The term ‘Foo Fighter’ first emerged throughout the 1930s, initially being coined by cartoonist Bill Holman, who included the term ‘Foo’ in his fireman Smokey Stover comic strip. 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 incorporated into military service culture during World War II and is believed to have led to the term “foo fighter” being used by radar operators to define a false or suspicious track on their radar systems.
Originally, the first documented sightings took place in November 1944, when aviators operating over Germany during the hours of darkness recounted finding glowing white objects traveling at immense speeds in pursuit of their aircraft. The entities were described by various witnesses as a fervent, pulsating ball of red, white, or orange light and were depicted as Christmas tree lights by some airmen. They also said that they appeared to taunt the aircraft, performing extreme maneuvers before disappearing completely.
Aviators and navigators stated that the objects operated in formation flight patterns with their aircraft and acted as if under intelligent control, but at no time did they exhibit antagonistic behavior. However, they could not be outmaneuvered or intercepted. The occurrences were so frequent that the balls of light were attributed to a name within European Ops and were often referred to by the most recognizable reference, “foo-fighters”.
The military treated the encounters with importance given their initial thoughts on secret German weapons systems; however, following similar reports from 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 documenting an article titled ‘Foo-Fighter’. The article reported that the ‘fireballs’ had been chasing US Air Force night fighters for about a month, and that the UFO had been dubbed the ‘foo-fighter’ by airmen.
It is interesting to note at this point that the reported ‘fireballs’ phenomenon within the Pacific Ocean Operations deviated somewhat from the foo fighters reported from Europe. In these documented events, pilots experienced the same “fireball” phenomenon, but in the Pacific these lights simply “hung in the sky”, although they were reported to occasionally chase aircraft. Another account in which a B-29 bomber managed to hit a UFO with gunfire leading to the object’s destruction was sliced into several large pieces and seen to fall to the ground setting buildings and the surrounding area on fire. Despite our obvious aggression against these objects, similar to the European arena, no pilot reported his aircraft being attacked.
In the UK, various Ministry of Defense documents published in 1990 and later recount sightings of strange UFOs by Royal Air Force sorties during 1942. The legend of the ‘Foo Fighters’ lives on to this day, having reached its maximum state 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 known as UFOs during peacetime operations.
