1944 Archive — Five anchor cases across the year the Foo Fighter phenomenon acquired its name: Bass Strait, Australia, February (bomber paced by instrument-disrupting shape); Sumatra, August 10 (Capt. Reida's B-29 throbbing sphere); Strasbourg, November 27 (Schlueter/Meiers/Ringwald — the founding Foo Fighter case); Hagenau, Germany, December 22 (McFalls's twin pursuing lights); Kaneohe, Hawaii, June 22 (disputed shoreline craft claim). thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1944: UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
1944 is the year the invasion of Europe and the war in the Pacific both produced their own UFO records in parallel. On D-Day itself, a waist gunner’s jammed weapon and a stalled engine coincided with an object appearing inside his bomber formation over Normandy; off Omaha Beach that same morning, a Navy gunner watched a dark ellipsoidal object circle low over the water for three minutes. Over Sumatra in August, Captain Alvah Reida’s B-29 crew watched a throbbing red sphere hold formation off their wing for eight full minutes before it broke away at a speed no aircraft of the era could match. And on the night of November 27, over the Rhine Valley north of Strasbourg, a night-fighter crew watched a red light close on their aircraft and vanish — an encounter so ordinary-sounding in the squadron’s own words that almost no one would remember it, except that the radar observer on board named it that night, and the name stuck for the rest of the war and beyond.</span
Date: 1944
Location: Royaume, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: UFO sightings photos in the history of UK.
Source: Undocumented
Date: 1944
Location: Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: World War II pilots on both sides of the conflict reported “Foo fighters,” bright, unidentified flying objects that move in the sky in a strange manner.
Source: Undocumented (see the November 27, 1944 entry below for the specific case that gave the phenomenon its name)
Date: 1944
Location: Austria, Klagenfurt
Time: Unknown
Summary: Major Leet, a bomber pilot, saw a luminous disc follow his plane and its maneuvers.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Jan. 2/3, 1944
Location: Halberstadt, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two rockets; altered course; fiery head and blazing stern.
Source: Page 54 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Jan. 5, 1944
Location: Kiel, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Black plate-sized discs.
Source: Page 55 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Editorial note: Previously dated “Jan. 5, 1943” on this archive — corrected to 1944, its chronological position in Ref. 1 and among surrounding January 1944 entries.
Date: Jan. 28, 1944
Location: Somewhere over France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Airborne red light.
Source: Page 56 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Jan. 29, 1944
Location: Location unknown
Time: Unknown
Summary: Red ball; yellow/red flames followed aircraft through evasive action.
Source: Page 56 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Feb. 1944
Location: Bass Strait, Australia
Time: 2:30 a.m.
Summary: At 2:30 a.m. a bomber crew at 4,500 feet altitude saw a dark shape pull alongside the plane and pace it at a distance of about 100 feet for about 18-20 minutes. A flickering light was visible at its trailing end, which illuminated the rear portion of the object. While the object was alongside, all radio and direction-finding instruments on the plane malfunctioned. Finally the object accelerated and sped away.
Source: Ref. 3; Bill Chalker, The Oz Files, 1996, pp. 35-36
Date: Feb. 4, 1944
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two sightings: stationary object of tear-drop shape, resembling a balloon; shiny silver ball looking like a very bright weather balloon with a metal sheen.
Source: Page 59 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Feb. 4, 1944
Location: Dutch coast
Time: Unknown
Summary: One long black stationary object, similar to a small flak burst floating.
Source: Page 59 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Feb. 8, 1944
Location: Frankfurt, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Silver-colored ball-like object, changing, stationary.
Source: Page 59 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Feb. 19/20, 1944
Location: Leipzig-Berlin area, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two objects: glowing balls; snake-like motion.
Source: Page 59-60 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Feb. 19/20, 1944
Location: Coblence and Aachen, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Silvery cigar-shaped object like an airship; appeared to be a line of windows along the bottom of the object.
Source: Page 60 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: February 22, 1944
Location: Washington, DC
Time: Unknown
Summary: A document circulating since the 1990s, purporting to be a “Double Top Secret” memo on White House stationary from Franklin D. Roosevelt dated February 22, 1944 and addressed to a “special committee on non-terrestrial science and technology,” alludes to recovered extraterrestrial technology and “intelligent life” elsewhere in the universe.
Source: majesticdocuments.com
Source Status: DISPUTED / HOAX-ADJACENT — This document originates from the same “Majestic documents” collection as the “MJ-12” papers, which a 1987 panel convened by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (led by aviation journalist Philip J. Klass) formally examined and characterized as forgeries — citing format, classification-marking, and typewriter-uniformity problems inconsistent with genuine period White House correspondence. No mainstream archive (including the FDR Presidential Library) has authenticated this or related documents from the same source. Retained here for the historical record of the claim itself, not as an established sighting or event.
