ACUFO-1945-03-00-TRIESTE-1
In a 1997 article about the "Foo-Fighters" of WWII, Italian ufologist Giuseppe Stilo indicated that the following “Foo-Fighter” type observation on Italy is presented for the first time by the CISU (Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici).
The role of ufologist Andy Roberts is explained: this British specialist in the “Foo-Fighters” phenomenon, director of the British UFO Research Association, following the publication of his article on this type of case in the English aeronautical magazine Air Mail of August 1987, asking witnesses to come forward, received the following testimony [here translated from Italian - P. Gross], among others. It came from a former aviator living in London, Eric Anderson, who flew a “Boston” of the 55th Fighter-Bomber Squadron of the RAF. Stilo explained that it is particularly significant “because it involves a real skirmish between the plane and the unidentified phenomenon: almost an extension of the many cases of the kind that contemporary UFO-aircraft case studies will subsequently present.”
Anderson wrote to Roberts:
“At the time of the events I was in the South African Air Force and detached to the RAF on flying duties. We had been enlisted as a crew in Egypt and the incident occurred on the occasion of our eighty-third or eighty-fourth raid: I have to recover all the details from memory, because I did not keep my log book after the war, when I returned to live in South Africa. The crew included pilot and flight officer Dave Urry, myself in the role of navigator and bombardier, Dennis Evers as gunner and radio operator and turret gunners Urry and Evers, who are still alive. From our base in Forli the following route is marked with a red pencil on the map I attach. The briefing took place at the base by our Wing Commander, Lionel Leon, from the RAF. We had been in the air for about two and a half hours and were returning to base around two in the morning. The entire crew had carried out, with the ground staff, a careful inspection of the lower part of the plane since we had hit the water by the tail and hit the sea only 4 or 5 minutes from the coast, where we were forced to take evasive action until we lost sight of the six balls of fire! The pilot was warned by the radio operator and I asked him to climb to 10,000 feet immediately, in case we were damaged and had to bail out over the Adriatic. Fortunately, this did not happen, but we asked the radar station commander for a route that would take us straight back to base... the reason they considered it essential to stay at 10,000 feet was also my dissatisfaction with the fact that we had hit the water although the altimeter still indicated one hundred feet, and the same was true for the pilot's instrument (...) We were questioned by 232 Squadron; I went to Flying Officer Lancaster, to whom I gave full details of the unknown balls of fire and told him and the flight engineer that I suspected our instruments had been affected by the balls of fire (...).”
“That night we had reached our objective in the Alps and bombed it from an optimal height. (...) There was a three-quarter moon and visibility was excellent. We were flying along the coast at 10,000 feet when the radio operator and pilot announced in unison the presence of the flying globes. The entire crew examined them, debating what type of weapon they were. We expected an attack and asked the pilot to make a wide circle around them at an altitude of 2,000 feet, the same height as the balls of fire. So I saw that there were actually six of them, three times larger than the moon. They lined up like a tattered necklace in the night, but seemed well spaced, the nearest a third of a mile away, the furthest between eight and ten miles. They were perfect spheres, without ornaments or projections of light or lines connecting them. They couldn't have been barrage balloons. They glowed a deep red as if they were molten iron balls in the sky, and we could easily compare them to the Moon. We had just made a complete circle around them when they suddenly seemed to be heading towards us at high speed.”
“I immediately asked the pilot to take evasive action. For ten minutes, I continued to ask the pilot for a series of maneuvers that we had never performed before on our sorties: climbs and pitches to one side, stall procedures, spins and frequent reversals of direction. The commander behaved like a fighter pilot. He literally made the plane go from one end of the sky to the other in a triangle between the north-east of Italy and the extreme south of the Alps (in practice the whole episode took place in the Frioli, editor's note). Finally I asked him to fly low and head towards the Adriatic coast south of Trieste, five minutes after passing the coast we hit the water at a speed of 250 miles per hour (...). We made a 25-mile circuit around the spheres, keeping our twin-engine Boston at an average altitude of 2,000 feet, so that our view of them was always from the left windows.”
