Talk:Foo fighter
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Do the following assertions need to be mentioned:
- The Foo Fighters over Europe disappeared when the Allies captured the territory where German secret research labs were known to exist.
http://www.project1947.com/articles/amlfoo.htm
- The speculation that it was a device intended to give off light to aid Nazi fighters. http://www.phenomenamagazine.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Area+51&action=page&obj_id=3443&type_id=3&cat_id=132&sub_id=0
- The speculation that it was just vertigo (hallucinations due to the unnatural condition of being up in the air) http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/abwatch/naziufo/naziufo2.html
- Speculation that it was ordinary Nazi planes that were equipped with an anti-radar device. http://www.ufo.freewire.co.uk/foofighters.htm
- This page http://www.qtm.net/~geibdan/newse/foo/foo2.html has a story that asserts that a plane was lost as a result of foo fighter action, and another suffered engine trouble.
- http://www.qtm.net/~geibdan/newse/foo/foo1.html in a fifth-hand report, says they destroyed a bomber. Most of the page is absurd.
[edit] Ummm, Me 262?
After reading the description here, and then on other pages I googled, I would like to propose that the series of foo fighters seen by the US night figther pilots were possibly the Me 262B-1a/U1. The B-1/U1 was a "quick and dirty" conversion of the B-1 trainer to the NF role via the addition of the FuG-218 Neptun radar.
This aircraft would:
- Show two glowing balls of light, unlike the Me 163
- Be able to maintain formation for lengthy periods of time
- Easily be able to keep up with any US aircraft in a dive
- Easily "zoom up into the sky"
Limited operations started in October 1944, and continued until the end of the war IN May 1954, so the time frame of the Time article (Jan 1945) is well within the realm of possibility. I know they were flown operationally only by 10./NJG 11, as well as experimentally by Kommando Stamp/Kommando Welter. If the US pilots met aircraft operated by the later, that might explain why they didn't actually get fired on.
Frankly I can't imagine why anyone would even think the description fits the Me 163, and at the same time why no one has proposed the Me 262 instead. I believe this is simply an initial guess made in 1944, one that has remained with us even in the face of better post-war information.
Note this item (found in the Time article):
Day bombers have met the Me163, which has an explosive charge in the nose and is apparently designed to crash into Allied planes.
This is almost certainly a reference to the Enzian missile, not the Me 163. The Enzian looks quite a bit like the 163, and indeed was remotely controlled in order to explode near bombers. It shows that given the limited information available during the war, experimental designs could easily be mistaken for ones that were already known. The point here is that since the Me 163 was known earlier than the Me 262 (albiet not long) it is not all that difficult to believe they would have ascribed it to the first thing they could think of.
BTW, many of the articles noted above make mention of the foo fighters not showing up on radar. This is hardly surprising, Germany is well beyond the horizon as seen by the Chain Home sites in England, which would be the primary radar sites during this period. Although there were short-range gunlaying systems on the continent, notably the excellent SCR-584, these had ranges of about 25 miles and were attached to AA guns. The mention of a "sector radar" not seeing them is simply laughable.
Maury 13:28, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] External images
Please dont link them like that. I have uploaded it to wikipedia with a fair-use tag but it is likely PD as I believe it is a US gov employee taking the picture. That needs to be verified. --Cat out 10:20, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
the article has one source. the paragraphs under Etymology and History subtitles do not cite their sources (we can presume one). I request research into the sources of those claims.
