The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific theaters of operations.
Though “foo fighter” initially described a type of UFO reported and named by the U.S. 415th Night Fighter Squadron, the term was also commonly used to mean any UFO sighting from that period. Formally reported from November 1944 onwards, witnesses often assumed that the foo fighters were secret weapons employed by the enemy.
The Robertson Panel explored possible explanations, for instance that they were electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo’s fire, electromagnetic phenomena, or simply reflections of light from ice crystals.
There has never been an official explanation for the strange balls of lights the pilots encountered.
Bob B
My Dad was Deputy Commander with the 36th Fighter Group during WWII flying the unfriendly skies over Europe. Dad related encounters to me of seeing what became known as ‘Foo Fighters’ while piloting his P-47. Foo Fighters are and were real. What exactly they are or were remains uncertain. But many reports of tube like lights flying along as if keeping formation with fighter planes were shared between certain fighter pilots within the squadron.