During World War II, thousands of aircraft were flying above Europe and the Pacific on bombing raids, reconnaissance missions
and other operations. Never before had so many people been above the clouds, scanning clear skies with eagle-eyed intensity on the constant look-out for enemy action. It is hardly surprising that the UFOs, which had probably always been ‘up there’, suddenly got spotted in great abundance. But as some worried people soon came to ask: were they fighting enemies from only this world?
Whilst scattered sightings occurred throughout the war and across the globe, it was late 1943 before air crews began to realise that something odd was going on. At first, those who reported these incidents were laughed at or told they must be suffering from battle fatigue. But such easy rationalisations soon had to be rejected.
Hillary Evans reported a sighting on 14 October 1943, when a bomber raid on an industrial plant at Schweinfurt in Germany was mounted by the American 384th. On their final bombing run, many crew members observed ‘a cluster of discs’ dead ahead. These were ‘silver coloured, about one inch thick and three inches in diameter’. They were ‘gliding down slowly’ in a tight group. One B-17 pilot, unable to avoid contact, feared imminent disaster as his plane sliced through the small lights. But, to his intense relief, the bomber continued on it’s way, unhindered and undamaged.
By autumn 1944,
reports were so commonplace over France, Germany and surrounding areas that crews had nicknamed the lights ‘foo
fighters’, apparently after a comic strip popular at the time. ‘Foo’ was, presumably, a corruption of the French word ‘Feu’, which means fire.
According to rumour, there was also a British investigation into the foo fighter reports, called the Massey Project. However, Air Chief Marshal Sir Victor Goddard – who was an outspoken believer in alien craft during the 1950s – flatly denied this, and said that Treasury approval for such a minor exercise at a time when Britain was fighting for its survival would have been ludicrous.
W.A. Harbinson contends that there really was a German secret weapon – a small, jet-powered, remote-controlled disc, effectively a prototype of larger (manned) versions that would have flown had the war not ended when it did.
According to post-war German accounts that Harbinson traced, the device was designed by Rudolph Schriever in spring 1941, first tested in June 1942 and flown in earnest in August 1943. Schriever reportedly built a full-scale circular craft some 137 feet in diameter that was scheduled to fly in April 1945. The test was abandoned with the advance of the allies on Berlin, the death of Hitler and the end of the war in Europe. But Harbinson found evidence that the working full-scale prototype was built in the Harz Mountains during 1944 and secretly flown on 14 February 1945.
It can be assumed that this technology
was acquired by America during Operation Paperclip.