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Rhine valley, France or Germany, late in October 1944:

Case number:

ACUFO-1944-10-00-RHINEVALLEY-1

Summary:

“Citizens Against UFO Secrecy” (CAUS) was a lobby who tried to obtain declassified documents of the US Government about UFOs. They published news of their action in their bulletin Just Cause, with Lawrence Fawcett, publisher, and Barry Greenwood, editor. In their issue No 32 of June 1992, they published that they managed to get the first Foo Fighters official reports in the War diaries of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron of the US Army Air Force and its summary, both classified “Secret” at the time. Among the cited extracts, they indicated that on Frame 1515 of the microfilm roll of the summary, we read:

“Another outstanding feature occurred late in October [1944]. While flying an intruder mission in the Rhine Valley, Capt. Edward Schlueter and Lt. Don Myers experienced contact with the first Foo Fighters, referred to as such by Lt. Myers for the lack of a better name and because of the eerie feeling it gave the crew. At first these two officers were taunted by their buddies and began to wonder if they had developed combat fatigue. However other crews began to report seeing Foo Fighters in the Rhine Valley at night, thus the Foo Fighters were definitely established as an existing phenomena.”

CAUS noted that this summary makes reference to Captain Schlueter and Lieutenant Meiers encountering a Foo Fighter in late October, but in the War Diary, the first report was in late November 1944 and no incident is listed for October.

Possibly, an article in Newsweek Magazine, USA for January 13, 1945, could relate to this first sighting by this same crew:

“Lt. Donald Meiers of Chicago was piloting a Beaufighter on an intruder mission over Germany. He was braced to meet Nazi planes or anti-aircraft. Suddenly an eerie light split the darkness around his plane. Looking up from his instrument panel the horrified lieutenant saw two red balls of light cruising alongside his wing tops. Thinking he had run into a secret antiaircraft weapon, Meiers tensed and waited for a German on the ground to push a button and blow him up, but the balls merely kept pace with him for a while and then disappeared.”

This report was about two lights; in their next Foo-Fighter sighting, this crew reported “eight to ten lights”, and in their third report, only one light was seen; this tends to indicate that there were indeed three separate sightings by this crew, the first being this one, in late October 1944.

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Sources:

[Ref. aaf1:] BARRY GREENWOOD - U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES - 4415TH NFS HISTORY:

Barry Greenwood found in the Summary of the Unit History of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron of the U.S. Air Forces:

[Ref. nwk1:] "NEWSWEEK" MAGAZINE:

[Ref. jce1:] UFOLOGY BULLETIN "JUST CAUSE":

The bulletin of “Citizens Against UFO Secrecy” (CAUS) published that they managed to get the first Foo Fighters official reports in the War diaries of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron and its summary. Extracts were cited, such as:

Aircraft information:

At the time of this reported sighting, the 415th NFS flew British-built Bristol Beaufighters Mk VIF. They were fitted with a Mark VIII radar onboard set. Maximum speed was 512 km/h.

Armament was 4 20 mm cannons in the front, 6 7.62 mm machine guns in the wings and 1 7.62 mm manual machine gun in the dorsal hatch.

Above: A 415th NFS Bristol Beaufighter.

Discussion:

Above: Jacket badge of the US 415th Night Fighters Squadron, showing the British Bristol Beaufighter plane they used at that time.

Crews of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Force reported their nocturnal observations of what they called “Foo Fighters” above the Rhine valley then occupied by the Germans, between November 1944 and April 1945, as their base was in Dijon and Ochey in France.

Their reports apparently ceased when the Germans lost Alsace.

At the time of this report, the 415th NFS operated their incursions on the Rhine Valley, over France and Germany, generally in the red ellipse on the map below:

This report is about two lights seen in late October 1944; in their next sighting of Foo-Fighters, on November 23, 1944, this crew had reported “eight to ten lights”, and in their third report, on November 26, 1944, only one light was reported.

This tends to indicate in my opinion that there were indeed three separate sightings by this crew, the first being this one, at the end of October 1944.

It should be noted that after speaking about this observation at the end of October 1944, we are told, they were mocked by their colleagues. This would in my opinion explain why their report does not appear in the daily operations log. It appeared in a later summary focusing explicitly on Foo-Fighters observations. This also makes sense. We are told that it was only when other crews reported similar phenomena that it was considered that there was “something” real; therefore, this first report could be taken into account following a probable new interview with the crews of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron on their observations.

This would also explain why, of the three sightings, only this one does not have an exact date: interviewed later, the crew may not have remembered exactly when it occurred, hence the date “late October”, 1944.

Of course, this is not “bulletproof”. The Newsweek article, in which the information that the sighting was about “two lights” and makes it different from the next two reports by the crew, may have been in error.

The sighting itself is not very detailed. However, I see no obvious prosaic explanation. No flare, enemy plane would result in “two red balls of light cruising alongside his wingtops”. St-Elmo fire could not be red. V-2 rockets launched from Holland were never launched in pairs. Enemy jet plane exhausts would only be visible if the enemy jet plane was in front of the witnesses plane. Enemy planes or weapons of any kind is also a weak explanation as no damage was caused, no action that would result in damage was reported.

Below: the Smokey Stover comic strip; from which Lieutenant Donald Meiers took the expression «Foo-Fighters».

Evaluation:

Possible extraterrestrial craft.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

• [aaf1] * 415th Night Fighter Squadron, U.S. Army Air Forces, Unit History Summary, page 1515, 1945, rectrieved by ufologist Barry Greenwood, 1992.
• [nwk1] * "Foo-Fighters", article in Newsweek magazine, USA, January 13, 1945.
• [jce1] * "First official Foo-Fighters records discovered", article in the ufology bulletin Just Cause, of the Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), Lawrence Fawcett, publisher; Barry Greenwood, editor, USA, No 32, page 4, June 1992.
• [aub1] * "First official Foo-Fighters records discovered", article by the CAUS reprinted in the Australian UFO Bulletin, Australia, page 2, December 1992.

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