Cette page en français
The article below was published in Newsweek magazine, on December 25, 1944.
More information about the Foo-Fighters here.
A massive assault by the United States Army Air Force based in Britain and Italy last week brought the air war in Europe to a new peak of [illegible word] and technique. At a season when bad weather ordinarily reduces air activity, the Eighth, and Fifteenth Air Forces surpassed all previous records and in a single day sent 2,100 heavy bombers and 1,150 fighters against the Reich.
From Britain, 1,600 heavies, escorted by 800 fighters flew in five waves stretching over 300 miles. They were manned by 16,800 airmen: they carried 4,000 tons of explosives and incendiaries. Once over Germany, in cloudy weather that grounded the Luftwaffe and required Americans to use electronic bombing devices, the Fortresses attacked rail yards at Frankfurt and Giessen; the Liberators bombed rail yards at Hanau. From the south the Fifteenth's heavy bombers hit Moosbierbaum oil refinery near Vienna.
But though German defense was limited to anti-aircraft fire, the German was still ready for battle, still ingenious in defense. Dispatches heavily censored by Supreme Headquarters revealed that American pilots have recently encountered a new phenomenon over Germany: glittering Christmas tree ornaments. Sometimes translucent, floating single or in clusters, the balls are presumably a new form of aerial interference. Recalling the Americans and Germans use of tinfoil strips dropped by attacking planes to confuse Radar instruments on the ground, Hanson Baldwin, military analyst of the New York Times, made this educated guess on the new German weapon.
"The new 'silver spheres' might represent... the reverse of this idea. Such spheres drifting about in the sky, might interfere with and confuse the radar in attacking planes, thus making 'blind' bombing impossible, or far more inaccurate than it normally is."
