ALSACAT:

Mysterious Fire Balls Follow Yanks Fliers

By ROBERT WILSON

A U. S. NIGHT FIGHTER BASE, FRANCE, Jan. 1. (SP) -- The Nazis have shown something new into the night skies over Germany - the weird, mysterious "Foo-fighter," balls of fire which race alongside the wings of American Beaufighters flying intruder missions over the Reich.

U. S. pilots have been encountering the eerie "Foo-fighter" for more than a month in their night flights. No one apparently knows exactly what this sky weapon is.

The balls of fire appear suddenly and accompany the planes for miles. They appear to be radio-controlled from the ground and manage to keep up with the planes flying 300 miles an hour, official reports reveal.

"There are three kinds of these lights we call "Foo-fighters," said Lieutenant Donald Meiers, of Chicago, Ill.

"One is red balls of fire which appear off our wing tips and fly along with us, the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of us and the third is a group of about 15 lights which appear off in the distance - like a Christmas tree up in the air - and flicker on and off."

The pilots of this night fighter squadron - in operation since September, 1943 - find these fiery balls the weirdest thing they have as yet encountered.

They are convinced that the "Foo-fighter" is designed to be a psychological weapon as well as military although "it is not in the nature of the fire balls to attack planes."

"A 'Foo-fighter' picked me up recently at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhine valley," Meiers said. "I turned to the starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. It turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping right with us."

"On another occasion when a "Foo-fighter' picked us up, I dove at 360 miles an hour. It kept right off our wing tips for a while and then zoomed up into the sky.

"When I first saw the thing off my wing tips I had the horrible thought that a German on the ground was ready to press a button and explode them. But they don't explode or attack us. They just seem to follow us like will-o-the-wisp."

(An Associated Press report from Paris Dec. 13 said the Germans had thrown silvery balls into the air against day raiders. "Pilots then reported they had seen these objects, both individually and in clusters, during forays over the Reich.)

Mysterious "Foo Fighters," Balls Of Fire, Trail U.S. Night Flyers

Thought at First to Be Explosive, but None as Yet Has Damaged a Plane

A UNITED STATES NIGHT FIGHTER BASE, France, Jan. 2 (AP). -- American fighter pilots engaged in night missions over Germany report the Nazis have come up with a new "secret weapon" - mysterious balls of fire which race along beside their planes for miles.

Yank pilots have dubbed them "foo fighters," and at first thought they might explode, but so far there is no indication that any planes have been damaged by them.

Some pilots have expressed belief that the "foo fighter" was designed strictly as a psychological weapon. Intelligence reports seem to indicate that it is radio-controlled and can keep pace with planes flying 300 miles an hour.

Lt. Donald Meiers of Chicago, said there are three types of "foo fighters" - red balls of fire that fly along at wing tip; a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of the planes, and a group of about 15 lights which appear off in the distance - like a Christmas tree up in the air - and flicker on and off.

The pilots of this Beaufighter squadron - in operation since September, 1943 - find these fiery balls the weirdest thing they have as yet encountered.

"A ‘foo fighter’ picked me up recently at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhine Valley," Meiers said. "I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping right up with us."

"On another occasion when a ‘Foo-Fighter’ picked us up, I dived at 360 miles an hour. It kept right off our wing tips for a while and then zoomed into the sky."

"When I first saw the things, I had the horrible thought that a German on the ground was ready to press a button and explode them. But they didn't explode or attack us. They just seem to follow us like will-o-the-wisps."

Lt. Wallace Gould of Silver Creek, N. Y., said the lights followed his wing tips for a while and then, in a few seconds, zoomed 20,000 feet into the air and out of sight.

Numerous Over Big Cities

The pilots agreed that the balls of fire were more numerous over large German cities.

Of his first experience with them, Gould said, "I thought it was some new form of jet propulsion plane after us. But we were very close to them and none of us saw any structure on the fire balls."

Capt. Fritz Ringwald, staff officer from East St. Louis, Ill., went along on a flight after hearing the numerous reports of the "foo-fighters."

"I saw lights off the right and told the pilot, who said, ‘Oh, those are lights on a hill’", Ringwald reported, adding, "I looked in that direction a few minutes later and then told him, ‘Well, that hill is considerably closer to us now.’"

‘Foo-Fighter’ Seen by East St. Louisan

Among those reporting the appearance of the "foo fighter" was Capt. Fred B Ringwald, 33-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs A. F. Ringwald, Woodcrest, East St. Louis.

A staff officer of the "Night Fighters," a volunteer group of the Army Air Corps organized to carry out bombing raids on Germany, Ringwald wrote his parents last week he was operating from a French air base. He was a private pilot before joining the army in September, 1943, and operator of the Crescent Service Station, Tenth and State streets.

He took part in the African invasion and has spent a total of 21 months fighting in the European theater.

His wife, Mrs Emily Ringwald, joined the Waves last September and is stationed at Stillwater, Ok.

