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UFOs and the Media
TIME Magazine
Jan. 15, 1945
Foo-Fighter
If it was not a hoax or an optical illusion, it was
certainly the most puzzling secret weapon that Allied
fighters have yet encountered. Last week U.S. night fighter
pilots based in France told a strange story of balls of fire
which for more than a month have been following their planes
at night over Germany.[*] No one seemed to know what, if
anything, the fireballs were supposed to accomplish. Pilots,
guessing it was a new psychological weapon, named it the "foo-fighter."
Their descriptions of the apparition varied, but they agree
that the mysterious flares stuck close to their planes and
appeared to follow them at high speed for miles. One pilot
said that a foo-fighter, appearing as red balls off his wing
tips, stuck with him until he dove at 360 miles an hour;
then the balls zoomed up into the sky.
Skeptical scientists, baffled by the whole affair, were
inclined to dismiss the fireballs as an illusion, perhaps an
afterimage of light which remained in the pilots's eyes
after they had been dazzled by flak bursts. But front-line
correspondents and armchair experts had a Buck Rogers field
day. They solemnly guessed: 1) that the balls of fire were
radio-controlled (an obvious absurdity, since they could not
be synchronized with a plane's movements by remote control);
2) that they were created by "electrical induction of some
sort"; 3) that they were attracted to a plane by magnetism.
The correspondents further guessed that foo-fighters were
intended: 1) to dazzle pilots; 2) to serve as aiming points
for antiaircraft gunners; 3) to interfere with a plane's
radar; 4) to cut a plane's ignition, thus stop its engine in
midair.
Some scientists suggested another possibility: that the
fireballs were nothing more than St. Elmo's Fire, a reddish
brush-like discharge of atmospheric electricity which has
often been seen near the tips of church steeples, ships'
masts and yardarms. It often appears at a plane's wing tips.
[*] Last month pilots reported that they had seen mysterious
floating silvery balls, apparently another "secret weapon"
in daylight flight over Germany.
 
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