Date: Feb. 24/25, 1944
Location: St. Quentin, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Three silver objects resembling zeppelins, moving independently of the wind, not interconnected.
Source: Page 60 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: March, 1944
Location: Carlsbad, NM
Time: Unknown
Summary: Air Force pilot saw fast-moving UFO speed out of sight over horizon.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, III
Date: April 11, 1944
Location: Location unknown, probably Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Projectiles resembling glider bombs; a large orange glow and smoke trail.
Source: Page 66 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: April 25, 1944
Location: France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Black tear-dropped craft.
Source: Page 63 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: April 26, 1944
Location: Essen, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Things; four orange glows; short stubby wings; football-sized, looking like large oranges.
Source: Page 64-65 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Summer 1944
Location: Normandy, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Los Angeles columnist George Todt, in a party of four Army officers including a Lt. Col., watched a pulsating red fireball sail up to the front lines, hover for 15 minutes, then move away.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, IV
Date: Summer 1944
Location: Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Egg-shaped, metallically glistening motionless object.
Source: Undocumented
Date: June 1944
Location: Normandy, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Luminescent discus-shaped object.
Source: Page 67-68 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: June 1944
Location: Palmyra Atoll
Time: About midnight.
Summary: Anchored at Palmyra Atoll, Edward W. Ludwick, Executive Officer on a Coast Guard-crewed cargo vessel, was witness to an unusual object. After searching for a lost Navy aircraft, a moving star-like light began to swell like a balloon as it came closer. Viewed with binoculars: it was a round sphere hovering, 5x brighter than stars. It moved slowly for half an hour, covering 90 degrees, then headed northward.
Source: Clark & Farish, Foo-Fighters of WWII
Date: June 1944
Location: Adriatic Sea
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Summary: At 11:00 a.m. a flight of three P-38 fighters at 33,000 feet saw above them, at an estimated altitude of 50,000 feet, a silver disc. The object descended to about 40,000 feet and paced the fighters for 3 minutes, then accelerated and sped away.
Source: Ref. 3; Jan Aldrich, Project ACUFOE, from CUFOS report form
Date: June 1, 1944
Location: Penuela, Puerto Rico
Time: 19:00
Summary: A witness, then 8 years old, was playing alone outside in Penuela, Puerto Rico around 7:00 pm when they heard a sound like a large, angry swarm of bees overhead. Taking cover on the ground, they looked up to see a hovering circular, very large round aircraft with many lights shining from underneath. It took off after a few seconds.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center
Date: June 6, 1944
Location: France
Time: 01:00
Summary: Secondhand account submitted on behalf of an 8th Air Force veteran: during a Normandy-landing-morning bombing mission targeting a railroad depot, roughly ten minutes after crossing the coast, an escort called “bandits” over the radio. The right waist gunner’s weapon jammed as an object appeared inside the formation; radio contact was lost and the No. 4 engine stalled. About fifteen minutes later the object disappeared, the jam cleared, and systems returned to normal.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center
Date: June 6, 1944
Location: Normandy Coast, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Dark ellipsoidal object, blunted on each end like a sausage.
Source: Page 67 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: June 6, 1944
Location: Just off Omaha Beach, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Edward Breckel, gunner on the USS George E. Badger, reported that a dark ellipsoidal object was seen five miles away, about 15 ft above the water, moving in a circular course for 3 minutes.
Source: Chester, page 67, CIRFO Orbit, Jan 1955
Date: June 22, 1944
Location: Oahu, Near Kaneohe, Hawaii
Time: Unknown
Summary: An object was observed; metallic traces found. One object was observed by one experienced male witness on the shore. Seven 4.5-foot-tall dwarfs, each wearing a green coverall, were seen. A separate claim holds that an object was shot down by the U.S. military as it attempted to depart Oahu near Kaneohe, and that one female occupant was captured and flown to Washington, DC.
Source: Webb, David, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports
Date: June/July 1944
Location: Normandy, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Spheres approximately the size of a football.
Source: Page 70 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: July 1944
Location: Turk Island
Time: Unknown
Summary: An unidentified object was tracked by radar only, by 11 witnesses. Sources are Condon Files and NICAP files; a thin citation, but this is all that survives. Radar-only contacts don’t mean much on their own, as the Navy and AAF were running into false returns around the Pacific throughout the war, but this is retained as part of the broader pattern of wartime Navy radar-anomaly interest.
