All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S07E14.Foo.Fighters.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Tonight,

a fiery phenomenon
terrorizing American airmen

during World War II,

Eight to 10 balls of fire

come at the Night
Fighter Squadron

with serious speed and intent.

A huge red light

traveling at an estimated
200 miles an hour.

He aims his plane towards
these balls of light

and prepares to engage.

And just like that, the
lights all just disappear.

The men call these
fiery orbs Foo Fighters.

They seem to be
stalking US pilots.

But what are they?

These pilots are
stressed and fatigued.

You're looking out
into the darkness,

your mind is going to
play tricks on you.

The witnesses were adamant,
they saw what they saw,

and it defied the
laws of physics.

Now, we explore
the top theories

surrounding these
strange encounters.

Maybe it was a
secret German weapon

on a collision course
with their airplane.

The idea of unidentified
flying objects

was almost entirely in
the realm of fiction.

This is an 80-year-old
mystery, and it's still here.

What's the hidden
truth

behind World War II's
mysterious Foo Fighters?

November 26th, 1944,

Longvic Air Base,
Dijon, France.

Allied forces are
battling their way

toward the German homeland,

when American pilot,
Edward Schlueter,

and his radar operator,
Donald Meiers,

take off on a search and
destroy mission over Germany

for the 415th Night
Fighter Squadron.

The 415th

Night Fighter Squadron is
the point of the spear

for a new type of
nighttime war fighting

near the end of World War II.

It's six months after D-Day,

Allied forces are
gaining ground,

and Germany is
getting desperate.

While the tide of
war is shifting

in the favor of the Allies,

there is an effort to bring the
war directly to German soil,

and that leads to a growing
emphasis on night fighting.

The 415th Night
Fighter Squadron

are flying these stealth planes,
these Bristol Beaufighters.

They're painted black, they
are just armed to the teeth;

they have guns, they have
cannons, they can drop bombs.

The tactic of
these night fighters

was to go after things
like supply trains

and military
installations after dark.

That night,
near Mannheim, Germany,

Schlueter and Meiers
attack and destroy

a German military train.

They're headed back to
Dijon,

and they see in the sky

something that
they can't explain;

it's like a big
red glowing light.

Schlueter reports that
there's a strange red light

about 2000 feet off
his starboard side.

It's like nothing
they've really seen before.

In the battlefield, there
are all sorts of lights

and explosions all the time,

but this is something
new, something different.

After it follows
their aircraft

for a pronounced period of time,

they notice that
the ball of light

suddenly disappears
in a long red streak.

Schlueter soon learns he's not alone.

Another aircrew
on the same squadron

encounter very similar
strange lights.

This has gone from
being a one-off incident

to something of a
developing phenomenon.

A few nights later,

the intelligence
officer, Fred Ringwald,

decides to come along
and see for himself.

His thinking is that perhaps

this is some sort of new
German secret weapon.

On this mission,
Schlueter and his crew

are on what's called
a ground sweep;

they're flying very
close to the ground,

following the Rhine River,

they're looking for
targets of opportunity,

but they're also trying to
stay below German defenses.

Ringwald suddenly spots

a strange cluster of orange
lights in the distance

off the left wing
of their aircraft.

This time, instead of
one big glowing red light,

they see maybe about eight to 10

reddish, orange glowing objects.

Schlueter thinks they
might just be stars twinkling

far, far away.

He recognizes that things
can look different at night

and over great
distances in the air.

But then they seem
to come closer,

and he realizes this is
not simple starlight.

It's eight to 10
balls of orange fire

that seem to be coming
towards his aircraft

at breakneck speed.

Schlueter is like,
"This is something

really bizarre."

So he gets on the
radio and he says,

"Have we got any enemy
aircraft in the area?"

And they say, "No.
What, are you crazy?

You're the only guys up there."

And yet men in the
plane,

they 100% see something
coming at them.

