Hi Judy, again, sorry but I was in a hurry in the last post here.
It's a fact that the Germans were working on all sorts of secret developments in both aviation and rocket technology - including a stealth bomber.
Yes, but there's no real secret today about what they were into. They were indeed very open-minded and experimenting along many lines. (Where's the moral in that? That a Fascist dictatorship were trying to get zero gravity to work, the first to build missiles, etc? But I think it's because the Nazi Party at core was grounded in the Occult. Aaaanyway - )
The only useable, practical developments war-time Germany came up with in the air were of course the V1 and, very late, the V2. These are rockets or missiles. They were on the cusp with the first fighter-jet too.
Throughout the latter stages of the war when the Allies went on bombing missions, it was frequently reported that they encountered UFOs. The term 'UFO' had not yet been coined. And to my knowledge there are no detailed existing reports. My guess would be that they encountered saucers, but I can't prove that. The Allied airmen called them "foo-fighters" anyway. They were far more maneuverable than aircraft or rockets, able to basically buzz all around an aircraft at whim.
Encounters with foo fighters were not so rare, but it seems reports were usually just verbal and shared among the crews who had more on their minds as they were in a war.
I have seen a couple of photos somewhere years ago ... they just showed very bright lights in b/w. Nah, IMHO foo-fighters were not German. They didn't, er, fight, for one thing! If Germany had still had a viable airforce, it's likely they also encountered these objects. maybe they did.
I know that during its years of development, the authorities actively encouraged people to believe that sightings of the stealth bomber were UFOs. If you look at some of the photos here, to me it would be incredibly easy to think it was a UFO as it shot past you, especially if you didn't know such a shape of aircraft existed! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit
I do agree. It rarely happened though, since the whole point of stealth technology is not often to be seen. Probably a majority of UFOs have lights of some kind (using the word 'lights' - we don't know the function), sometimes of blinding brightness.
Just my two cents' worth! I'll be interested to read some of the reports that are being released though.
Yes. The report said that the WW II sighting-reports were actually destroyed. So, as far as I know, whatever incident it was that caused Churchill and Eisenhower to bring a black-out down on first one, and then subsequent bomber-to-UFO encounters, we don't know what was actually seen or what happened. 🙁
V
Foo Fighters
I haven't read anything on foo fighters for thirty years, so I thought I'd look on the modern www. It's a bit difficult as a well-known rock group took the name so nearly all hits are for them! I did find:
Photos of WW II foo fighters:
http://www.santafeghostandhistorytours.com/ufoII.html
The first sightings occurred in November 1944, when pilots flying over Germany by night reported seeing fast-moving round glowing objects following their aircraft. The objects were variously described as fiery, and glowing red, white, or orange. Some pilots described them as resembling Christmas tree lights and reported that they seemed to toy with the aircraft, making wild turns before simply vanishing. Pilots and aircrew reported that the objects flew formation with their aircraft and behaved as if under intelligent control, but never displayed hostile behavior. However, they could not be outmaneuvered or shot down. The phenomenon was so widespread [my emphasis - V] that the lights earned a name - in the European Theater of Operations they were often called "kraut fireballs" but for the most part called "foo-fighters". The military took the sightings seriously, suspecting that the mysterious sightings might be secret German weapons, but further investigation revealed that German and Japanese pilots had reported similar sightings.
There's a lot more on foo fighters from the same page, http://www.foofighters.net/Foo_fighter/encyclopedia.htm
This includes other wartime UFO sightings such as a cylindrical object "bigger than a plane" with portholes. I didn't know till now what the objects were originally called by airmen on our side. The term had to be "cleaned up" from f******* foo fighters to the shorter version, as they were seen apparently thousands of times and a viable term was indeed needed, to report.
So you see. It's so "easy" to opinionate that "maybe they were a German invention" (not an exact quote). But in fact these objects were encountered towards the end of WWII by the British, the American, the German, and the Japanese.
That's what I mean (I know, Judy, you won't mind me citing the personal example :):) ) and I'm using it as an impersonal example) about skepticism not knowing the facts.
