored in botany before the war. Several times I would find a one line description of a sighting but would get hours of narratives concerning all of the first-hand accounts. Documented accounts really mean nothing to me, you just have to stick a tape recorder in front of all of the eye-whitness's faces and let them talk. This is the only way you can really find anything out.

A very interesting article.

A Leonard Wirkus of the 416th NFS told me he believed that the foo fighters were Nazi flying saucers. Today, there is a popular movement towards this belief. And yes indeed, I classify this as a technological belief legend. I personally don't give the Nazi's that much credit. Also, the Nazi flying saucer theory has one major flaw, it fails to address the hundreds of sightings made over Japan.

I personally doesn't believe in that either but there are sources, like Rudolf Lusar (Secret German Weapons of World War 2 pg 164-166,1959), that says that the german designed and even made prototypes of "flying saucers". Though other sources says they never left the design stage and as you said, that wouldn't explain the sightings over Japan.

[edit on 13/10/04 by NaturalManiac]

Hi Rotwang
Found a better site on the Kaikoura lights
brumac.8k.com...
Bruce Maccabees detailed analysis of the incident.
The planet Venus, squidboats even mating muttonbirds have been used to ridicule the sightings, but having read Bil Startups book, I feel secure in knowing that in the decades spent in the air, Startup knew what the Planet Venus looked like. In his book (Kaikoura UFOs by Bill Startup) he says how on many occasions whilst flying the route, he would point out Venus as it rose over the horizon.
He got bored and pi$$ed off with people that weren't there and never saw what he and his crew saw, telling him what in fact he saw...he had seen Venus, squidboats, mutton birds before, and knew these weren't the Kaikoura UFOs.
Another interesting book is Quentin Foggarty's Lets hope they're Friendly. Foggarty was the Australian journalist on board the plane that night.
Whilst the event itself was strange, it was almost tame compared to the hysteria of those around him after the event.
I have even seen in recent years, some flippant NZ journalists trying to explain the whole thing away as a hoax.....which would of required the Air Traffic Controllers to be in on it, and the NZ Airforce for that matter.
Bruce Maccabee:
'It has been the intent of this paper to demonstrate that, at least to the present time,
there is no satisfactory explanation based on known phenomena for the lights that Crockett
filmed. (There has also been no satisfactory explanation for what Fogarty described, whether or
not it was what Crockett filmed.) Therefore it appears that the sighting was of something truly
unknown to science, i.e., it remains "unidentified." Furthermore, the verbal descriptions
suggest that this phenomenon was actually an object that was moving or "flying," in which case
it was a true UFO (TRUFO). '


[edit on 13-10-2004 by Zero Point]

I've not really pursued the Nazi Flying saucer thing, but I love that stuff. I can't remember where I read it at but there is a book, I believe, written by a French Folklorist that has all kinds of out-of-this-world occult nazi stuff. Also, the hollow earth theory where after the war, these nazi flying saucers found a hole in one of the polar caps and hid inside the earth. I think it would make a cool movie, somewhere in line with "The Quidemas Experiment."

Also, with Leonard Wirkus, I found this guy and called him to set up a phone interview, then later we were to meet in Nolfolk, Va., for the WWII Night Fighters Convention. But I really wanted to get this Nazi Flying Saucer stuff on tape so I was to call him back in three days and we would record over the phone. Well, I called back only to discover that he had passed away the day before.

So, I really don't know very much about this angle of things, but it is indeed fascinating!

Hey Zero Point,

By the way, are you from NZ? You seem to have alot of intrest down under. Anyway if you are you ought to look up Cpt. Startup and drop him a line. I really have a bad habit of looking up authors of books that deal with aviation in WWII. Many informative things can be learned.

When I was interviewing these WWII vets, man, were they fed up with idots telling them what they had seen. Following a rigid methology in collecting folktales is tough, you have to really try to be as unbiased as possible, especially stuff that deals with the supernatural. People get really upset if you mess with their world view. I also collect folktales which deal with skeptical folk-belief. Ya, it's folklore too.