“At that time (March 1945), none of us knew anything about these objects, and this was the first and only sighting we had during the war. A few weeks later, we received a copy of the Stars and Stripes magazine and the English magazine Union Jack (...) One or perhaps both of these journals gave details of observations of such objects made at high altitude by American aircraft crews.”
| Date: | March 1945 |
|---|---|
| Time: | After midnight. |
| Duration: | ? |
| First known report date: | Circa 1990 |
| Reporting delay: | 5 decades. |
| Country: | Italy |
|---|---|
| State/Department: | Friuli-Venezia Giulia |
| City or place: | Trieste |
| Number of alleged witnesses: | 4 |
|---|---|
| Number of known witnesses: | 1 |
| Number of named witnesses: | 4 |
| Reporting channel: | Letter to ufologist Andy Roberts after his call for witnesses. |
|---|---|
| Visibility conditions: | Night. |
| UFO observed: | Yes. |
| UFO arrival observed: | ? |
| UFO departure observed: | ? |
| UFO action: | Follow plane, then go towards plane. |
| Witnesses action: | |
| Photographs: | No. |
| Sketch(s) by witness(es): | No. |
| Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): | No. |
| Witness(es) feelings: | ? |
| Witnesses interpretation: | ? |
| Sensors: |
[X] Visual: 4.
[ ] Airborne radar: [ ] Directional ground radar: [ ] Height finder ground radar: [ ] Photo: [ ] Film/video: [X] EM Effects: Possible effects on flight instruments. [ ] Failures: [ ] Damages: |
|---|---|
| Hynek: | NL |
| Armed / unarmed: | Armed, 12,7 mm Browning M2 machine guns. |
| Reliability 1-3: | 2 |
| Strangeness 1-3: | 3 |
| ACUFO: | Possible extraterrestrial craft. |
[Ref. gso1:] GIUSEPPE STILO:
This Italian ufologist indicates that the following “Foo-Fighter” type observation on Italy is presented for the first time by the CISU (Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici).
The role of ufologist Andy Roberts is explained: this British specialist in the foofighters phenomenon, director of the British UFO Research Association, following the publication of his article on this type of case in the English aeronautical magazine Air Mail of August 1987, asking witnesses to come forward, received the following testimony [here translated from Italian - P. Gross], among others.
An even more astonishing testimony came to Andy Roberts from a former aviator living in London, Eric Anderson, who flew a Boston of the 55th Fighter-Bomber Squadron of the RAF. It is particularly significant because it involves a real skirmish between the plane and the unidentified phenomenon: almost an extension of the many cases of the kind that contemporary UFO-aircraft case studies will subsequently present.
Here is what Anderson wrote to Roberts: “At the time of the events I was in the South African Air Force and detached to the RAF on flying duties. We had been enlisted as a crew in Egypt and the incident occurred on the occasion of our eighty-third or eighty-fourth raid: I have to recover all the details from memory, because I did not keep my log book after the war, when I returned to live in South Africa. The crew included pilot and flight officer Dave Urry, myself in the role of navigator and bombardier, Dennis Evers as gunner and radio operator and turret gunners Urry and Evers, who are still alive. From our base in Forli the following route is marked with a red pencil on the map I attach. The briefing took place at the base by our Wing Commander, Lionel Leon, from the RAF. We had been in the air for about two and a half hours and were returning to base around two in the morning. The entire crew had carried out, with the ground staff, a careful inspection of the lower part of the plane since we had hit the water by the tail and hit the sea only 4 or 5 minutes from the coast, where we were forced to take evasive action until we lost sight of the six balls of fire! The pilot was warned by the radio operator and I asked him to climb to 10,000 feet immediately, in case we were damaged and had to bail out over the Adriatic. Fortunately, this did not happen, but we asked the radar station commander for a route that would take us straight back to base... the reason they considered it essential to stay at 10,000 feet was also my dissatisfaction with the fact that we had hit the water although the altimeter still indicated one hundred feet, and the same was true for the pilot's instrument (...) We were questioned by 232 Squadron; I went to Flying Officer Lancaster, to whom I gave full details of the unknown balls of fire and told him and the flight engineer that I suspected our instruments had been affected by the balls of fire (...).”
