The Foo Fighters of World War II. It was nearly the end of World War II. But for the airmen of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, it felt more like the beginning of War of the Worlds.
Lt. Fred Ringwald was the first to see it. He was riding as observer in a night fighter piloted by Lt. Ed Schlueter, with Lt. Donald J. Meiers on radar. It was a late November evening in 1944, partly cloudy with a quarter moon. They were roaming the Rhine Valley just north of Strasbourg on the French-German border when Ringwald said, “I wonder what those lights are, over there in the hills,” according to an American Legion Magazine story on the sightings from 1945.
There were eight to 10 of them in a row, glowing fiery orange. Then Schlueter saw them off his right wing. They checked with Allied ground radar, but they registered nothing. Thinking that the lights might be some kind of German air weapon, Schlueter turn the plane to fight…only to have the lights vanish.
We will be chatting with two guest tonight who both have seen these strange lights on their property along with strange cryptids.