FIRE BALLS that fly with American night raiders over Germany, believed to be a new German psychological weapon have been reported by Capt. Fred B. Ringwald, (above) son of Mr and Mrs A. F. Ringwald, Woodcrest, East St. Louis.

PILOTS CALL THEM "FOO FIGHTERS"

Raiders Over Reich Pursued by Weird Balls of Fire

BY ROBERT WILSON

A U. S. NIGHT FIGHTER BASE, FRANCE. --(AP)-- The Nazis have thrown something new into the night skies over Germany -- The weird, mysterious "foo-fighters," balls of fire which race alongside the wings of American Beaufighters flying intruder missions over the Reich.

United States pilots have been encountering the eerie "foo-fighter" for more than a month in their night flights. No one apparently knows exactly what this sky weapon is.

The balls of fire appear suddenly and accompany the planes for miles. They appear to be radio-controlled from the ground and manage to keep up with planes flying 300 miles an hour, official intelligence reports reveal.

"There are three kinds of these lights we call "foo-fighters", said Lt. Donald Meiers, of Chicago.

"ONE IS RED balls of fire which appear off our wing tips and fly along with us, the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of us and the third a group of about 15 lights which appear off in the distance -- like a Christmas tree up in the air -- and flicker on and off."

The pilots of this night fighter squadron -- in operation since September, 1943 -- find these fiery balls the weirdest thing they have as yet encountered. They are convinced that the "foo-fighters" is designed to be a psychological weapon as well as military although it is not the nature of the fire balls to attack planes.

* * *

"A FOO FIGTHER" picked me up recently at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhine valley," Meiers said. "I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 250 miles and hour and the balls were keeping right up with us."

"On another occasion when a "foo-fighter" picked me up, I dived at 360 miles per hour. It kept right off our wing tips for awhile and then zoomed up in the sky.

"When I first saw the things off my wing tip I had the horrible thought that a German on the ground was ready to press a button and explode them. But they don't explode or attack us. They just seem to follow us like will-o-the-wisps."

(An Associated Press report from Paris Dec. 13 said the Germans had thrown silvery balls into the air against day raiders. Pilots then reported they had seen these objects, both individually and in clusters, during forays over the Reich.)

[... Other cases ...]

At ten o'clock of a November evening, in late 1944, Lt. Ed Schlueter took off in his night fighter from Dijon, France, on what he thought would be a routine mission for the 415th Night Fighter Squadron.

Lt. Schlueter is a tall, competent young pilot from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, whose hazardous job was to search the night sky for German planes and shoot them down. He had done just this several times and had been decorated for it. As one of our best night fighters, he was used to handling all sorts of emergencies. With him as radar observer was Lt. Donald J. Meiers, and Lt. Fred Ringwald, intelligence officer of the 415th, who flew as an observer.

The trio began their search pattern, roaming the night skies on either side of the Rhine River north of Strasbourg - for centuries the abode of sirens, dwarfs, gnomes, and other supernatural characters that appealed strongly to the dramatic sense of the late A. Hitler. However, at this stage of the European war, the Rhine was no stage but a grim battleground, where the Germans were making their last great stand.

The night was reasonably clear, with some clouds and a quarter moon. There was fair visibility.

In some respects, a night fighter plane operates like a champion boxer whose eyesight isn't very good; he must rely on other senses to guide him to his opponent. The U. S. Army has ground radar stations, which track all planes across the sky, and tell the night fighter the whereabouts of any plane. The night fighter flies there, closes in by means of his own radar until usually he can see the enemy, and if the plane doesn't identify itself as friendly, he shoots it down.

Or, gets shot down himself, for the Germans operate their aircraft in much same way we did, and so did the Japanese.

Lt. Schlueter was flying low enough that he could detect the white steam of a blacked-out locomotive or the sinister bulk of a motor convoy, but he had to avoid smokestacks, barrage balloons, enemy searchlights, and flak batteries. He and Ringwald were on the alert, for there were mountains nearby. The inside of the plane was dark, for good night vision.

Lt. Ringwald said, "I wonder what those lights are, over there in the hills."

"Probably stars," said Schlueter, knowing from long experience that the size and character of lights are hard to estimate at night.

"No, I don't think so."

"Are you sure it's no reflection from us?"

"I'm positive."

Then Ringwald remembered - there weren't any hills over there. Yet the "lights" were still glowing - eight or ten of them in a row - orange balls of fire moving through the air at a terrific speed.

Then Schlueter saw them far off his left wing. Were enemy fighters pursuing him? He immediately checked by radio with Allied ground radar stations.

"Nobody up there but yourself," they reported. "Are you crazy?"

And no enemy plane showed in Lt. Meiers' radar.

Lt. Schlueter didn't know what he was facing - possibly some new and lethal German weapon - but he turned into the lights, ready for action. The lights disappeared - then reappeared far off. Five minutes later they went into a flat glide and vanished.

