Foo fighters: lights pacing US night fighters over the Rhine, December 1944 (1944)
Night-fighter crews of the US 415th Squadron reported red, green and amber lights pacing their aircraft over the Rhine, closing to 1,000 feet. SHAEF passed the reports to the British Air Ministry, which suggested flak rockets but conceded the affair 'is still something of a mystery'.
- Case number
- TU-1944-900001
- Date
- 16 December 1944
- Location
- Rastatt and Breisach area, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
- Coordinates
- 48.857° N, 8.203° E
- Shape
- light
- Colour
- Unknown
- Witnesses
- 14
- Status
- unresolved
Case summary
On the night of 16-17 December 1944 a crew of the US 415th Night Fighter Squadron, flying an intruder mission about 20 miles north of Breisach, reported five or six red and green lights in a 'T' formation at about 800 feet. The pilot first took them for flak; ten minutes later the same lights were closer and astern, holding 1,000 feet off through turns before vanishing. The squadron's mission report headed 17-18 December notes that its pilots had named these lights 'Foo-Fighters'; the documents differ by a day over which night the episode belongs to.
Squadron intelligence officer Captain F. B. Ringwald compiled sortie reports covering fourteen separate incidents between December 1944 and January 1945; with no answer at XII Tactical Air Command, SHAEF asked the British Air Ministry. In a memorandum of 13 March 1945 the Air Ministry wrote that a few of the alleged aircraft might be Me 262 jets and that flak rockets were 'the most likely explanation', but conceded that 'the whole affair is still something of a mystery', the evidence too sketchy for a definite conclusion. Ground-control radar returned no enemy aircraft.
Postwar enquiries did not settle it: thirteen scientists, engineers and former Luftwaffe officers questioned by US Air Force Europe intelligence in autumn 1945 knew of no German weapon that fitted. The 1953 Robertson Panel floated St. Elmo's fire, electrostatic effects or reflections from ice crystals; none has been demonstrated against the record.
Nearby strategic sites
- RAF Bentwaters & Woodbridge (East Gate) — 598 km away