And so, Ed Schlueter, the pilot,

he's a trained fighter pilot,
he knows what he has to do.

He decides he's gonna
intercept whatever this is.

He prepares to engage
these strange lights

and prepares for a dogfight.

At the last moment,

these lights just disappeared
off at high speed.

A few weeks later,

as Lieutenant Harry Giblin
and his radar observer

crossed the Rhine
into German territory,

they see two huge
orange balls above them,

about 1000 feet
higher in altitude.

The balls of light
were moving

at an incomprehensible speed.

So whatever these things are,

they are incredibly fast

and they're incredibly
maneuverable.

A few nights later,

another crew encounter
two glowing balls

heading towards their plane;

and then the next night, they
see exactly the same thing.

And it seems to be
these balls of light

are tracking the plane.

These balls don't
attack the planes,

but there's a sense of menace.

The pilots say, "Look,

we don't know what
we're dealing with here,

but it's under
intelligent control."

Back on the base,

the pilots named these balls
of fire that they'd seen

Foo Fighters.

It's a play off of
a popular comic strip

in which the main character
uses the catchphrase

"Where there's
Foo, there's fire."

It's a silly name,

but these airmen are deadly
serious about what they've seen.

They don't think it's a
figment of their imagination.

By the end of 1944,

the 415th has had more than
a dozen mysterious encounters

with Foo Fighters,

and a war correspondent
picks up the story.

On January 2nd, 1945,

the New York Times runs a story

about these Foo
Fighter encounters;

that the Germans have
thrown this new technology

into the night skies, and
no one knows what it is.

Suddenly, it's not
just the night fighters

who wanna know what's going on,

everyone wants to
know what's going on.

What if it's the Germans?

What if this is the Axis
powers creating a new weapon,

a new aircraft,

something that we
don't know about

that's going to start
shifting the advantage

that, at this point, the
Allied powers have in the war?

A few days after the
New York Times article,

the AP Science editor
writes another article

that puts out this theory

that maybe what the
German army has done

is put an electric charge over
all of its occupied territory

that would disrupt
anything flying into it.

And there's a suggestion
that these balls of light

are basically latex balloons

that might be
getting dragged along

in the wake by these fighters

and moving through this
electrified airspace.

It kind of sounds
a little crazy,

but there was an occasion
where another air crew,

shortly before all this Foo
Fighter business took off,

actually encountered

what looked like hundreds
of small latex balloons

in the skies over occupied Euro.

Thunderbolt pilots report seeing

about a hundred yellow balloons

approximately one-foot in diameter

at an altitude of
two to 3,000-feet.

Seeing these yellow
latex balloons by day,

and these similarly-sized
orange balls of light by night,

makes the theory
seem very plausible.

While some in the military

suspect the Foo Fighters may
merely be latex balloons,

others fear that the pilots
are catching glimpses

of something far more
powerful and deadly.

Hitler's putting an
enormous amount of resources

into wunderwaffen
or "wonder weapons."

Essentially, he's
hoping that Germans

will make a breakthrough to
create a war-winning weapon

that will destroy Allied forces.

One such super weapon

is the terrifying V-2 rocket.

The V-2 ballistic
missile

was the world's first
long-range ballistic missile;

in fact, it goes farther,
it launches higher,

it carries a bigger payload
than any of the rockets

that anyone has
experienced before.

And in Hitler's arsenal,

he calls this one the
vergeltungswaffen,

"the vengeance weapon."

London after a V-2 raid,

the Nazi vengeance weapon,

which in six months
killed or maimed 9,000.

The worst attack by a
V-2 occurs when a V-2 rocket

hits a department store in
London killing 168 people.

Between September of
1944 and March of 1945,

Nazi Germany launches
over 3,000 V-2 rockets.

They're especially effective

against targets in
Belgium and France

and in the United Kingdom,

because the weapons
move at such high-speed

that Allied forces have
absolutely no weapon system

that can stop them.