The puzzled airmen continued on their mission, and destroyed seven freight trains behind German lines. When they landed back at Dijon, they decided to do what any other prudent soldier would do - keep quiet for the moment. If you tried to explain everything strange that happened in a war, you'd do nothing else. Further, Schlueter and Meiers had nearly completed their required missions, and didn't want to chance being grounded by some skeptical flight surgeon for "combat fatigue."

Maybe they had been "seeing things."

But a few nights later, [... Other cases ...]

One of the most baffling mysteries of the Second World War were strange aerial apparitions in the shape of blazing balls which were encountered over Truk Lagoon, in the skies of Japan, the West Rhine area of Alsace-Lorraine and over the Bavarian Palatinate. There were met by U.S. night fighters pilots at night, by U.S. day bomber squadrons and by some British air pilots.

These weird balls of fantastic and variable speeds, glowed from an orange to red and white and back to orange and appear to have been sighted first at 10 p.m. on November 23, 1944, by a U.S. pilot in the area north of Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine. Three nights later they were again seen by a U.S. pilot flying in the same area.

[... Other cases ...]

One pilot, chatting in a mess of the 415th U.S. Night Fighter squadron, stationed at Dijon, France, spoke to other pilots who had met these balls, and had been derided by Intelligence after their reports had been made. This pilot had a brain wave.

"Let's call the so and so's Foo Fighters!" he said. This nickname was taken up and stuck. It appears that it was suggested by a comic strip in a New York newspaper, at the time. One 'Smokey Stover said: "Yeah, if there's foo there's me." Probably the slang word foo is a corruption of the French feu, or fire.

The Foo Fighters seem first to have been met with by night pilots flying over the Rhine, north of Strasbourg, and in 1944 and 1945. It will be observed that they were encountered in the sector of the war-time front between Haguenau and Neustadt. Haguenau is in Alsace-Lorraine, 35 miles north of Strasbourg, while Neustadt is in the Bavarian Palatinate, 55 miles due north of Strasbourg.. Both places are west of the Rhine.

It was at 10 P.M. on November 23, 1944, when Lieutenant Edward Schlüter, pilot of the U.S. 415th Night Fighter squadron, at Dijon, in south-central France, took off on a routine patrol to intercept German planes in the skies, west of the Rhine, between Strasbourg and Mannheim. As the crow flies he had to go 150 miles on a patrol that would take him 'east over the Vosges mountains, a very lonely and grim and isolated range buttressing the western approaches to the Rhine. Schlüter is a finely built man, the last word in aeronautical efficiency, and a very experienced night fighter pilot of the second World War. He is a native of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

With him in the darkened cockpit were the radar observer, Lieut. Donald J. Meiers, and an Intelligence officer, Lieut. F. Ringwald. Nothing happened till their plane had crossed the Vosges, and they had sighted the shining waters of the Rhine rolling rapidly toward Mainz.

The sky, that night, was clear, with light clouds, visibility was good, and the moon was in the first quarter. U.S. radar stations covering all U.S. pilots in that area, had not noticed them of [or] any other plane in the sky. Some way to the east Schlüter could see the white steam jetted from the smokestack of a German freight locomotive, running in blackout conditions with fire-box door clamped up, and blinded, on one of the strategic railroads, constructed, many years ago, on both banks of the Rhine, by order of the famous Graf von Bismarck the old grim Iron Chancellor of the old German Reich. (I know this region well, myself, having more than once traveled there, on newspaper’s assignments.)

At this time, in 1944, Germany stood at bay, and the Allies were closing in on her. Some 20 miles north of Strasbourg, Lieut. Ringwald, the U.S. Intelligence officer, glanced to the west and noticed eight or ten balls of red me, moving at a~ amazing velocity. They seemed to be in formation and they could be seen clearly from the cockpit of the U.S. night fighter plane, because the cockpit was unilluminated, to get rid of dazzle.

"Say," said Ringwald to Schlüter, "look over there at the bright lights on those hills, yonder. What are they?

Schlüter: "Hell, buddy, there are no hills over there! I should say they were stars. You don't need me to tell you that it is not easy to guess at the nature of lights you see on night flights ...not when they are distant, as these are."

Ringwald: "Stars, you say? I don't reckon they are stars. Why, their speed is terrific".

Schlüter: "Maybe they are just reflections from our own plane, as we are going pretty fast."

Ringwald: "I am certain, absolutely sure, that those lights are not reflected from us."

Schlüter, now, gazed hard at the lights. They were, at that moment, off his port wing. He got into radio phone contact with one of the ground radar stations.

"There are about ten Heinie night fighters around here, in the sky. Looks as if they are chasing us, and their speed is high."

U.S. radar station: "You guys must be nuts! Nobody is up there but your own plane. Aren't seein' things, are you?"

Meiers, in the plane, glanced at the radarscope: "Sure, no enemy planes showed up on the screen!" Schlüter now maneuvered the plane for action; and made towards the lights They were blazing red. But they seemed to vanish into invisibility! Two minutes later, they reappeared, but now a long way off. It looked as if they were aware that they were being chased for attack, Six minutes later, the balls did a glide, levelled out, and vanished.

