During the military campaigns of World War II, both allied and axis powers noticed strange balls of light following and matching the maneuvers of their aircraft. The objects seemed to maneuver with great speed and the Allies began to worry that the German's had developed a new weapon with startling capabilities.

The objects were dubbed "foo fighters." because of a popular comic strip at the time, Smoky Stover. Smoky was fond of saying "Where there's foo there's fire" and the objects seem to be fiery, rounded shapes.

On September 29, 1944, at 10:45 a.m., a test pilot was trying out a new Messerschmitt jet, ME 262 Schwalbe, when his attention was suddenly caught by two luminous points situated on his right. He shot at full speed in that direction and found himself face to face with a cylindrical object, more than three hundred feet long with some openings along its side, and fitted with long antennae placed in front up to about halfway along its length. Having approached within about 1,500 feet of the craft the pilot was amazed to see that it was moving at a speed of more than 1,200 m.p.h.

December 22, 1944: The pilot of the Allied plane was nervous. He was at 10,000 feet, over enemy territory. Somewhere hidden in the black sky there was sure to be German fighter aircraft. He scanned the darkness looking for trouble. Suddenly he saw two large, orange glowing balls approaching him. His radio operator saw them too. They didn't look like enemy fighters, but neither did they look like anything he'd ever seen.

The balls suddenly leveled off and started following the plane. The pilot decided to try and lose them with evasive maneuvers. He put his plane into a steep dive. The objects immediately followed. Next he tried a sharply banked turn. The objects stayed with him. For several more minutes the pilot used his best tricks to lose his pursuers and failed. When he was about to give up suddenly the objects were gone, disappearing suddenly into the night. During he whole incident not a shot was fired.

More encounters with the foo fighters were reported, but none of the objects ever seemed to take any aggressive action, so the idea that they were an advanced enemy weapon was dropped. After the war was over it was learned that German pilots had been seeing the same things and German military authorities had feared an Allied secret weapon.

A solid conclusion has never been given pertaining to this topic, the military either plays it off as the airmen's imagination or ball lightning. Ball lightning is possible, but this many occurrences during a specific amount of time is improbable.

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