There are very old traditional tales about the Will-o'-the-wisp which try to debunk the legend. Swamp gas is perhaps the oldest version of this skeptical tale, St. Elmo's fire is another. Even though these tales try to debunk certian beliefs concerning the Will-o'-the-wisp, it in no way exempts them from being collected and cataloged by us Folklorists.

I once really embarrased a Folklore Professor in class one time, we were studying the supernatural realm of the Jinn, arabic fairies. Unlike european cultures many Arabs still believe in the Jinn. Most european cultures shed their beliefs in fairies around the begining of the 20th century. But I insisted that aliens were displacing the fairy realm in most western cultures and that many traditional fairy legends were identical to many alien legends. The professor insisted that people who see aliens were just hallucinating. So I asked him to define hallucination, he said that they were illusions. So I asked him to define illusions and he couldn't.

I honestly believe that skeptical folk-belief is as important to collect as is supernatural folk-belief. The stories I collected concerning sightings of Me 262s and Baka bombs were just as important as the stories concerning foo fighters. If anything the guys who saw foo fighters seemed to be more open minded. The guys who had seen jets at a time when they wern't flying at night seemed to be very hard headed about the reality of these jets.

I'm on my way to check out Bruce's site out....

Later.

Here are a couple of exerps from James O'Keefe's unpublished personal memoirs which he gave me permission to use. The Venus hypothesis was very strong towards the end of the war but this in no way detracts from it's value as an accurate account of current beliefs about this phenomenon. I feel the mechanics here are very important, here he uses one Skeptical belief legend to debunk another. Skeptical folklore rarely attempts to address the compexity of an unusual encounter of this sort, more often it borrows jingoisms and clich�s from the scientific community in an attempt to marginalize the significance of these unusual experiences. Anyway here's O'Keef's tale:

"Strange sightings had been reported to the intelligence officers at the interrogations following the May 23 mission. Discounting over wrought imaginations and the tricks which night shadows play on the vision, there was still evidence that something new and ominous in the way of a night fighter had been present in the skies over Tokyo in the early morning hours. We could account for many of our lost planes for they had been seen going down. But some had disappeared with no trace. Over the target several blinding explosions, many times greater than ordinary flak bursts, had been observed, and we now suspected that the planes unaccounted for had vanished in them. Our intelligence officers sorted through the interrogation reports, details of a crude, small aircraft captured on Okinawa, radio messages broadcast by raving military leaders, and came up with... the baka bomb, a suicide plane which could be launched from the belly of a bomber such as a Betty, a standard Japanese medium bomber.

Aside from the demented pilot, the plane carried a warhead weighing close to a ton, rocket fuel sufficient to keep the plane airborne for half an hour, and a rising sun flag, presumably to be waved exultantly in the last few seconds before the explosion would atomize the baka, its pilot, and its unfortunate target. 'The baka can be aimed and released at you when you're caught in and illuminated by ground searchlights. But before you come in range of those searchlights beware of the motherplane which we think also carries a powerful searchlight capable of picking you up at a distance. And of course if the mother plane is one of the fast Bettys, it can keep up with you, hold you in its light while its baka is released and overtakes you. And...uh... ' The intelligence officer's voice trailed away, 'You're welcome to look at these diagrams and pictures of this...uh...new weapon.' He knew what we wanted from him--a means of dealing with a suicide attack. We knew about our appalling losses suffered by our navy off Okinawa and that the losses were due primarily to the kamikaze attacks."

The article continues and the aircraft is now overTokyo on the May 25th mission. Just after bomb release the crew sights a light in the air after they had just shaken a ground searchlight.

"We caught our collective breaths only to grasp insudden shock and alarm at the bright light which appeared above and in front of us. A mother plane's searchlight probing for us? And then below us a stream of tracers shot into the darkness, a B-29 gunner firing at what unknown menace? I swung my gunsight to cover the light and brought four caliber-50 machine guns to bear on it. We staggered on, the light neither gaining on us nor fading away. We banked again, and this brought us onto a south heading toward Tinian. The great bright light was now to the east of us, and it stayed there and was visible until the sun came up. It had been out there in space a few million years, sometimes appearing in the evening sky, sometimes in the morning sky. To us earthlings, studying the skies, Venus is far and away the brightest and most brilliant of our neighbor planets."