In fact, it seems to me that there was a simply massive story to be told of what happened during WWII with the crews in the air on both sides encountering "foo fighters", but it will always now be an untold story. Such encounters were apparently frequent. But virtually all are passed on now, and in the midst of war people had more urgent things to do than to keep records... 🙁
V
Thanks for posting those photos V - most interesting. I'd never heard of them before. What do I make of them - I dunno! :confused:
On the plus side, they all look fairly similar; on the minus, especially with the old photos, it could simply be grainy film. My mother used to teach photography and had to touch up nearly every photo, to remove the white spots (and sometimes black ones!)
I have a friend who was a Concord pilot - I must ask him what he knows of that incident. I never heard of it during my years with BA, which seems rather strange.
My cousin, who was an army officer at the time, was out one night (I think in the 70's) with some of his friends (and no, he wasn't drinking, as he was a Christian Scientist ;)) They all saw from the car what they could only describe as a UFO and it shook him up. So I haven't got a completely closed mind about them - I always feel that there are usually natural explanations for things, but it isn't always the case.
But then, why is the SETI Institute still trying to find life (I'm talking about a bit more than organisms here) on other planets and galaxies?
Questions, questions!
Judy
On the plus side, they all look fairly similar; on the minus, especially with the old photos, it could simply be grainy film. My mother used to teach photography and had to touch up nearly every photo, to remove the white spots (and sometimes black ones!)
The photos are very poor, granted. They are not all fakes, for one thing, I'm sure. They've been around since the war itself: I was 'only' born in the fifties, but saw them very early on. Point 1 is that no one went up there, or stood on a runway, in the war, with the intent of taking photos of UFOs, so there are only a very few photos of poor quality. Point 2, however, is that these grainy b/w photos were backed up by the testimony of apparently thousands of aircrew on all sides - American, British, German, Japanese. The foo fighters were a mystery to all, but "intelligently controlled" and sometimes in formation.
It was a different age, and there was a war on. If such happened today, journalists and authors would be swamping aircrew for interviews, and many detailed books would come out on the subject. I'm certain it was a widespread phenomenon, from all accounts, in WWII, but people didn't know what to make of it, and few records were kept. Those that were kept are apparently destroyed. So it's a part of lost or "hidden history": the bizarre tale, though true, just doesn't fit into the meme of what WWII "was", so it's swept under the carpet.
As it was Time magazine at the time did run an article on foo fighters.
I have a friend who was a Concord pilot - I must ask him what he knows of that incident. I never heard of it during my years with BA, which seems rather strange.
It's famous footage. You never saw it? The moving film of it is out there on the net so I'll go do a hunt. We've already posted it once on this thread, I'm sure! It's typical of the "foo fighters" of WWII.
My cousin, who was an army officer at the time, was out one night (I think in the 70's) with some of his friends (and no, he wasn't drinking, as he was a Christian Scientist ;)) They all saw from the car what they could only describe as a UFO and it shook him up. So I haven't got a completely closed mind about them - I always feel that there are usually natural explanations for things, but it isn't always the case.
You wouldn't dare do this today as kids would ridicule you for the rest of your teaching career. But one day in the 1960s, in the middle of a music lesson, the mild-mannered teacher at an all-boys school just dropped the teaching and came out with what he and one or two others together had seen the other night while crossing a field at night. In awe, he described a brightly glowing diamond-shaped object which sat still in the sky over them, but with balls of light flying around it like electrons in silence. No way are such things experimental craft of any nation, though admittedly stealth aircraft could account for the odd one or two reports way back in the 70s.
Concord and foo fighter?
V
Thanks for the Concorde footage. If it happened in the 1970's, I was probably on a trip. I used to choose to go to the Far East and Australia for 3 weeks because that's the part of the world I loved the most (the Far East) and it also gave me 6 nights off when I got home (instead of only 3 on shorter trips). Many of the hotels we stayed in during those days were quite primitive - you were lucky if you had piped Musak in your room - no radio or television, so there are gaps in my historical knowledge of those days! 😀
I often learn of things years later that somehow had passed me by!
Judy