The Foo Fighters of World War Two
From Disturbing History by Disturbing History-True Stories
May 24, 2026 · 1h 1m
About this episode
This episode explores the mysterious Foo Fighters reported by pilots during World War Two and their implications in military aviation history.
The story of the Foo Fighters of World War Two is one of the strangest, best-documented, and least-resolved cases in the history of military aviation. In the late autumn of nineteen forty-four, pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, flying night fighter and bomber missions over Europe, began returning to their bases with reports of glowing objects that paced their aircraft, performed seemingly impossible maneuvers, and then vanished into the dark. The reports were taken seriously by intelligence officers. They were corroborated by multiple witnesses across multiple squadrons. They reached the press in early nineteen forty-five, when Time magazine ran a feature on the phenomenon. And they continued through the end of the war, in both the European and Pacific theaters, with no satisfactory official explanation. This episode follows the story from its earliest documented appearances over the Rhine Valley, with the Four Hundred Fifteenth Night Fighter Squadron and pilots like Lieutenant Edward Schlueter, through the coining of the term foo fighter by radar observer Donald Meiers, who borrowed the word from the cult-favorite Smokey Stover comic strip by Bill Holman. From there…
Topics covered
- military aviation
- UFO phenomena
- World War Two
- glowing objects
- pilot reports
- postwar theories
Keywords
- Foo Fighters
- World War Two
- military aviation
- UFO
- pilot reports
- Project Blue Book
- Robertson Panel
- glowing objects
- postwar theories
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Time magazine, Project Blue Book, Robertson Panel
Books & works: Smokey Stover
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