References:

O'Keefe, James. 1986. "The Great Searchlight." Memories: 40th Bomb Group Association: March, #8, p.6-8.
O'Keefe, James. Personal Memoirs. "The Great Searchlight." p.189-95. (Unpublished.)

Yeah Rotwang, I'm from NZ...not far from the Kaikoura sightings either, although at the time I lived in Wellington.
I'm not sure if Bill Startup is still alive, I have the feeling that I saw something to do with his passing in the paper a while back...tho I can't be 100% sure about that. Although I do know that he got fed up with telling the story over and over again, and that he had told all he could about it and that there was nothing more to add after the fact.
I'm not sure if it would come under the heading of folklore but in the early 90's there was another strange yet not so well known sighting along the Kaikoura Coast. A guy and his mother were walking home from the fish n chip store with dinner, when a Cesna aircraft flew over, following the coastline. They noticed that a few meters below the plane was a black object. They watched as it flew over, then the black object dropped out of formation from the plane and banked, revealing itself to be a black equilateral triangle. It swooped down and disappeared behind some trees into a marshland area. By the time they got to where it seemed to have landed, there was nothing...no marks on the ground or anything. The fella researched everything he could find about the area and found out that the original name given to that portion of the coast, hundreds of years ago by the local Maori (the indigenous culture of New Zealand) when translated into English, is something along the lines of 'The place of the Black Dart'. The Maori tended to name their landmarks after events, or physical characteristics more often than not, rather than after people as the European tended to do.
Even off the coast from where I live from time to time strange lights are observed. Although the area is very geologically active with more fault lines than I'd really care to think about, with Earthquakes on a regular basis...which leads me to wonder if at least some of these anomalies might have a natural if somewhat exotic origin. Although it has to be said that nothing like the Kaikoura UFO's of 1978 has ever happened again.

Zero Point,

I thought you might be from down under, I live on the far eastern tip of the upper peninsula of Michigan right on lake Huron, 500 meters from Canada. It's starting to get cold up here. There is a ton of UFO activity around in the county where I live. There is even a guy who has built a full scale replica of a Flying Saucer, he has it out in his pole barn.

Anyway, last summer my two brothers and I went out to this small island in Huron and pitched a bond fire. God, it was a clear, dark, beautiful night. The stars seemed so close you could almost reach out and touch them. There was no moon, just dark. We counted about 25 satelites pass overhead in one hour.

About 10:30 pm I was looking directly overhead and was looking at these three bright stars in a equilateral triangle and bacame dizzy and almost fell over. I straitened myself and looked back up and these three stars were moving slowly in an easterly direction at identical velocity and heading. Ofcourse I pointed it out to my brothers and none of us could believe that we were seeing this, we watched it until it disapeared over the horizion. They went from our zenith, directly above us to the horizon in about four minutes, about a full 80 degrees of movement and it maintained it's triangular shape the entire time. That was astonishing! It may have been three satelites in identical orbits, but I really don't know that much about satelites. You could see stars through the triangle as it moved so I don't think that it was solid. I really couldn't believe I was seeing it when it happened. That is the strangest thing I've ever seen in the night skys, and I do alot of stargazing.

Well, have you ever heard of earthquake lights. It seems that you were alluding to it as a probable cause for the appearences of strange lights in your area. I'm not so sure I buy into this scientific interpretation of UFOs. I studied electromagnetic wave propogation theory in the Air Force and in the University. I believe that it is supposed to work something like the piezoelectric effect. Up here in Michigan there is a lot of sightings going on all the time and there are no fault lines that run close to this region. The seismic activity is marginal, that is, unless my ex-mother-in-law is not doing jumping jacks.