The supersonic V-2 rockets

are unlike anything Allied
pilots have seen before,

especially as the V-2's
streaked through the night sky.

The V-2 are powered
by a mixture of alcohol

and liquid oxygen.

And what's
interesting about that

in relation to the Foo Fighters

is that, at night, the plume
is a sort of yellowish-orange;

so if a pilot saw it
perhaps from a long way off,

they would see a sort of
yellowy-orange streak of light,

and they might think that this
was an object tracking them.

But the V-2s aren't
the only Nazi super weapon

that leaves fire in its wake.

The Komet rocket

is one of Hitler's most
touted wonder weapons.

Traveling at 600 miles per hour,

these vehicles were the
only rocket-powered planes

ever used in battle.

At about the time that
these Foo Fighter reports

were coming in,

there were apparently
several hundred

of these Komet rocket
aircraft in production.

These planes are
highly maneuverable,

and they can rapidly
climb to 30,000 feet,

before descending to
intercept enemy airplanes.

What was powering
this rocket plane

was a mixture of liquid
hydrogen peroxide,

methane, and water.

And when it went off,

what it created was
this huge amber plume

that would appear
behind the jets.

If you're a pilot
looking out,

and you're seeing this mixture
of rocket fuel burning,

it would look unlike anything
you had ever seen before.

This fiery plume coming
out of the rear of this thing

could be mistaken for the
so-called Foo Fighters.

Foo Fighter sightings by the
415th Night Fighter Squadron

continue into the
spring of 1945,

then vanish just as victory
is declared in Europe.

The timing fuels speculation
that the Foo Fighters

were a secret Nazi weapon,

but what kind remains a mystery.

The war ends in
Europe in May of 1945,

but it is still ongoing in
the Pacific against Japan.

Flight crews in
bombers, the B-29s,

which fly at higher altitudes,

longer distances across water,

they're starting to report
the same kind of lights,

similar to the Foo Fighters

that the 415th Night
Squadron had seen.

The pilots are
reporting

that there are these balls
of fire coming up at them

and hanging on their tails
as they fly over Japan.

The colors seem to
shift from orange to red to

white in kind of a
cyclical pattern.

And even though these
balls of light or fire

never seem to offer
any kind of attack,

they seem dangerous.

There's one
occasion where a pilot

is being chased by
one of these things,

and he goes into a cloud bank

that would give
this thing the slip,

and he comes out of the cloud

and this thing is still
right there on his tail.

The pilot describes
this giant orange ball

about three-feet in diameter

that's just sitting about
500 yards off of his wing;

and it keeps up with him

and then vanishes
in the dawn light.

Several B-29 pilots

say that if they use
evasive maneuvers,

they can escape
these balls of fire,

but if they're flying
steadily on course,

which is what you
do on a bombing run,

those balls of fire
are right behind them,

and they can't lose 'em.

Some argue that
these encounters

with Foo Fighters in the Pacific

indicate that the
Nazis may have shared

their secret weapon technology
with their Japanese allies

as the war drew to a close.

These sightings give
credence to the idea

that whatever the objects are,

they might be a part

of the Axis power's
last-ditch defensive effort.

Once the
Nazi regime falls,

Allied scientists rushed
to uncover evidence

that these advanced secret
weapons actually existed.

May, 1945, Allied
scientists took possession

of a number of prototype weapons

that the Nazis had
been developing

in secret military installations
deep in the Black Forest.

The Associated
Press has an article come out

in August 20th, 1945,

and it reports that British
and American scientists

have found more of
Germany's weapons,

including a giant bazooka
that could fire accurately

at a target over 120 miles away.

There was also
something called a Spider Bomb,

a sort of air-to-air missile

that could be fired from
a long distance away,

perhaps 15 miles, using
a wire to guide it.

None of these
experimental weapons

ever got past the
prototype phase,

but by the time
the 415th Squadron

is flying in the
skies over Germany,

there's a possibility
that the Axis forces

are just throwing everything
they've got at the Allies

and just hoping for a miracle.