None of the occupants of the U.S. nightfighter plane could make out what on earth those red balls were. Schluter guessed they might be some German experimental devices, like the red, green, blue, and white and yellow rockets that flashed up amid the fIak of anti-aircraft batteries when an enemy night bomber raid was on n big scale. and could be heard approaching some way off, I have, myself, seen such rockets when on night patrol in the edge of London, or the Thameside dockyards, in 1942, and 1943. The Germans appear to have had these mystery devices, as had the British; but I have never been able to find out what purpose they served.

But the bewildered night fighter pilots of the 415th U.S. Air Force did not let this mystery spoil their stroke. Lieut. Schlüter, that night, heavily bombed eight fast German freight trains on the Rhine railroads.

But, back at the base at Dijon, knowing that they would not be believed by Intelligence higher-ups, and might be charged with hallucinations and war neurosis, Schlüter and the other two did not discuss the matter. They did not wish to be grounded, and taken off combat duties. So they made no report to base at Dijon.

[... Other cases ...]

Wilkins then goes on to describe in detail the first sighting of the "Foo Fighters" by American night-pilots flying over the Rhine, in the area north of Strasbourg, and particularly over the sector of the Allied invasion front between Haguenau and Neustadt, Both these places lie to the west of the Rhine.

It seems that the first encounter occurred at 10 p.m. on November 23, 1944, over the Rhine, near Mainz, when Lieut. Edward Schluter, a fighter-pilot of the U.S. 415th Night-Fighter Squadron based at Dijon, noticed some eight or ten balls of fire, flying in formation at immense speed. The sky was clear, with light clouds, the moon was in its first quarter, and visibility was good. Schluter and his companions, Radar Officer Lieut. Donald J. Meiers and Intelligence Officer Lieut. F. Ringwald, were able to see them with

the greatest ease, particularly as they themselves were flying with their cockpit darkened in order to eliminate dazzle. Getting in touch at once with one of the American ground radar stations, Schluter reported that he seemed to have about ten German night-fighter chasing him. But the U.S. radar post replied: "You guys must be nuts! Nobody is up there but your own plane. 'Ain't seein' things, are you?"

Lieut. Schluter and his companions realized that their story would not be believed but would be attributed to hallucinations or neurosis, and so they made no official report about the matter on their return to their base at Dijon.

THE "FOO-FIGHTERS"

ONE NIGHT IN November, 1944, a Lieutenant Ed Schlueter, his radar observer, Lieutenant Donald J. Meiers, and Lieutenant Fred Ringwald, an intelligence officer, all members of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, cruised the Rhine River area north of Strasbourg in search of Nazi planes. Cruising low enough to detect enemy convoys or blacked-out troop trains, they paid special attention to the mountains ahead.

Not long after their takeoff at 10 P.M., the intelligence officer peered through the darkened cockpit, completely baffled. In the distance, several lights seemed to be moving through the air. He alerted the pilot.

The objects, eight to ten of them, were glowing bright orange. They checked for reflections in the cockpit. It was no illusion. Moments later, Schlueter sighted them far off his left wing, unable to estimate their size and distance. The "balls of fire" raced across the sky at tremendous speed.

Schlueter notified his radar operator and the ground radar. There was not a sign of the strange objects on ground scopes or the aircraft radar. Schlueter banked into the lights, anticipating a dogfight. In a split second, they vanished completely, reappearing seconds later farther away. The puzzling display continued. Five minutes later the row of lights swept into a flat glide and disappeared.

The "balls of fire" were not seen again that evening, and Schlueter and his crew completed their mission behind German lines, knocking out seven freight trains. Back at Dijon, their base in east central France, the fliers kept silent about the experience, fearing they would be grounded for combat fatigue. Convincing their superiors that a formation of ghostly globes of light had been seen would take some tall talking.

- November 23, 1944 -22 pm: Another story of "Kraut-Bolids". Lieutenant pilot Edward Schluter, of the 415th squadron of night fighters of the US Air Force based in England, observed a real formation of a dozen luminous disks moving together at a frightening speed. The formation, reported from the ground was followed by radar by radar operator Lt. Donald J. Meiers, and onboard by the radar officer of the intelligence service F. Ringwald, observer. These "ghost hunters" have often manifested during the last war between Haguenau (Alsace) and Neustadt an der Weinstrasse (Rhineland). Allied pilots called them the "foo fighters" or "Kraut-bolids"; American bombers, operating over the Japanese archipelago, also saw and reported them.

About eight or 10 bright orange lights startled the crew of an American aircraft connected with the 415th Night Fighter Squadron as the plane cruised the Rhine River area north of Strasbourg one November night. Curiously, the lights, which were moving across the sky at tremendous speed, did not show up on either ground or aircraft radar. The pilot, Lt. Ed Schlueter, banked into them expecting a dogfight, but much to his astonishment the objects completely disappeared, only to reappear seconds later. After five minutes the lights were gone.

1944 Nov 23; 22:00/Alsace Lorraine, Germany/Arnold-Palmer

Glowing objects were seen traveling at fantastic, variable speeds. They changed in color from orange to red to white to orange.

