The article below was published in the daily newspaper The News-Press, Fort Myers, Florida, USA, page 1, January 2, 1945.
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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.
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 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, 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 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 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 dove at 360 miles an hour. It kept right off our wing tips for awhile and then zoomed up into the sky.
"When I first saw the things 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 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 their raids over the Reich.