One possible
miracle weapon Allied pilots may

have seen was allegedly kept a
secret for decades.

In 1968, Renato Vesco,

an Italian aerospace
engineer, writer,

comes out and reveals
that he has had contacts

with high officials in
the German Luftwaffe

and the German army

presenting information about
these German wonder weapons

that have been held secret
ever since World War II.

Renato Vesco claims
that the Germans had produced

what he called the "Feuerball,"

which was a device
powered by a jet engine.

This was essentially
a self-propelled fireball

that could be
launched into the sky

to either disrupt or
destroy Allied aircraft.

The plan was that they
would get close enough

and emit some sort of
electromagnetic pulse

that would wreck the
plane's radar system

and might bring it down.

One witness claimed
that when fired during the day,

it looked like a shiny
disc spinning on its axis,

but if you fired it at night,

it looked like a burning globe.

Vesco also claims

that due to advanced
engineering,

these devices were
invisible to radar.

What Vesco says
is that in addition,

they had the ability
when disengaging

to go vertically very rapidly,

which is exactly what the
415th pilots were witnessing.

Vesco claims that this
fireball, feuerball, program

was based in the Black Forest,

the area that the 415th
Night Fighter Squadron

was patrolling and operating.

However, skeptics point
out

that there's actually
no hard evidence

that these weapons were in
development and production

in the area where the 415th

was reporting Foo
Fighter sightings.

But it is interesting
to speculate

on the types of weapons
that the Germans

might have thrown into the sky
at that time.

More than a
hundred Foo Fighter encounters

are reported during
World War II.

Many of these accounts
describe strange lights

moving in ways unlike any
known aircraft or weapon,

leaving some to wonder
whether these objects

were actually in the sky at all.

World War II was really
the first non-stop war.

It was 24/7, as much
fighting at night as at day,

obviously, the night
fighters, night bombing raids,

and people were exhausted,
physically and mentally.

There are lots of
advantages to fighting at night,

especially in the air,

but this means that
the service people

that are fighting overnight

are subject to
sleep deprivation,

including members of the 415th.

In an ideal world,

these pilots would have
at least one rest day

between missions,

but with manpower shortages
being what they were,

a lot of these people were
just flying constantly

night after night after night.

When it comes
to the reports by pilots

of Foo Fighter encounters,

could it be that extreme
fatigue and combat stress

were playing tricks
on the airmen's minds?

Experts say that
these factors

could mess with
perceptions of reality,

but given the very large
number of encounters

and the fact that these
fighters are trained

to fight at night,

it seems unlikely that
all of these sightings

were due to fatigue and stress.

Knowing what we now
know,

it's intriguing to speculate

that these Foo Fighter sightings
might have been triggered

by something else.

These pilots that
we're talking about

were exhausted quite often,
but they had to overcome this.

They couldn't take a nap
while they were flying,

they needed to stay awake,
they needed to stay alert,

and they needed a
tool to get there.

An awful lot of
aviation personnel operating at

night were doing so under
the influence of drugs.

The Germans were
the first to rely

upon the use of amphetamines
to basically drive their troops

beyond the normal limits
of human endurance.

In the early
stages of the war,

the Germans experienced
great success

with this new tactic
that they have developed

that is nicknamed
Blitzkrieg, "lightning war."

The idea is to press a
breakthrough so fast and so hard

that it leaves the
enemy with no recourse

but to beat a hasty retreat.

In 1939,

as Germany begins a Blitzkrieg
onslaught across Europe,

soldiers are given
large quantities

of a powerful amphetamine
called Pervitin

to fuel their rapid advance.

Their mental acuity
goes up, they're able to stay

awake, and it also boosts
confidence, it boosts

aggression, it makes them into
better soldiers.