I do believe that the objects that people are seeing are real, I just feel that unfortunately people tend to discount other peoples experiences as disingenuous, and their own experiences as genuine. I have seen what is known as a Jack- o'- lantern light, this is one of the most unusual experiences I have ever had in my life. People who have never seen a Jack- o'- lantern light have no idea of what I am talking about because they have never experienced it. So naturally, people rummage through their suitcase of experiences and try match this up with something that they have experienced and if they can't, they will try to compare it to an experience that they know a trusted friend or relative has had. This is how we make sense of the world. A true skeptic would tell me I saw swamp gas and turn me off. The fact that where I saw this Jack-o'-lantern was almost 100 miles from the nearest swamp dosn't enter into this skeptic's head. Our scientific culture really can only offer us fancy gadgets, medicines that turn out toe nails whiter and cheese curls, that's all. The aim of science in today's world is in the preservation the status quo. I wouldn't look to the scientific community for answers, that is, unless you have your checkbook handy.

If you enjoy reading you should try finding a book called "Against Method." It was written by an eminent Professor in the History and Philosophy of Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, Paul Feyerabend. He really unveils the scientific community's onerous intents on stagnating progress.

Today is Black Thursday, 61 years ago the US 8th Air Force had it's worst losses during the war on the bombing mission to Schweinfurt Germany. 65 bombers and 650 men lost in one day, this may be the worst day in USAF history. I salute all of the Men who flew on this mission, and venerate those who gave their lives to help defeat fascism.

God Bless them All!

[edit on 14-10-2004 by Rotwang]

Well, have you ever heard of earthquake lights. It seems that you were alluding to it as a probable cause for the appearences of strange lights in your area.

Yes I've heard of the theory of Earthquake lights, but I didn't intend to hold them up as the cause of the strange lights in the area, or anywhere else for that matter. To be quite honest, I haven't settled on any one particular theory for UFO's, including the ETH. I have the sneaking suspicion that not all the UFO's or strange lights have the same origin, yet all get lumped together in the same basket.
While it may turn out that some of the sightings are ET related, but I'm yet to be convinced, and feel there are many obvious loopholes in the hypothesis.
It also strikes me that alot of people have already decided for themselves what the truth is, and become inflexible if other theories don't fit their own model....but I guess thats just Human Nature...I sure have been guilty of the same thing myself at times. The truth is I don't know what they are.
The fun I get from the subject is thinking of other alternatives (without claiming them to be the truth) rather than becoming indoctrinated in the mythos of any particular explanation. I wonder if part of the phenomena mighthave a natural origin, and will seem as obvious to the people of the future as thunder and lightning is to us in the present. With the Kaikoura UFO's, alot of people (kiwis) claim them to be flying machines from here there or wherever, yet that perplexes me as all they can say for sure is that they saw very bright lights...saying they were nuts and bolts machines seems to be where the imagination cuts in and fills in the blanks with what they themselves would prefer the blanks to be. The people that saw them described what they saw but admit that they don't know what they were. And I'd have to agree with them. I'm just glad that mystery still exists, it would be a boring straight road without twisties. Plus history has a habit of throwing in serendipitous discoveries while looking for something else.
BTW, back to your subject, the Foo fighters....during your own research have you found any photographs of FOOs that you consider to be genuine photos? I've read somewhere before that whilst numerous photos exist, alot of them have turned out to have dubious cedibility.

One thing about the UFO spotted in Kaikoura.... the mail aircraft was orginally asked by Wellington Airport Radar if it could go and have a look at this object that had shown up on their screens, the same thing was scene on Christchurch Airport Radar, that blows Squid boats Venus and most other theories right out of the water.

One thing about the UFO spotted in Kaikoura.... the mail aircraft was orginally asked by Wellington Airport Radar if it could go and have a look at this object that had shown up on their screens, the same thing was scene on Christchurch Airport Radar, that blows Squid boats Venus and most other theories right out of the water.

Not only that, but some of the radar returns were estimated to be moving at 10,000 kph....thats fairly quick for a squid boat eh. Also at least one of the lights followed the plane until touchdown at Christchurch Airport.
One thing that I find strange was that not one jet fighter was scrambled to intercept the targets. Maybe they were not on such a quick to react alert status.

Hey Zero Point,

I have the sneaking suspicion that not all the UFO's or strange lights have the same origin, yet all get lumped together in the same basket.