NOVEMBER 23, 1944.-

IN THE SKY OF THE VOSGES. - (88)

Time: 10 PM

Lieutenant Eduard SCHLUTER, pilot of the 415th Fighter Squadron of the U.S. AIR FORCE, stationed in DIJON, took off for a routine mission to take him above the Vosges. Native of OSCHLOSCH (Wisconsin) WCHLUTER had experience of night flights. With him in the cockpit were Lieutenant Donald J. MEIERS, radar controller and an intelligence officer, Lieutenant F. RINGWALD.

The sky was clear that evening, and American radars had detected no enemy presence in the sky of the Vosges over which he was flying for the moment. About 30 km from Strasbourg, Lieutenant RINGWALD saw to the West a linear formation of 8 to 10 red fireballs which were moving at high speed.

EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK BY MICHEL BOUGARD (Delarge) "LA CHRONIQUE DES OVNI" P. 271

23.11.44 north of Strasbourg (France)

An American night fighter from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron patrols, at about 10 pm, some thirty kilometers north of Strasbourg.

It took off from Dijon-Longvic, and the crew consists of lieutenants Edward Schlüter (pilot), Donald Meiers (radar) and F. Ringwald (this aircraft was probably a P 70, the 415th NFS having received its first P-61 than 4 months later in Saint-Dizier).

Looking towards the west, Ringwald noticed a number of light sources that he could not identify. He pointed out their presence at Schluter and Meiers, and a conversation began between them concerning the nature of these lights.

By radio, the pilot asks the radar station on the ground if it has an echo of the phenomenon. The answer is negative, and Meiers gets no echo either on the scope of the on-board radar.

The plane turns to get closer to the phenomenon and the crew can distinguish more and more distinctly those luminous globes whose pulsating phosphorescence is completely incomprehensible. It approaches them very quickly, when the phenomenon suddenly goes out, to reappear a few moments later, in a completely different direction, before finally disappearing.

The earliest reliable report of the specter-like apparitions came from a pilot and crew belonging to the 415th Night Fighter Squadron based at Dijon, France. The 415th patrolled both sides of the Rhine River, north of Strasbourg, in Eastern Germany, seeking out any German planes in the area with the aid of U.S. Army ground-based radar stations. Lieutenant Ed Schlueter (pilot), Lieutenant Donald J. Meiers (radar observer) were on such a mission on the night of November 23, 1944, when Ringwald first spotted what appeared to be stars off at a distance. within a few minutes, the star-like points became orange balls of light (eight or ten of them) "moving through the air at terrific speed". The "objects" could not be picked up by radar, either ground-based or from the plane. The lights then disappeared, reappeared farther off, and within minutes vanished from view.

518: 1944/11/23 22:00 10 7:49:00 E 48:53:00 N 3333 WEU FRN BRH 5:9

20mi NE/STRASBOURG,FR:US PLANES PACED/8-10 FAST RED FOO-FIGHTERS:/LDLN#330p13

Ref#150 WEINSTEIN,D; UFO/AIRCRAFT ENCOUNTERS Page No. 6 : IN-FLIGHT

History doesn't relate the mood of the crewmembers of the Northrop P-61 Black Widow patrolling the sky above the Rhineland that night, but the available clues suggest that they were none too happy. A night-fighter crew was about as close-knit a unit as you could find among the frontline squadrons ranged against Germany in late 1944. Success—their very survival when it came down to it—depended on a high level of trust, intense training, the reliability of a piece of hardware then still in its infancy—radar—and undiluted concentration.

The last thing U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant Ed Schlueter would have needed that night was a passenger. Worse, Ringwald wasn't even aircrew, but an intelligence officer.

Lieutenant Fred Ringwald was sitting behind and above Schlueter, the P-61's pilot, in the position normally occupied by the gunner. Schlueter's unit, the 415th Night Fighter Squadron of the U.S. 9th Army Air Force, had recently upgraded from their British-made Bristol Beaufighters to the Black Widow. They had also just transferred from the Italian theater of operations to England and from there across the Channel, deploying eastward in short hops across northwest France as the Allies pushed the Nazis toward the Rhine and back into Germany itself.

Schlueter flew his aircraft south along the Rhine, looking for "trade." The Black Widow was a heavy fighter; bigger than the Beaufighter and considerably more menacing in appearance. While its primary targets were the German night fighters sent up to intercept British bomber streams heading to and from Germany, there was always the chance, provided Schlueter was sharp-eyed enough, of hitting a Nazi train or a vehicle convoy, especially as the Germans were moving men and materiel under cover of darkness due to the Allies' overwhelming daytime air superiority. This had been pretty much indisputable since the D-Day landings five months earlier.

But night strafing operations brought their own hazards. Over the uncertain territory of the Rhineland, sandwiched between the bluffs of the wide and winding river and the rugged uplands of the Black Forest, there was a better than even chance you could follow your own cannonfire into the ground.