And at one point in the 1940s,

the British discover
a downed German plane;

and in it, they find
these amphetamines,

and they realize this is what's
powering the German forces,

maybe it could be powering
the Allied forces as well.

In response, American pilots

also begin using amphetamines.

You might not hear
about this in history class,

but by late 1943,

the US Army Air Force is
distributing millions of tabs

of the powerful stimulant
Benzedrine sulfate

to personnel who will
conduct night flights

in both bombers
and fighters to men

who the army needs to
stay awake and alert

under conditions of
almost total darkness.

By the time the Foo
Fighter sighting start in 1944,

the US has handed out over
70 million of these tablets.

The men called
these go-pills

with the idea that it
was basically speed,

this is going to
keep them hyped up.

We don't have documentation

about if the 415th was
actually using these pills,

but overall, the
evidence suggests

that about 15% of
American fighter pilots

were using these pills.

But there's a downside

to the continuous use
of these amphetamines.

The Nazis soon
figured out that this wasn't

good for their soldiers.

It made them too aggressive,
it made them too paranoid,

they had too many problems.

So they declared it
was a dangerous drug,

and they stopped giving
it to their troops.

People get addicted and
then start to take too

much of it.

And if you take too much
of these particular drugs,

you get symptoms such as
delirium, panic attacks,

paranoia, hallucinations,

exactly the sort of thing
that might make you mistake

an innocuous light in the sky

for something rather more
unusual and extraordinary,

like Foo Fighters.

There's a standard
set of side effects

associated with the use
of Benzedrine sulfate,

and one factor that often
gets overlooked in all of this

is that there is an
individual variability.

And what that means is that
you give the drug to 10 people,

all 10 of them will
experience the drug

in completely different ways,

some of them will hallucinate,
some of them will not.

And this provides a
powerful explanation

for why some people report

seeing these glowing
balls of light

and others don't.

When Foo Fighters gained
global attention In 1944,

the term UFOs had
not been coined yet

and tales of
extraterrestrial encounters

were mere science fiction.

But a few years later,
all that changes

when a possible alien
spacecraft sighting

becomes national news.

On June 24th,
1947,

just a couple of
years after the war,

there's a private pilot
near Mount Rainier

who reports that he has seen
a number of flying discs.

Kenneth Arnold's vivid report

instantly becomes
a media sensation.

The press called
them flying saucers.

The pilot himself was like,

"Hey, I never said they
were flying saucers,"

but we got that
term coined for us

in that year of 1947.

Suddenly, people
all across America

are claiming to see
unexplained objects

flying in the skies overhead.

The frenzy only gets
worse later in the year

when the military
reports having recovered

some form of unidentified
flying object

near Roswell, New Mexico.

Something came down
near Roswell Army Airfield,

and the military put
out a press release

harking back to
Kenneth Arnold sighting

over Washington State,

and said, "We have recovered
one of these flying saucers."

Within 24 hours, they
changed their story and said,

"It had been just
a weather balloon,"

but it was too late,

the story had gone
all around the world.

And these two incidents,

Kenneth Arnold's
flying saucer sighting

and Roswell could be
said to be the birth

of the modern UFO phenomenon.

The UFO craze that's
kicked off after Roswell

reignites interest in the
wartime Foo Fighter sightings,

and it causes some to wonder

if there is an alien
presence out there,

and whether or not
they might explain

the wartime Foo
Fighter phenomenon.

UFO fears are
heightened in the summer of 1952

with a mysterious sighting
over Washington, DC.

On Saturday, July
19th, 1952,

air-traffic controllers at
Washington National Airport

reported seeing about 10
different unidentified orbs

hovering above the city.

This became an overnight story.

You're talking about these orbs

that are moving at fast pace.

So the fighter
jets were sent out,

and they were reporting
that these orbs,

they were moving
600 miles per hour.

These UFO sightings
by air-traffic controllers

are a national story.