Source: Jan Aldrich, UFO DNA – PB4Y1
Date: July 1944
Location: Brest, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two men of the 175th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, saw a large rectangular object with no apparent source of propulsion move steadily over the front lines and out to sea. The object at one point passed in front of the moon, briefly obscuring it from view.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, IV
Date: July 1944
Location: Normandy, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Targets flying at extremely high altitudes.
Source: Page 81 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Aug. 1, 1944
Location: Ploesti, Romania
Time: Unknown
Summary: Yellow object traveling several times the speed of an aircraft.
Source: Page 71 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Aug. 10, 1944
Location: Sumatra
Time: Unknown
Summary: Sighting of maneuvering UFO which paced a B-29 (the Reida case) during a mission.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, III
Date: August 10, 1944
Location: Kharagpur, India
Time: Unknown
Summary: Captain Alvah M. Reida was piloting a B-29 bomber based at Kharagpur, India, on a mission over Palembang, Sumatra, when his right gunner and co-pilot noticed a sphere “probably five or six feet in diameter, of a very bright and intense red or orange in color” that constantly throbbed, about 12,500 ft off the starboard wing. It kept pace with the B-29, then flying at 210 mph. Reida tried to shake it off, but it stayed in the same relative position until, after eight minutes, it “made an abrupt 90 degree turn and accelerated rapidly, disappearing in the overcast.”
Source: Undocumented
Date: Aug. 10/11, 1944
Location: Palembang, Sumatra
Time: Unknown
Summary: Reddish orange balls, about the size of a baseball; spherical object, probably 5 or 6 feet in diameter, of a very bright and intense red or orange in color.
Source: Page 71-74 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Aug. 12, 1944
Location: Pelice, Southern France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Enormous disc; circular lights (changing from bright yellow to white), like portholes in a ship; motionless.
Source: Page 75 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Aug. 13, 1944
Location: Kaoe Bay, Indonesia
Time: Unknown
Summary: Very brilliant light appearing to hover in air for at least five minutes.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Aug. 1944
Location: Bt. St. Lo and Vire, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Cherry-red light; size of large star; sat motionless in sky before disappearing into clouds.
Source: Undocumented
Date: End Aug., 1944
Location: Mattoon, IL
Time: Unknown
Summary: A mysterious man appeared at windows, as if in search of someone. He stunned witnesses by pointing at them a device that “made consciousness dissolve” and left a strange cloying smell behind.
Source: Magonia #51, FSR 61, 3
Date: Sept. 1944
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Time: 9 p.m.
Summary: Around 9 p.m. a Canadian soldier stationed near the front lines close to Antwerp observed “a glowing globe” traveling from the direction of the front line towards Antwerp. It seemed to be about a meter in diameter, as though of cloudy glass with a light inside, giving off a soft white glow. Its altitude seemed to be about 13 metres, speed about 50 km/h, with no sound of any sort. It was obviously powered and controlled. It was followed by another, which in turn was followed by others — five in all.
Source: Don Berliner files
Date: Sept. 1944
Location: Oak Ridge, TN
Time: Unknown
Summary: On the banks of the Clinch River at Oak Ridge, TN, a large windowless gaseous-diffusion plant — part of the Manhattan Project’s fissionable-material production — began operation in mid-September 1944. Shortly after the plant began operations, a strange, metallic-looking, tube-like object was reportedly spotted hovering over the road near the plant. The object moved away as a crowd started to gather. The sighting was reported to the FBI.
Source: Charles Fort; secondary reference via Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story
Date: Sept. 1944
Location: Unknown Japanese island
Time: Unknown
Summary: White object, egg-shaped, very brilliant.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Sept. 1944
Location: England
Time: Unknown
Summary: Bright spherical object, like a rolling ball.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Late Sept. 1944
Location: Dover, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: Solid black cylindrical shape; red glow emitting from rear.
Source: Page 81-82 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Fall 1944
Location: Holland
Time: Unknown
Summary: Light moving high in night sky.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Oct. 1944
Location: Southeast Holland
Time: Unknown
Summary: Field Artillery officer and men saw a brilliant object moving from NW to SW, crossing an arc of about 90 degrees in about 45 minutes.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, IV
Date: Oct. 10, 1944
Location: Alghut, Sweden
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Summary: At 8:00 p.m. a man on a bicycle was suddenly illuminated by a light beam from the woods, then saw a large shining sphere rise rapidly from the ground and hover at treetop height. It appeared moon-like, golden in color, and made no sound. After about 5 minutes the object abruptly disappeared.
