photometric measures of the original negatives which argue against a fabrication. (2)
In the 50 or so years since the Trents had their strange encounter, the photographs have been repeatedly subjected to more and more sophisticated analyses, and have passed every test. This case is just one of a large number of sightings of highly unusual, apparently intelligently guided objects, seen both in the skies and on the ground, that have been occurring for decades. There are, of course, various theories to account for these sightings, aside from the sceptical notion that all are, without exception, hoaxes, illusions or misidentifications of ordinary phenomena.
The most widely accepted theory is, of course, the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), which holds that genuine UFOs are spacecraft piloted by explorers from another planet. This theory has the greatest currency in the United States. In Europe, more credence is given to an alternative theory known as the Psycho-social Hypothesis, which suggests that encounters with UFOs and ‘aliens’ may be due to subtle and ill-understood processes occurring within the mind of the percipient. Inspired by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung, who examined UFOs in his book Flying Saucers A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (1959), the psycho-sociologists see such encounters as similar to waking dreams that fulfil an undefined psychic need. (To Jung, the circular shape of the UFO suggested a psychic need for wholeness and unity, represented by the mandala, a circular symbol identified by Jung as one of the archetypes residing in humanity’s collective unconscious.)
There are a number of secondary theories for UFOs, including the idea that they are time machines from the future, that they are actually living beings indigenous to interplanetary space, that they originate in other dimensions of existence and so on, all of which are beyond the scope of this book. The idea that UFOs are man- made, and based on plans captured by the Allies in the ruins of Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War, has been put forward by a number of writers and researchers. Outlandish as it may sound, it is actually well worth examining the evidence for ‘Nazi flying saucers’.
Although it set the stage for the drama of modern ufology, Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting of nine anomalous objects flitting between the peaks of the Cascade Mountains was not the first twentieth-century UFO encounter. In the closing stages of the Second World War, Allied pilots on night-time bombing raids over Europe frequently reported strange flying objects. These objects were christened Too Fighters’, after a catchphrase in the popular Smokey Stover comic strip. ‘Where there’s foo, there’s fire.’ (‘Foo’ was also a play on the French word feu, meaning fire.) The aircrews suspected that the objects might be some kind of German secret weapon. On 2 January 1945, the New York Herald Tribune carried the following brief Associated Press release:
Now, it seems, the Nazis have thrown something new into the night skies over Germany. It is the weird, mysterious Too fighter’ balls which race alongside the wings of Beaufighters flying intruder missions over Germany. Pilots have been encountering this eerie weapon for more than a month in their night flights. No one apparently knows what this sky weapon is. The ‘balls of fire’ appear suddenly and accompany the planes for miles. They seem to be radio-controlled from the ground, so official intelligence reports reveal. (3)
In their book Man-Made UFOs (1994), Renato Vesco (a pioneer of the Nazi-UFO hypothesis) and David Hatcher Childress cite the testimony of a former American flying officer who had worked for the intelligence section of the Eighth Air Force towards the end of the war. Wishing to remain anonymous, the officer said to the New York press:
‘It is quite possible that the flying saucers are the latest development of a “psychological” anti-aircraft weapon that the Germans had already used. During night missions over western Germany I happened to see on several occasions shining discs or balls that followed our formations. It was well known that the German night fighters had powerful headlights in their noses or propeller hubs — lights that would suddenly catch the target, partly in order to give the German pilots better aim but mostly in order to blind the enemy tail gunners in their turrets. They caused frequent alarms and continual nervous tension among the crews, thereby lowering their efficiency. During the last year of the war the Germans also sent up a number of radio-controlled bright objects to interfere with the ignition systems of our engines or the operation of the on-board radar. In all probability American scientists picked up this invention and are now perfecting it so that it will be on a par with the new offensive and defensive air weapons.’ (4)
Unfortunately, Vesco and Childress are not forthcoming with a detailed reference for this statement.
The British UFO investigators Peter Hough and Jenny Randies make the interesting point that the Second World War saw more people in the skies than any other prior period, and that it was therefore no great surprise that UFOs should have been spotted in abundance. (5) Of course, this statement carries the implication of a likely nonhuman origin of the objects, which advocates of the Nazi-UFO hypothesis hotly dispute: for them, the large number of Foo Fighter sightings, coupled with the obvious interest the objects showed in Allied aircraft, strongly implies that they were built specifically to interact in some way with those aircraft.
As is so often the case with the UFO mystery, genuine sightings generated various rumours of official interest in the phenomenon. For instance, there was, allegedly, a secret British government investigation into the Foo Fighter reports called the Massey Project. ‘However,’ write Hough and Randies, ‘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.’ (6)
Some encounters undoubtedly had mundane explanations. For example, during a bombing raid on a factory at Schweinfurt, Germany on 14 October 1943, flight crews of the American 384th Squadron observed a large cluster of discs, which were silver in colour, one inch thick and about three inches in diameter. They were floating gently down through the air directly in the path of the American aircraft, and one pilot feared that his B-17 Flying Fortress would be destroyed on contact with the objects. However, the bomber cut through the cluster of discs and continued on its way undamaged. It is quite possible that encounters such as this were actually with ‘chaff, pieces of metal foil released by German Aphrodite balloons to confuse radar by returning false images. (7)
Nevertheless, many aircrews reported events that were not so easy to explain, including the harassment of their aircraft by small, glowing, disc-shaped and spherical objects that were highly manoeuvrable. On 23 November 1944, Lieutenant Edward Schlueter of the 415th US Night Fighter Squadron was flying a heavy night fighter from his base at Dijon towards Mainz. Twenty miles from Strasbourg, Lieutenant Fred Ringwald, an Air Force intelligence officer who was on the mission as an observer, glanced out of the cockpit and noticed about ten glowing red balls flying very fast in formation. Schlueter suggested that they might be stars, but this explanation was proved wrong when the objects approached the plane.
Schlueter radioed the American ground radar station, informing them that they were being chased by German night fighters, to which the station replied that nothing was showing on their scope. Schlueter’s radar observer, Lieutenant Donald J. Meiers, checked his own scope, but could detect nothing unusual. Schlueter then decided to make for the objects at full throttle. The response from the Foo Fighters was instantaneous: their fiery red glow rapidly dimmed, until they were lost to sight. Less than two minutes later, however, they reappeared, although they seemed to have lost interest in the American aircraft and glided off into the night towards Germany. (8) Upon the objects’ departure, the fighter’s radar began to malfunction, forcing the crew to abandon their mission.
In an encounter of 27 November 1944 over Speyer, pilots Henry Giblin and Walter Cleary reported a large orange light flying at 250 mph about 1,500 feet above their fighter. The radar station in the sector replied that there was nothing else there. Nevertheless, a subsequent malfunction in the plane’s radar system forced it to return to base. An official report was made — the first of its kind — which resulted in many jokes at the pilots’ expense. (9) After the 27 November encounter, pilots who saw the Foo Fighters decided not to include them in their flight reports.
This self-imposed censorship was broken by two pilots named McFalls and Baker of the 415th, who submitted a flight report on their mission of 22 December 1944. In part, the report reads:
At 0600, near Hagenau, at 10,000 feet altitude, two very bright lights climbed toward us from the ground. They leveled off and stayed on the tail of our plane. They were huge bright orange lights. They stayed there for two minutes. On my tail all the time. They were under perfect control. Then they turned away from us, and the fire seemed to go out. (10)
