The article below was published in the daily newspaper The News-Herald, Del Rio, Texas, USA, page 2, on January 3, 1945.
See the cases of 1944 - 1945 here.
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By Howard W. Blakeslee
Associated Press Science Editor
NEW YORK, Jan. 2 - The description of the new German foo-fighters, or balls of fire, fit into several well-known electrical phenomena.
These are induction, ball lightning, and have some, though not all the apsect, of St. Elmo's Fire. If they are electrical, they are somehow created in the air close to the planes, rather than anything shot like artillery shells or anything else flaoting in the air in the wait for planes.
Induction is suggested by the reports that the foo-fires kept up with the plane, at fixed distances, regardless of plane speed, changes in speed or changes in direction.
Electrical induction of some sort would explain such marvellous synchronization.
Induction, however, fails completely to describe what happend when a fire-ball zooms upwards leaving the plane. Apparently the balls fly paths of thousands of feet away from the planes.
The common experience that resembles this trick is ball lightning. How anybody could produce ball lightning is unknown. Exactly what ball lighting may be is also unknown. But it is quite harmless thing, even as the German foo-balls are reported to be.
A reason for the foo-balls, again based on experience, is interference, with radar, radio, or perhaps with a plane's ignition, but past tests have indicated you need a power plant equal to Niagara Falls to stop a plane's ignition four or five miles away.