Source: Anders Liljegren, AFU archives
Date: Oct. 16, 1944
Location: Formosa, Taiwan
Time: Unknown
Summary: Small black dot; hanging stationary.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Oct. 20, 1944
Location: Po Valley, Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Red light, appearance of an aircraft light.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Oct. 20, 1944
Location: Florence, Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two orange balls diving into the hills.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Oct. 25, 1944
Location: Omura, Japan
Time: Unknown
Summary: Multiple sightings of possible balloons.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Oct. 29, 1944
Location: Munich, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Light blue colored ball of fire approximately three feet in diameter.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Oct. 30/31, 1944
Location: Cologne, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: A ball of fire; circular, pale orange, clean-edged light.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Nov. 5, 1944
Location: Singapore, Malaya
Time: Unknown
Summary: A long purple-blue parabolic trail.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Nov. 5/6, 1944
Location: Aachen/Bonn, Aachen/Cologne, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Possible jet; single light; 5 free-lance visuals on jets, no A.I. or G.C.I. contacts; several flares similar to jets.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Nov. 16, 1944
Location: Enroute Leyte, Philippine Island
Time: 2355 (11:55 pm local)
Summary: USS Gilliam, en route Leyte, Philippine Island, from Oro Bay, New Guinea. Ship’s log reports Lt. J.L. Besmond, OOD, aboard USS Gilliam (APA 57), in company Task Unit 79.15.1, reporting an unidentified object at a distance of 21 miles.
Source: USS Gilliam ship’s log
Date: Nov. 22, 1944
Location: Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Spherical object, fluctuating in brightness, pyrotechnic pink in color, changing speeds violently, swift and jerking movements.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Nov. 24, 1944
Location: Northern Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Round amber light, luminous orange-yellow, blinding light; witness felt unbearable heat.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Nov. 26, 1944
Location: Mannheim, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Red light that disappeared in a long red streak.
Source: Undocumented
Date: November 27, 1944
Location: Rhine Valley, north of Strasbourg, France/Germany border
Time: Night — approximately 10:00 p.m.
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: The night that gave the entire “Foo Fighter” phenomenon its name. Lt. Edward Schlueter, radar observer Lt. Donald J. Meiers, and intelligence officer Lt. Fred Ringwald of the U.S. 415th Night Fighter Squadron, flying a Bristol Beaufighter on patrol along the Rhine north of Strasbourg, encountered lights that neither ground radar nor onboard radar could account for. The squadron’s own contemporaneous historical-data entry, in Schlueter’s words, records a single red light, roughly 2,000 feet off starboard, that “disappeared in a long red streak” after closing on the aircraft — a more modest account than the widely retold “eight to ten bright orange lights” version that has become the standard popular telling of this case. Meiers, agitated after the flight, coined the name by slamming down a copy of the Smokey Stover comic strip and invoking its firefighter catchphrase. [Full Report]
Source: 415th Night Fighter Squadron historical data, November 27, 1944 (U.S. Army); Jo Chamberlain, “The Foo-Fighter Mystery,” American Legion Magazine, December 1945; Keith Chester, Strange Company (2007)
Date: Late November (possibly 28-30), 1944
Location: Strasbourg, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Eight to ten lights in a row, glowing orange, moving at terrific speed.
Source: Undocumented
Editorial note: This entry’s description closely matches the popularized retelling of the November 27, 1944 case above; the two may be the same encounter recorded under slightly different dates, or a separate sighting influenced in the retelling by the more famous case. Retained separately given the source ambiguity.
Date: Late November, 1944
Location: Lingayen Gulf, Philippines
Time: Unknown
Summary: Bright green globe.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 1944
Location: Austria
Time: Unknown
Summary: B-17 pilot (William D. Leet) and crew, on a lone-wolf mission, were followed by an amber-colored disc.
Source: NICAP UFO Evidence, 1964, Hall, III
Date: Dec. 1944
Location: Bt. Strasbourg and Manheim, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Bright fuzzy round ball, twice the size of a full moon; yellow, white, red tint that was not a solid color; no radar return.
Source: Page 118-119 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Dec. 1944
Location: Bt. Frankfurt and Karlsruhe, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Three to four very bright balls, completely illuminated red, yellow, white and blue in color; size of a tennis ball at arm’s length.
Source: Page 119 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Dec. 1944
Location: Somewhere between eastern France and Western Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: String of lights, twelve to fifteen in number, orange to yellow in color, approximately four feet in diameter, stretching twice the length of the crew’s aircraft; no radar contact.
