The term ‘Foo Fighter’ first emerged throughout the 1930s, and was initially coined by cartoonist Bill Holman, who included the term ‘Foo’ in his firefighter comic strip Smokey Stover. Bill Holman claimed that he discovered the word at the base of a Chinese statuette. After its widespread use in these popular cartoons that were well read by service personnel, it was subsequently embedded in the culture of military service by World War II and is believed to have led to the term “foo fighter”, which was used by the Radar operatives to define a false or suspicious runway on your radar systems.
Originally, the first documented sightings took place in November 1944, when aviators operating over Germany during the hours of darkness recounted how they encountered bright white objects traveling at immense speeds in pursuit of their planes. The entities were described by various witnesses as a fervent, pulsating ball of red, white or orange light, and some airmen described them as Christmas tree lights. Furthermore, they said they appeared to taunt the aircraft, performing extreme maneuvers before disappearing completely.
Airmen and navigators stated that the objects operated formation flight patterns with their aircraft and acted as if they were under intelligent control, but at no time did they exhibit antagonistic behavior. However, they could not be overtaken or intercepted. The events were so frequent that the balls of light were attributed to a name within European operations and were often referred to as the most recognizable reference, “foo-fighters”.
The armed forces treated the encounters with meaning given their initial thoughts on secret German weapons systems, however, following similar reports from both German and Japanese aircrews, it quickly became clear that these mysterious objects were not the work of advanced German technology.
The term ‘Foo Fighters’ gained notoriety after the publication of TIME magazine in 1945 which documented an article titled ‘Foo-Fighter’. The article reported that the ‘fireballs’ had been chasing the United States Air Force night fighters for about a month, and that the airmen had dubbed the UFO the “foo fighter.”
It is interesting to note at this point that the ‘fireballs’ phenomenon reported from within Pacific Ocean Operations deviated somewhat from the foo fighters reported from Europe. In these documented events, the pilots experienced the same “fireball” phenomenon, but within the Pacific these lights simply “hung in the sky”, although they were reported to occasionally chase aircraft. An additional account in which a B-29 bomber managed to hit a UFO with shots that led to the destruction of the object was cut into several large pieces and was seen falling to the ground igniting buildings and surrounding areas with fire. Despite our obvious aggression against these objects, similar to the European arena, no pilot reported that their plane was attacked.
In the United Kingdom, several articles of the Ministry of Defense published in 1990 and following years, relate sightings of strange UFOs on the part of the incursions of the Royal Air Force during 1942. The legend of the ‘Foo Fighters’ lives on today. and it has reached its peak during World War II. Sightings of ‘balls of light’ in the sky continue to be reported by commercial and military pilots to this day, although today they are referred to as UFOs during peacetime operations.