“That night we had reached our objective in the Alps and bombed it from an optimal height. (...) There was a three-quarter moon and visibility was excellent. We were flying along the coast at 10,000 feet when the radio operator and pilot announced in unison the presence of the flying globes. The entire crew examined them, debating what type of weapon they were. We expected an attack and asked the pilot to make a wide circle around them at an altitude of 2,000 feet, the same height as the balls of fire. So I saw that there were actually six of them, three times larger than the moon. They lined up like a tattered necklace in the night, but seemed well spaced, the nearest a third of a mile away, the furthest between eight and ten miles. They were perfect spheres, without ornaments or projections of light or lines connecting them. They couldn't have been barrage balloons. They glowed a deep red as if they were molten iron balls in the sky, and we could easily compare them to the Moon. We had just made a complete circle around them when they suddenly seemed to be heading towards us at high speed.”
“I immediately asked the pilot to take evasive action. For ten minutes, I continued to ask the pilot for a series of maneuvers that we had never performed before on our sorties: climbs and pitches to one side, stall procedures, spins and frequent reversals of direction. The commander behaved like a fighter pilot. He literally made the plane go from one end of the sky to the other in a triangle between the north-east of Italy and the extreme south of the Alps (in practice the whole episode took place in the Frioli, editor's note). Finally I asked him to fly low and head towards the Adriatic coast south of Trieste, five minutes after passing the coast we hit the water at a speed of 250 miles per hour (...). We made a 25-mile circuit around the spheres, keeping our twin-engine Boston at an average altitude of 2,000 feet, so that our view of them was always from the left windows.”
“At that time (March 1945), none of us knew anything about these objects, and this was the first and only sighting we had during the war. A few weeks later, we received a copy of the Stars and Stripes magazine and the English magazine Union Jack (...) One or perhaps both of these journals gave details of observations of such objects made at high altitude by American aircraft crews.”
[Ref. prt4:] JAN ALDRICH - "PROJECT 1947":
N - 1945.03.--- After Midnight, Northeast Italy west of Trieste
RAF Boston Bomber, 55 Squadron, 232 Wing, Pilot and 2 other crew members, 6 Spheres 3 time the apparent size of the moon that were like red-hot metal followed the bomber to the southeast over the Adriatic. When they appeared to move toward the aircraft, pilot took evasive action. (Letter and report Form, Andy Robert's collection)
[Ref. gvo1:] GODELIEVE VAN OVERMEIRE:
1945, March,
ITALY, west of Trier
The pilot and two members of the crew of an RAF Boston bomber observed around midnight six spheres resembling red-hot metal following the aircraft (PROJECT ACUFOE, Catalog 1999, Dominique Weinstein)
[Ref. dwn1:] DOMINIQUE WEINSTEIN:
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After midnight, the pilot and two crew members of a RAF Boston Bomber (55th Squadron, 232nd wing) observed six spheres three times the apparent size of the moon that looked like red-hot metal which followed the bomber to the southeast over the Adriatic Sea. When they appeared to move toward the aircraft, the pilot took evasive action.
Sources: Project 1947, Jan Aldrich / Letter and report form, Andy Roberts' Collection
[Ref. dwn2:] DOMINIQUE WEINSTEIN:
After midnight, the pilot and two crew members of a RAF Boston Bomber (55th Squadron, 232nd wing observed six spheres three times the apparent size of the moon that looked like red-hot metal which followed the bomber to the southeast over the Adriatic Sea. When they appeared to move toward the aircraft, the pilot took evasive action.
Sources: Project 1947, Jan Aldrich / Letter and report form, Andy Roberts' Collection
[Ref. rpl1:] ROBERTO PINOTTI AND ALFREDO LISSONI:
These Italian ufologists indicate that during the Second World War, according to case studies collected “by ufologists”, mysterious foofighters have been seen on several occasions by military pilots, including one case in which English pilot Eric Anderson saw six fireballs over Friuli in March 1945.
The Douglas A-20 “Havoc”, also known as “DB-7”, also nicknamed “Boston” by the British for the bombing version (photo below), was a US aircraft of attack, light bombing and night fighter of World War II that was used in the USSR under the nickname “Box”, as well as by the Royal Air Force, U.S. Army Air Forces, and others. Douglas Aircraft Company had built 7,267 of them.
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In my opinion, this is an extraordinary case, due to the angular size of the objects; it is a shame I could not find more information.
Possible extraterrestrial craft.
* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.
| Main author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editor: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Create/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | December 17, 2023 | Creation, [prt4], [gvo1], [dwn1], [dwn2]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | December 17, 2023 | First published. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | July 29, 2024 | Additions [gso1], [rpi1]. Summary rewritten with the information from [gso1]. |