There was no official record as to why the intelligence officer Ringwald was along for the ride, but knowing something of the way in which spooks had a habit of ring-fencing intelligence from the people who needed it most, I had a feeling that Schlueter and his radar operator would have been left just as much in the dark.

In the black skies above the Rhineland, after a long period of routine activity, it was Ringwald who broke the silence. "What the hell are those lights over there?" he asked over the RT. "Probably stars," Schlueter said, concentrating on his instruments. "I don't think so," Ringwald replied. "They're coming straight for us."

Now, Schlueter looked up and out of the cockpit. In the pitch-black of his surroundings, the formation of aircraft off his starboard wing stood out like a constellation of tiny brilliant suns. Instinctively, he twisted the control column, bringing the Black Widow's four cannon and four .50 cal machine guns into line with them. At the same time, he called ground radar.

The ground station was supposed to be Schlueter's eyes and ears at all times, but if each pulsating point of light represented the exhaust plumes of a German night fighter, there were anything up to ten aircraft closing on him and he hadn't heard a whisper out of them. Somebody had screwed up. Later, he would be angry. Now, he was simply frightened and confused. He urgently requested information. "Negative," the reply came back. "There are no bogies in your sector. You're on your own."

Schlueter's radar operator, Lieutenant Don Meiers, who was crouched over the scope of the SCR540 airborne intercept (AI) radar in a well behind Ringwald, told him the same thing. The sky ahead of them was empty of any air activity.

But the lights were still there and they kept coming. Instead of running, Schlueter boosted the throttles and pointed the nose of the Black Widow at the lead aircraft of the formation.

As the twin air-cooled radial engines powered up either side of him, the glow from his opponents' exhausts dimmed; and then they winked out.

Puzzled and alarmed at having lost the contacts, and with no help from Meiers on the Black Widow's own radar, Schlueter held the aircraft steady and the crew braced themselves for the engagement.

Schlueter eased the night fighter into the blacked-out bowl of sky where he had last seen the contacts. He craned his neck for a glimpse of something—anything—that signaled the presence of another aircraft, jinking the plane left and right to check his blind spots.

Still nothing.

It was only when he started to execute a turn back to base that Ringwald told him the lights were back again.

Schlueter followed the line indicated by Ringwald and saw them a long way off. Impossibly far, in fact, but still within radar range. He called out to Meiers, but the radar operator was now having technical problems with his AI set.

Schlueter again prepared to engage the enemy, but the lights had already begun to glide away to the northeast, eventually retreating deep into the German lines and disappearing altogether.

Nobody said anything until shortly before the Black Widow landed. Although Schlueter and Meiers were agreed that the Germans must have been experimenting with some new kind of secret weapon, neither wanted to hazard a guess as to what this weapon might have been. There was nothing they knew of in their own inventory that approached the weird, darting performance characteristics of the aircraft they'd just seen.

Fearful they would become the target of unwelcome squadron humor—along predictable lines they were "losing it"—they decided not to report the incident. And Ringwald, the spook, went along with it.

Reports of this incident exist in a number of UFO books—books I'd not encountered before because to someone steeped in the dry reportage of nuts-and-bolts technical journalism, they'd never entered my orbit. The incident showed that almost three years before Twining wrote his memo to General Schulgen unconventional aerial objects had appeared in German skies prior to their manifestation across the U.S.A. in 1947.

On odd days off work and at weekends, I'd begun trawling public archives for corroborating evidence of this sighting. What I found were details on the 415th Night Fighter Squadron and the aircraft Schlueter had flown at the time of the encounter; details that allowed me to fill in the gaps of the published account and to visualize the sense of bewilderment and fear that Schlueter and his crew would have experienced that night. But along the way, I discovered that Schlueter's sighting was far from unique. All that winter of 1944-45, Allied aircrew reported small, ball-shaped aircraft glowing orange, red and white over the territory of the Third Reich. While some attributed the lights to natural phenomena such as ball lightning or St. Elmo's fire, others could not dismiss the sightings so easily. The devices appeared to be able to home in on Allied aircraft as if guided to them remotely or by some built-in control system.

Nov. 1944; France

415th Night Fighter Squadron pilot saw formation of round objects. (NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, III)

Saverne (67) on 23 November 1944

General features

Num Base:	1205
Department:	Bas Rhin (67)
Place of observation:	Saverne
Latitude:	48.733
Longitude:	+7.366
Date of observation:	23 November 1944
Hour:	22:00 hours
Duration (HH:MM:SS):	N.C.
Weather:	No weather indication
Type of observation:	Visual: close distance
Nbr of witness(es):	1
Official investigation:	No

Features of the object

Nbr of object:	undetermined number
Type of object:	Sphere
Size:	Not specified
Color:	not defined
Luminosity:	Brilliant
Visual characteristics:	blinking fires
Speed:	not defined
Movement/Displacement:	Not specified
Object on the ground:	No
Instantaneous disappearance:	No

Observation

The engineer of a USAAF P70 Fighter observed several luminous spheres with pulsating lights.