Yes sir, indeed! Bingo, ureka and amen brother! In the study of folk-religion this process is known as syncretism. When I was studying as an undergraduate at Indiana University I became very good friends with the UFO Folklorist Dr. Thomas Bullard. Perhapes you have seen him on the Discovery Channel, he's been in several UFO documentaries, but anyways, he calls this the "Imperialistic aspect of the UFO phenomenon." It's like a giant vaccume sucking up legends and belief-traditions from wherever it is convenient. However, this is very typical during the maturing phases of all religious belief systems. It is very similar to the Catholic notion of the Axis Mundi, which is the belief that the Catholic Church in Rome is the central pivot of the earth and the entire cosmos. In the 17th Century all beliefs and traditions fell subject to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, nothing was allowed to compete against Rome's monopoly of theocratic power. You should read the sentencing of Galileo, Papal Condemnation (Sentence) of Galileo.

Today, I liken the power of the Media to that of Rome, if the ETH makes money, than this is the theory they are going to market. Any competitor to this theory will be crushed, just as mercilessly as was Galileo. The skepticism that is generally offered up is of an equally hoaky value like Dr. Michael Persinger's research on earthquake lights. His research is almost silly. Yet he has learned well on how to emulate the traditions of authenticating "scientific knowledge." He very much reminds me of Franz Anton Mesmer whom I would lable as the Father of psudo-science. As you may be familiar with Persinger's research, he has advanced the theory that electro-magnetic waves produced from techtonic activity somehow triggers the brain to hallucinate. This is not very far off base from Mesmer's theory of "Animal Gravity" or "Animal Magnetism."

These beliefs in magnatism have very old roots within the American Spiritualist movement. Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of the American Spiritualistic movement in the 1880's and established the Church of Christ, Scientist, begining the modern Christian Science movement. She too propogated this belief in "animal magnetism."

Persinger is also believed to have been involved in Project "Sleeping Beauty," a secret attempt by the US gov't to develop weaopns for magnetic mind control. Sheeew! This all reeks of Mesmer. It's kind of funny, but Mesmer was also the father of Hypnotism, formally somnambulism or simply, Mesmerism, which is currently a traditional practice within the UFO Abdution community. Mary Baker Eddy used to also perform simular somnambulistic trances in gatherings at her home. I have also had the honor of interviewing two such Abductee Somnambulists while I was researching traditions of supernatural belief. Great stuff!

Well, back to the foo fighters, yes I have one picture of what is claimed to be one of these "balls of light" that followed a B-29 from the 505th Bomb Group on a combat mission. There is also a picture of one of these "balls of fire" in, I believe, the 499th Bomb Groups records housed at the National Archives. I photocopied the thing but the quality was almost useless. But it is there, I've seen it and it looks just like a ball of light. I don't really believe that either photo would be of any great value in solving this mystery. In fact, the one I have I believe is just a snapshot of one of the gunners firing his .50 cals at the moon. It's not a very convincing photograph, but the crewmembers of the B-29 that gave it to me claim that is a picture of one of those "Balls of light." Were they pulling my leg? I don't know.

I do find the lack of research and explaination of the legendary Foo Fighters kinda disturbing.

My thoughts: allied pilots were seeing these things quite often in the skies, enough that they thought they could be some new Nazi weapon. After the war ends, we search records of the Japanese and germans, and find that both sides were reporting these things often. They thought the Foo Fighters were Allied weapons.

So, what we have, is a mysterious phenomina or agency, belonging to neither side of the war, yet observed by both, and to this day, no one has tried to dig deep and find out why?

Maybe there is alot more documentation, but its buried in super classified files somehwere in the Pentagon.

About the only thing of any documentation I can find on the Foo-Fighters phenomina was the great "Air Raid" of Los Angelas in 1942. other than that......

Keep looking for the truth. I hope you stumble across something really good!

Hey did you get to read any of my research paper on the foo fighters? Actually the files were at the National archives, Boling AFB reseach library and at the Maxwell AFB USAF archives and I didn't need any kind of clearence to access and copy all of these records. I have three good sized boxes filled with records. I was able to find a lot of the stuff that others in the UFO community told me I wouldn't find or that it didn't exist. I guess obstinance has it's place in folkloric research.