The article below was published in the daily newspaper The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, on January 2, 1945.
See the cases of 1944 - 1945 here.
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A U.S. Night Fighter Base, France, Jan. 1 (AP) -- The Nazis have thrown 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.
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.
Three kinds Described
"There are three kinds of these lights we call 'foo-fighters,'" said Lieut. Donald Meiers, of Chicago. "One is red balls of fire which appear off our wingtips 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 fifteen lights which appear off in the distance - like a Christmas tree up in the air - and flicker on and off."
The pilots on this night fighter squadron - in operation since September, 1943 - find these fiery balls the weirdest things 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 the nature of the fireballs to attack planes.
"A 'foo-fighter' picked me up recently at 700 feet and chases 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."
"Like the Will-O-The-Wisps"
"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-wisps."
(An Associated Press report from Paris December 13 said that the Germans had thrown silvery balls into the air agains day raiders. Pilot then reported they had seen these objects, both individually and in clusters, during forays over the Reich.)
Lieut. 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.
"The Hill Moved Up"
Lieut, Edward Schlater [sic, Schlueter], of Oshkosh, Wis., said he had seen the "foo-fighter" on two occasions and it "looked like shooting stars."
Capt. Fritz Ringwald [Fred Ringwald], staff officer from East St. Louis, Ill., went along on a flight after hearing the numerous reports of the "foo-fighter."
"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 abd then told him 'Well, that hill is considerably closer to us now.'"
