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 Strange Company - Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII

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By Keith Chester

Anomalist Books

Pb, 308pp, extensive notes, documents, index, £12 ISBN: 10: 1-933665-20-3

The first in-depth study of the foo-fighter mystery – a must read for UFOlogists of all persuasions.

Foo-fighters bring instant recognition among both rock fans and UFOlogists alike. Equally, most Forteans are aware of the stories told by veterans of the Second World War who described seeing balls of fire and other extraordinary aerial phenomena that paced, buzzed and pursued warplanes over the European and Pacific theatres of conflict. The foo-fighters are frequently mentioned in the early UFO literature but little was known about the origins of the mystery until recently. It was an account by the late UFO researcher Len Stringfield of his sighting of three teardrop-shaped, wingless objects during the summer of 1945 that piqued the interest of film-maker and UFO researcher, Keith Chester, leading him to write this book. Stringfield, then a sergeant serving with the US 5th air force intelligence corps, was a passenger on a C-46 flying near the Japanese islands when the objects came into view, an appearance which coincided with trouble in one of the aircraft's engines. Fortunately, his plane made it to dry land and Stringfield was left at a loss to explain what he saw as enemy aircraft. At that stage, Japan had capitulated and Germany was overrun by Allied forces.

There have been frequent rumours that the US and British governments conducted extensive investigations of these phenomena during the war. Until recently little research had been done into the extensive wartime archives, but this situation has changed with the release over the past two decades of formerly secret intelligence files. Evidence of the RAF's own inquiries into what they called 'night phenomena' came to light during my own research with Andy Roberts into British Government files at the UK National Archives for our book Out of the Shadows, published in 2002. These limited investigations concluded that some sightings by aircrew could be accounted for as misperceptions of rockets, flak and natural phenomena by aircrew whilst under extreme combat stress. Others remained unknown, a conclusion which neatly reflects that of post war official studies of flying saucers and UFOs.

Possibly the most intriguing revelation in this book are the results of Keith Chester's own inquiries at the US National Archives. These threw up evidence not only references to a joint US and British foo-fighter investigation later in the war, but also a direct link with post-war UFO studies by the intelligence services. Most important of all was the involvement in wartime investigations of Bob Robertson, the US physicist who presided over a scientific panel which reviewed the UFO evidence for the CIA in 1953. What Robertson and his team of experts actually concluded is unclear, as here the trail went cold for Chester's inquiries.

What emerges from this data is that the traditional idea of modern UFOlogy having its origins in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold's sighting is simply wrong. As Jerry Clark notes in the foreword to this, the first in-depth study of WW2 UFOs, it is now clear that the actual genesis of the phenomenon – and official concern about it - can be traced back to the middle of the Second World War. Strange Company makes clear for the first time just how frequent the wartime sightings actually were and the concern they created within Allied military, who seriously feared they could be advanced secret weapons developed by the Axis forces. This in itself gave rise to the persistent modern myth that claims the foo-fighters were highly advanced flying saucers created by Nazi scientists, whose designs were later captured and developed in secrecy by the Americans. The proponents of this bizarre theory will find little to support their claims in this sensible, sober book which largely sticks to primary source material apart from a few unfortunate lapses. It demonstrates clearly how the phenomena lumped together under the catch-all label 'foo fighters' included not only nebulous lights but also objects of all conceivable shapes and sizes, seen both at night and during daylight both from the air and ground, including craft-like objects that appeared to aircrew to be under some form of intelligent control.

The precise etymology of 'foo(or phoo) fighters' nevertheless remains something of an enigma, which is touched upon only briefly in Chester's book. Andy Roberts, in a survey carried out for the Fund for UFO Research during the 80s, discovered the phrase was not recognised by RAF aircrew who referred to the UFOs they saw during WW2 as 'the Light', 'The Thing' and 'balls of fire.' Strange Company traces the American usage to the 'foo mobile', a truck used by a madcap fireman Smokey Stover, a character in a wartime comic strip popular with US servicemen. His catch-phrase, 'where there's foo there's fire' was seemingly adopted by aircrew serving with the USAAF's 415th Night Fighter squadron to describe the many strange sightings they made during intruder missions over Nazi Germany in 1944-45. The fact that the Allies used a different nomenclature to describe the weird things they saw in the sky underlines the confusion that reigned in the military hierarchy which struggled to account for them.

Apart from a vague reference to the effect that while war was raging 'there appeared to be someone, or some-thing from somewhere else, watching us' Keith Chester steers clear of speculation or elaborate theories. The implication is that he feels an extraterrestrial explanation is the only viable option for some of the more baffling encounters reported by aircrew. In fact a whole range of alternative explanations for the individual sightings described in this book could have been explored. Its value ultimately lies in its usefulness as a source of original data, much of which has never seen the light of day before. Unfortunately, in his attempt to be write a comprehensive introduction Chester could not resist including a survey of pre-WW2 sightings which draws on some less than reliable sources. In chapter one he refers to a story from 1933 which he describes as 'the first officially acknowledged UFO sighting by a unit of the British RAF'. It describes how a flight of Hawker Furies encountered a brilliant light over Sussex which stalled engines and left one pilot with burns. In fact the source for this 'encounter' – a book on the history of 3 Squadron published in 1947 – does not exist, neither do the pilots named in the account who do not appear either in the squadron operations record books or the Air Force list. Some mysteries, it seems, are easier to resolve than others.

This review originally appeared in Fortean Times (FT) 229 Nov 2007.