Three “Foo Fighters” hover above war planes, circa 1940’s
While the Allies encountered Foo-Fighters in Europe, the Pacific, and Japan, the German Luftwaffe pilots also saw unidentified fireballs, which they called “Kraut-bolids” or “Kugelblitz.”
Their behavior, their ability to maneuver, their momentary disappearances and subsequent re-emergence in a different place… Foo-Fighters seemed under control … but who?
November 1942: a squadron is flying anti-submarine patrol in the Bay of Biscay. Suddenly, the rifleman marks a “solid object” without wings appearing at the rear of the plane. At the turret, the unknown machine remains visible for 15 minutes, then rises in altitude and rotates 180 degrees before melting into the sky.
A month later, a pilot of the British Royal Air Force, BC Lumsden, is flying over the coast of France in his Hurricane. At 200 meters above the Bay of Somme, there are 2 lights that rise from the ground to meet him. Is it the DCA? No, the shots are too slow. He began a tight turn and, to his amazement, the cornering lights positioned behind him should stall. He descends to 1000 meters with the lights glued to his wake.
The operations of the Allied landings in Normandy in the summer of 1944 also seem to attract these balls of light like fireflies around a fire. During the Battle of France, August 1944, unidentified flying balls are seen and the US and her allies are afraid that the Germans have launched a major attack.
In September, it was the turn of Canadian Corporal Carson Yorke, in the suburbs of Antwerp, Belgium, to see a “glowing globe” on the horizon.
December 22, 1944, Lt. David McFalls, the Giblin pilot and radar operator, flying at 3000 meters above Haguenau, 35 kilometers north of Strasbourg. “Two very bright lights rise from the ground just in front of us,” they declared. “They stabilized in elevation and are placed near the tail of our plane where they remain two minutes. We believe they are under perfect control.”[ref]French translation of Foo Fighter article at Le monde de l’inconnu[/ref]