Foo Fighters was the name used for numerous unexplained phenomena in WW II, as well as being used in a derogatory sense. Some pilots over Europe called them "Kraut balls". In the Pacific Theater, it was how some pilots referred to the Japanese fliers who were infamous for their erratic flying. Foo fighters is the name given by the scientists and historians to the general body of spherical, circular, disc-like, or wedged shaped "bogies", sometimes seeming to glow, shine, or reflect a high degree of illumination seen mostly by World War II pilots or flight crews. They usually paralleled or followed aircraft and were seen by aviators on all sides of the action, being reported by American, British, German and Japanese crews. No Foo Fighter was known or reported to have made or attempted any sort of contact, interaction or attack. They were known, however, for their high rate of speed and agility, being much faster than any known aircraft at the time as well as being extremely maneuverable, often exhibiting highly unconventional abilities such as instantaneous acceleration and deceleration, rapid climbing and descent and hovering in place.

In today's world a Foo Fighter would be called a UFO, an Unidentified Flying Object, of which, by all accounts, Foo Fighters were. Some descriptions such as "glowing balls of light" or "spherical fire" do not fit the conventional image of UFOs, but the disc and wedge shaped objects do --- as does the unconventional maneuverability. Both those aspects, disc or wedge shape and unconventional maneuverability, have been attributed to many UFO or Flying Saucer accounts, but most especially so to one of the most high profile ones, the so-called Roswell UFO. Here an object of unknown nature broke up over the barren ranchland near Roswell, New Mexico, late one night in July 1947. Although the Roswell Incident was originally reported in the local paper within a few days of the crash by the local paper as being a flying saucer or a flying disc, the main body of the object was reported by some eyewitnesses as being wedge or delta shaped. W.C. Holden, an archaeologist, reportedly stumbled across the downed craft early in the morning following the crash. He was one of the first to see it and described it as "as looking like a crashed airplane without wings with a flat fuselage" with some reports implying the fuselage had a definite delta or wedge shape to it. It must be stated in contrast, however, that another archaeologist, known as Cactus Jack Campbell, while he did not have the reputation of Holden--- but who had nevertheless seen the aerial apparitions called Foo Fighters during World War II first hand himself --- reported being "out there when the spaceship came down" and seeing a "round object but not real big". What became known as Foo Fighters were reported by the British as early as September 1941, with regular sightings by all sides continuing, except for a several month lull in 1943, throughout the war. On the U.S. side, although sightings occurred periodically before the deployment of P-61 Black Widows in Europe, it was the P-61 nightfighter pilots that were among the first American military men to regularly report seeing Foo Fighters, saying "unknown objects" followed or paralleled their planes and glowed in the dark. It is said the night fighters shot at them a few times, but the fire was never returned. It is also thought it was the pilots of the Black Widows that finally gave the UFOs the nickname that stuck: "Foo-Fighters", a term picked up from the then popular Smokey Stover comic strip. Interestingly enough, with all the sightings and reports and all the gun cameras and high altitude photographs, no truly good pictures of Foo Fighters from the period have surfaced. A widely circulated photo showing what is alleged to be both a wedge-shaped and spherical-shaped Foo Fighter together with two Japanese planes is perhaps the most often depicted when citing Foo Fighters. The photo, from the 1975 photo-history by the Italians, G. De Turris & S. Fusco, "Obiettivo sugli UFO", has both its supporters and detractors. If the picture was taken by Japanese photographers, which it surely must have been, it would seem, except for a quest for truth, they would have no vested interest in continuing or falsely perpetrating a myth. Not all aerial objects otherwise left unidentified in World War II were Foo Fighters or unexplained phenomenons such as Green Fireballs. Nor were they necessarily small in size either. Some were downright gigantic. The most infamous was an object seen by literally thousands of people along the coast of California barely three months into the war. The UFO over Los Angeles is mostly forgotten now, but during the early morning hours of February 25, 1942 the whole city and surrounding communities were in an uproar as thousands of rounds of anti aircraft shells were expended to pull down whatever it was out of the sky that night. The slow moving object, said to be as big or bigger than a Zeppelin, was caught in the glare of the searchlights from Santa Monica to Long Beach and seemed impervious to the constant barrage of shells. It eventually disappeared out over the Pacific after cruising along the coast and cutting inland for a while. The huge object was never clearly explained and was basically hushed up without response from the authorities.

During World War I, on the night of January 19, 1915 two German navy Zeppelins carried out the first successful bombing run against British soil. One year later, although not exactly a Foo Fighter in the World War II classical sense, the first sighting of a UFO from a powered aircraft ever as well as the first firing on a UFO from the air occurred over England.

David Clarke and Andy Roberts write in their book "OUT OF THE SHADOWS: UFOs, the Establishment and the Official Cover-up" (London: Piatkus, 2002), that early in January 1916 at the fighter aerodrome at Rochford in Essex outside London, around 8:45 PM, Flight Sub-Lieutenant J.E. Morgan arose for an anti-Zeppelin patrol in his BE2c fighter. When Morgan reached 5,000 feet he saw a little above and slightly ahead to the right about 100 feet away what he described as "a row of what appeared to be lighted windows which looked something like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn".

Believing that he had flown directly into the path of an oncoming Zeppelin in the act of preparing to attack London, Morgan drew his service pistol and fired several times in the direction of the "railway carriage". Immediately, "the lights alongside rose rapidly" and disappeared into the night sky, so rapidly in fact that Morgan believed his own aircraft had gone into a dive. Overcorrecting his actually not out of control aircraft he crashed into Thameshaven Marshes.

There were also foo fighter reports in the Pacific Theater of war. A nighttime sighting from September, 1941 in the Indian Ocean was similar to some later Foo Fighter reports. From the deck of the S.S. Pulaski, (a Polish merchant vessel transporting British troops), two sailors reported a "strange globe glowing with greenish light, about half the size of the full moon as it appears to us". They alerted a British officer, who watched the object's movements with them for over an hour.

On February 28, 1942, just prior to its participation in the Battle of the Java Sea the USS Houston reportedly saw a large number of strange, unexplained yellow flares and lights which illuminated the sea for miles around.

A report was made from the Solomon Islands in 1942 by a US Marine, Corp. S.J. Brickner. Following an air raid alarm, Brickner and others witnessed about 150 objects grouped in lines of 10 or 12 objects each. Seeming to "wobble" as they moved, Brickner reported that the objects resembled polished silver and seemed to move a little faster than common Japanese aircraft. He described the sighting, saying "All in all, it was the most awe-inspiring and yet frightening spectacle I have seen in my life".

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Aviation Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Russell