Foo fighter

The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific theaters of operations.

Though "foo fighter" initially described a type of UFO reported and named by the U.S. 415th Night Fighter Squadron, the term was also commonly used to mean any UFO sighting from that period. Formally reported from November 1944 onwards, witnesses often assumed that the foo fighters were secret weapons employed by the enemy.

The Robertson Panel explored possible explanations, for instance that they were electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo's fire, electromagnetic phenomena, or simply reflections of light from ice crystals.

The nonsense word "foo" emerged in popular culture during the early 1930s, first being used by cartoonist Bill Holman, who peppered his Smokey Stover fireman cartoon strips with "foo" signs and puns.

The term "foo" was borrowed from Bill Holman's Smokey Stover by a radar operator in the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, Donald J. Meiers, who (it is agreed by most 415th members) gave the foo fighters their name. Meiers was from Chicago and was an avid reader of Bill Holman's strip, which was run daily in the Chicago Tribune. Smokey Stover's catch-phrase was "where there's foo, there's fire". In a mission debriefing on the evening November 27, 1944, Fritz Ringwald, the unit's S-2 Intelligence Officer, stated that Meiers and Ed Schleuter had sighted a red ball of fire that appeared to chase them through a variety of high-speed maneuvers. Fritz said that Meiers was extremely agitated and had a copy of the comic strip tucked in his back pocket. He pulled it out and slammed it down on Fritz's desk and said "... it was another one of those fuckin' foo fighters!" and stormed out of the debriefing room.

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