Ancillary Mercy полностью

Many similar, baffling sightings occurred throughout the war. An RAF bomber over Zuider Zee in Holland in March 1942 saw a luminous orange disc or sphere following the plane, about one hundred or two hundred yards away. The tail gunner fired some rounds—no effect—and the object departed at 1,000 mph. On August 12, 1942, a U.S. Marine sergeant in the Pacific saw a formation of about 150 objects, no wings or tails, wobbling slightly, not Japanese planes. He called it “the most awe-inspiring and yet frightening spectacle I have ever seen in my life.”¹² On August 29, 1942, an Army Air Corps control tower operator named Michael Solomon in Columbus, Mississippi, saw two round reddish objects descend near the AAC flying school, hover, accelerate, and speed away.¹³

Such sightings continued through 1943 and 1944. In November 1944, a B-17 pilot in Austria reported being paced by an amber-colored, disc-shaped object. In January 1945, a pilot with the 415th Night Fighter Squadron was followed by three red and white lighted objects which followed his evasive maneuvers. In France that month, an American pilot reported being paced by an object at around 360 mph before it “zoomed up into the sky.” In March 1945, while in the Aleutian Islands, fourteen sailors aboard the U.S. attack transport Delarof saw a dark sphere rise out of the ocean, follow a curved trajectory, and fly away after circling their ship.¹⁴

The last significant foo fighter sighting occurred in the Pacific, and nearly brought down an American plane. On August 28, 1945, less than three weeks after the atomic bombings and Japanese surrender, twelve 5th Air Force intelligence specialists aboard a C-46 flew toward Tokyo in advance of the occupation forces. As the plane approached Iwo Jima at ten thousand feet, the crew saw three teardrop-shaped objects, brilliantly white—“like burning magnesium” —and closing on a parallel course to the plane. The navigational needles went wild, the left engine faltered and spurted oil, the plane lost altitude, and the crew prepared to ditch. Then, in a close formation, the objects faded into a cloud bank. At that moment, the plane’s engines restarted, and the crew safely flew on. One of the plane’s passengers was future UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield.¹⁵

One would expect that events such as these warranted an investigation, and that is what they received. There were at least two official American investigations of foo fighters. The U.S. 8th Air Force, under the command of General James Doolittle, conducted a study, although no copy of it has come to light. The report is said to have concluded that the sightings were possibly Axis experimental weapons, static electricity charges, misidentification of ordinary sights, or some kind of “mass hallucination.” The young OSS also investigated the phenomenon. At first its investigators believed the sightings to be German experimental craft, but soon discounted that theory. Donovan and his staff apparently settled on the notion that the objects, if that is what they could be called, were unusual but harmless. The New York Times published a story on foo fighters on January 2, 1945, under the title, “Balls of Fire Stalk U.S. Fighters in Night Assaults over Germany.” The article suggested German “sky weapons” as the culprit. None of the American investigators knew that the Germans and Japanese had encountered the same unusual phenomena, and had explained them as secret Allied weapons.¹⁶

It is not known whether American interest in foo fighters continued after the war. Quite possibly, foo fighters got lost in the shuffle. After all, no casualties resulted, and none of the objects showed clearly hostile activity. Much can get lost in something as big as the Second World War. But it remains puzzling that over fifty years later, no one really knows what the military or OSS thought about the strange foo fighters.

For a while after the war, stories of foo fighters remained submerged, the subject of discussion among veterans who had encountered them but not talked about openly. During the 1950s, the well-connected UFO investigator Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe collected foo fighter reports and said that “hundreds” of foo fighters were encountered by American, British, German, and Japanese pilots. One of his sources claimed to have a dozen or so reports that Pacific gunners fired at strange objects circling their ships.¹⁷ Considering what little about foo fighters has slipped out, such reports could well be true. Unfortunately, we will probably never know. Reports like Keyhoe’s and Stringfield’s lack official sanction, and for that reason elicit mere shrugs and smiles from the military and press—that is, when they are not simply ignored, which is the rule.

GHOST ROCKETS