Source: Page 120 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Dec. 2, 1944
Location: Villafranca, Ghedi Airdrome area, Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: A steady, seemingly hanging light.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 5, 1944
Location: Rhine River area, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Alleged aircraft that climbed out of range in nothing flat.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 14/15, 1944
Location: Erstein, Germany
Time: Night
Summary: Brilliant red light, appeared to be 4 or 5 times larger than a star, going 200 mph.
Source: Page 96,130 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Mid Dec. 1944 through Dec. 24, 1944 (within the first two weeks of the Ardennes offensive)
Location: Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Amorphous reddish glow that at times appeared cigar-shaped.
Source: Undocumented
Editorial note: Previously listed as two separate entries on this archive (“Mid Dec. 1944” and “Sometime between Dec. 16 and 24, 1944”), both with identical wording. Merged here as a single entry pending a source that would distinguish them as two events.
Date: Dec. 17, 1944
Location: Breisach, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: 5 or 6 flashing red and green lights in a T-shape.
Source: Undocumented
Date: December 22, 1944
Location: Hagenau, Germany
Time: 6:00 am
Summary: Lt. David McFalls of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron was over Hagenau, Germany. At 6:00 am, he saw two “huge, bright orange lights” climbing toward the plane. McFalls dived, banked and turned his plane, but the lights stuck with him for two minutes, then peeled off and blinked out.
Source: Undocumented (widely corroborated in secondary 415th Night Fighter Squadron histories, e.g. Jo Chamberlain, American Legion Magazine, December 1945)
Date: Dec. 23/24, 1944
Location: Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Red streak in sky.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 23/24, 1944
Location: Germany (no positive location)
Time: Unknown
Summary: Glowing red object shooting straight up; appeared to be an aircraft doing a wingover, going into a dive and disappearing.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 26/27, 1944
Location: Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Multiple sightings: red balls of fire; two yellow streaks of flame that disappeared from view; the crew thought they felt prop wash; a group of lights making distinct lines, somewhat like arrows; a row of vertical white lights.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 26/27, 1944
Location: Worms, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Circular, fiery ball; triangle of ovals, three circular, reddish-blue in color, vivid lights looking like flames, in a tight inverted-triangle formation.
Source: Undocumented
Date: Dec. 27, 1944
Location: Luneville, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two sets of three red and white lights.
Source: Page 107-108,131 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Dec. 27, 1944
Location: France
Time: Unknown
Summary: Orange lights, singly and in pairs, suspended in air, moving slowly before disappearing.
Source: Page 108 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Dec. 28, 1944
Location: Neuwied / Koblenz, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: A green ball about six inches in diameter; motionless and did not appear to have anything supporting it.
Source: Page 108 Ref.1 (NICAP)
Date: Dec. 28, 1944
Location: Ardennes, Belgium
Time: Unknown
Summary: Large white light; no radar contact; went straight up at tremendous speed; disappeared.
Source: Page 108-110 Ref.1 (NICAP)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1944 — Two Fronts, Two Records, One Name That Outlasted the War
The 1944 archive splits cleanly along the war’s two main fronts. In the Pacific, the strongest case is Captain Alvah Reida’s August 10 encounter over Sumatra — a B-29 crew watching a throbbing red sphere hold station off their wing for eight minutes at 210 mph before it broke away with an acceleration no Japanese or Allied aircraft of the period could produce. The Kaneohe, Hawaii entry from June sits at the opposite end of the reliability spectrum: a claimed shootdown and capture of both craft and occupant, sourced to HUMCAT with no supporting primary documentation located, retained here as a claim rather than an established event. In Europe, the record runs from the D-Day landings themselves — a jammed waist gun and a stalled engine coinciding with an object inside a bomber formation over Normandy — through a summer and autumn of German and French sightings, to the case that closes the year and gives the whole later phenomenon its name.
That case, the night of November 27 near Strasbourg, is unremarkable by the standards of this archive taken on its own: a single red light, a few thousand feet off, gone within a minute. What makes it the year’s anchor entry is what happened next — Lt. Donald Meiers named it “Foofighter” on the spot, the term reached the New York Times within a week, and by January 1945 it was showing up in official U.S. military intelligence reports as unremarkable operational vocabulary. Also flagged this year: a widely circulated “Roosevelt memo” on non-terrestrial science, sourced to the same disputed document collection that produced the debunked MJ-12 papers, carried here for the historical record of the claim but not as established fact.
“It kept up with the B-29, then flying at 210 mph… after eight minutes, it made an abrupt 90 degree turn and accelerated rapidly, disappearing in the overcast.”
Captain Alvah M. Reida’s crew, describing the August 10, 1944 encounter over Palembang, Sumatra.