Sources

UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA EIGHTY YEARS OF PILO [sic] by Weinstein Dominique

November - undefined 23 Lieutenant Ed Schluter, young, tall and competent pilot from Oshkosh (Wisconsin), took off in his fighter plane from Dijon (France) for a routine mission of the 415th Nocturnal Fighter Squadron: to scrutinize the sky for German planes to shoot down (he had already done this a few times and was decorated for that). With him is Lt. Donald J. Meiers radar observer, and Lieutenant Fred Ringwald, intelligence officer of the squadron, flying as an observer. The trio star[ts] their search, browsing the night sky partly cloudy with only a few clouds and a quarter moon, from each side of the Rhine north of Strasbourg. At one point Ringwald said, "I wonder what those lights down there over the hills are." "Probably stars" Schlueter answers. "No, I do not think so", answers Ringwald. Are you sure this is not a reflection of us? Absolutely." Ringwald Remembers -- there are no hills in this area. But the "lights" still shine - 8 or 10 in a row - orange balls of fire crossing the air at an amazing speed. Schlueter then sees them far off his left wing. He immediately checked the Allied radar stations by radio. "There is nobody else there but you" they answer. "Are you crazy?" And no ennemy Pla [sic "plane"] is no visible either on the radar of Meiers. Schlueter veers toward the lights, ready for action. They disappear and reappear further away. 5 minutes later they seem to thin and disappear for good. The airmen continue their mission, destroying seven freight trains behind the German lines. When they return to Dijon, they decided to keep the story to them for the moment. A typical observation of foo fighters.

Strange lights dog our pilots.

One typical report of balls of light came from the crew of a B-29 bomber belonging to the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, based at Dijon, France. On November 23, 1944, lieutenants Ed Schlueter, pilot; Donald J. Meiers, radar observer; and Fred Ringwald, intelligence officer, saw what looked to be stars, but these stars soon became orange balls of light. "There were eight to ten moving through the air at a great speed." These objects could not be picked up by radar, either ground-based or from the plane. The lights then disappeared, only to reappear further off.

Case 59

November 23, 1944

North of Strasbourg, France

Around 2200, Capt. Edward Schlueter (pilot) and Lt. Donald Myers (Radar observer) of the USAAF 415th Night Fighter Squadron took off from Dijon. At 30 km from Strasbourg, they r noticed several luminous sources. 8 to 10 objects glowing bright orange raced across the sky at tremendous speed. The pilot notified the radar operator who had no sign of the stranges objects on the aircraft radar. The ground radar station had no echos. The pilot banked into the 1st lights, anticipating a dogfight. They vanished completely, reappearing seconds later farther away. Five minutes later the row of light swept into a flat glide and disappeared. When the pilot had closed to the phenomenon they appeared like luminous globes of pulsating phosphorescent light.

Sources: The American Legion, December 1945 / The UFO Evidence, Richard Hall, NICAP 1964 / Mysteries of I the sky, Gordon Lore &Harold Deneault, NICAP, 1968 / List of cases prior to 1947, Jan Aldrich / UFO Encyclopedia volume 2, Jerome Clark / Lumieres Dans La Nuit #330.

It was later that month that an air crew would have the 415th's first sighting of 'foo fighters' according to the December, 1945 piece by Jo Chamberlin. The flight had consisted of Lt. Ed Schlueter, pilot, Lt. Donald J. Meiers, radar operator, and Lt. Fred Ringwald, intelligence officer of the 415th, who flew as an observer...

Lt. Schlueter was flying low enough that he could detect the white steam of a blacked-out locomotive or the sinister bulk of a motor convoy, but he had to avoid smokestacks, barrage balloons, enemy searchlights, and flak batteries. He and Ringwald were on the alert, for there were mountains nearby. The inside of the plane was dark, for good night vision.

Lt. Ringwald said, "I wonder what those lights are, over there in the hills."

"Probably stars," said Schlueter, knowing from long experience that the size and character of lights are hard to estimate at night.

"No, I don't think so."

"Are you sure it's no reflection from us?"

"I'm positive."

Then Ringwald remembered -- there weren't any hills over there. Yet the "lights" were still glowing -- eight or ten of them in a row -- orange balls of fire moving through the air at a terrific speed.

Then Schlueter saw them far off his left wing. Were enemy fighters pursuing him? He immediately checked by radio with Allied ground radar stations.

"Nobody up there but yourself." they reported. "Are you crazy?"

And no enemy plane showed in Lt. Meiers' radar.

Chamberlin's version varied slightly from the original January, 1945 reporting by Robert C. Wilson, which indicated it was Lt. Schlueter who had thought the lights were over a hill. From the January 2, 1945 edition of the Dixon, Illinois Evening Telegraph...

"I saw lights off the right and told the pilot, who said, 'Oh, those are lights on a hill,'" Ringwald reported. He added: "I looked in that direction a few minutes later and then, told him, 'Well, that hill is considerably closer to us now'."

In the North of Strasbourg, a patrol consisting of Lieutenants Schlüter, Meyer and Ringwald flies above the Rhine systematically searching each bank with the eyes. The visibility is good, with a relatively clear night, a few scattered clouds and a quarter moon.

It is Lt. Ringwald who first sees an alignment of a dozen glowing lights, resembling fireballs. Lt Schlüter see them move off his left wing, at a very high speed. Despite his experience, the crew is not able to identify the phenomenon. Ground radar detects nothing and Lt Meyer has no echo on his radar. The patrol therefore flies towards these strange lights, which suddenly disappear at their approach and reappear further, before definitely disappearing.

Date: Late November (possibly 28-30), 1944

Location: Strasbourg, Germany

Time:

Summary: Eight to ten lights in a row, glowing orange, and moving at terrific speed.

Source:

What Were the Mysterious “Foo Fighters” Sighted by WWII Night Flyers?

Something strange was following the Beaufighter crews of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron.

Toward the end of World War 2, mission updates from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron took a mysterious turn. Along with details of dogfights over the German-occupied Rhine Valley, pilots began reporting inexplicable lights following their aircraft.

One night in November 1944, a Bristol Beaufighter crew—pilot Edward Schlueter, radar observer Donald J. Meiers, and intelligence officer Fred Ringwald—was flying along the Rhine north of Strasbourg. They described seeing “eight to 10 bright orange lights off the left wing…flying through the air at high speed.” Neither the airborne radar nor ground control registered anything nearby. “Schlueter turned toward the lights and they disappeared,” the report continued. “Later they appeared farther away. The display continued for several minutes and then disappeared.” Meiers gave these objects a name, taking a nonsense word used by characters in the popular “Smokey Stover” firefighter cartoon: “foo fighters.”

The name "foo fighters" has become synonymous with Dave Grohl’s rock band of that name, but prior to the late 1990s, when the band Foo Fighters achieved worldwide fame, the name "foo fighter" was primarily known only in conspiracy theory circles or UFO research groups.

It refers to mysterious flying objects sighted by pilots in the last few years of the Second World War – objects variously described as glowing red, orange, yellow or white balls of light, or balls of fire – that seemed to appear out of nowhere, flew with aircraft in formation, and conducted aerial maneuvers that no aircraft could have performed.

Sometimes they were described as orbs, sometimes as cigar-shaped. Sightings of foo fighters were primarily reported by Allied pilots flying over Western Europe, but similar sightings were also reported by German and Japanese pilots. To this day, nobody knows exactly what they were.

The first sightings of foo fighters were reported in November 1944 by American pilots of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. The first plane to report a foo fighter sighting was piloted by Lieutenant Edward Schlueter. Lieutenant Donald Meiers was the radar observer and Lieutenant Fred Ringwald was the intelligence officer onboard.

They were flying over the French-German border when Ringwald spotted a row of eight to ten lights, glowing orange. He called ground radar to see if they were enemy aircraft, but they couldn’t pick anything up. Suspecting that the lights were some sort of new German weapon, they prepared to engage them – but then the lights vanished.

The strange lights were given a name by Meiers: foo fighters. The term "foo" was taken from a popular comic strip of the time, called Smokey Stover. In the comic strip, the character Smokey (a firefighter) used to say "where there’s foo there’s fire." Meier’s use of the name "foo fighters" stuck, and after this, that was the term used to describe these strange phenomena.

Over the next few months, reports continued to pour in of foo fighter sightings, many of which were seen by pilots of the 415th.

While the description of what they looked like sometimes varied, what was always consistent about the sightings was that the foo fighters seemed to be under some sort of intelligent control, were spectacularly maneuverable, impossible to shoot down or outmaneuver, not hostile (they never once attacked or made any attempt to attack or damage the aircraft that sighted them), and that they both appeared out of nowhere and then vanished into thin air.

23rd November 1944, Lieutenant Ed Schlueter was piloting a mission in France when he, along with his crew, observed approximately nine balls of light traveling at high speed. These "Foo Fighters" were undetected by Radar and disappeared only to re-appear soon after before vanishing completely. Similar reports of these strange objects were made by many pilots throughout the rest of the war and it was speculated that the anomalous objects were a secret military device being developed by the enemy.

SECRET

AIR STAFF SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

REF: - SHAEF/A/TS.37153/A.2.

18 March 1945

SUB: - Night Phenomena.

TO: - First Tactical Air Force (Prov.), APO 374, US ARMY.

1. With reference to reports forwarded from the XIIth Tactical Air Command through your Headquarters on the subject of night phenomena (foofighter), and further to this Headquarters' letter of even reference dated 11 February, a reply has now been received from the Air Ministry who say that Bomber Command crews have for some time been reporting similar phenonema.

2. The Air Ministry view is that a few of the alleged aircraft may have been Me.262’s and for the rest, flak rockets are suggested as the most likely explanation.

3. It is regretted that no further, or more definite, information can be given.

For the Deputy Supreme Commander

[Signed]

C.M. GRIERSON,
Air Commodore
A.C. of S., A-2

SECRET