But the next weekend,

another dozen orbs are
spotted in the skies

over the DC region,
feeding the UFO frenzy.

People across the country
are talking about UFOs,

they're worried about them,
they're wondering about them,

and they're reporting
them everywhere.

The Air Force convenes
a press conference

and announces that
there's nothing to fear,

but a lot of people
aren't convinced,

they think that the Air Force
is covering something up.

We're in the Cold War

and in arms race with
the Soviet Union,

and the CIA's job
is to determine

whether or not
these UFO sightings

are something that we actually
need to be concerned about.

So in 1953, the CIA brings
together a scientific committee

that it calls the
Robertson Panel

to investigate all of
these UFO sightings.

The conclusion they
come to,

it's a bit of a letdown.

They basically end up saying

all of these different things

are misidentification of
known aerial presences,

known phenomena,

might be a weather situation

that somebody interpreted wrong.

But there's
one series of sightings

the Robertson Panel
can't explain.

The one holdout that
even the CIA recognizes

is the Foo Fighters.

They allow that some accounts
simply defy explanation,

and, in fact, they even say,

"Had the term flying
saucer existed in 1945?"

That is undeniably
what the Foo Fighters

would've been called.

The lack of
a satisfactory explanation

from the government gives rise
to imaginative speculation

about what the World
War II Foo Fighters were

and where they came from.

For the believers,
the Foo Fighters

really were just the start

of what has become
an ongoing engagement

with unidentified
flying objects.

And as recently as 2024,

we have reports from
pilots flying in Oregon

of lights incredibly similar

to the way that Foo
Fighters are described,

and, in fact, the
air-traffic controllers,

when they're called in,

the pilots, of
course, are asking,

"What is in the sky with me?",

just as Ed Schlueter was asking

when he was flying his
Bristol Beaufighter,

and the reply from
the base comes back,

"It's a UFO."

Nick] Some UFO believers

say that these things
must be extraterrestrial,

and that they were
probably drawn to Earth

to witness firsthand one
of the most cataclysmic

and high-technology
wars in human history.

Skeptics have suggested

that the Foo Fighter
encounters of World War II

might have been hallucinations,

but the dozens of airmen
who reported those sightings

strongly reject that theory.

These are men known for their
bravery, their judgment,

and their keen eyesight;

they insist that what
they saw was really there.

Some people who've looked
at the Foo Fighter mystery

believe right from the outset

that these strange
balls of light

might have a
natural explanation.

Civilian and military
pilots are well aware

of this weather phenomenon
that's called St. Elmo's fire,

which is an atmospheric
weather condition

that's produced by
electrically charged ions

that discharge into the air;

and this can sometimes occur

along the wings of an
aircraft in flight at night,

it sometimes looks
like balls of flame.

Most experts
believe that St. Elmo's fire

is unlikely to explain
the Foo Fighter sightings

during the Second World War,

but a related atmospheric
phenomenon might.

What gives St. Elmo's
fire its glow is plasma.

Plasma is described as the
fourth state of matter;

so we have solid, liquid,
gas, and we have plasma

Plasmas are what
occur when you add energy to a

gas and that rips electrons
off of the atoms,

and now you end up with
positively charged ions

and negatively
charged electrons.

When lightning strikes, the
illumination is due to plasma.

Plasma is the
most abundant form of matter

in the universe.

The Aurora Borealis,
or Northern Lights,

is a naturally occurring display

of plasma physics in action.

It's plasma that
produces naturally

amazing sights.

And some believe that plasma

could be a potential explanation
for the Foo Fighters.

Even in the 21st
century,

we're not certain what plasma
balls are, how they form,

or why they behave
the way they do.

There are some
scientists that claim

that they seem to act almost
like living organisms.

Plasma balls are
a clear sphere.

Inside, you have a mixture
of noble gases like neon

interacting with
high-voltage electrodes.

Once that electric current
moves through the gas,

it emits a light,

and that's what you see
glowing with plasma balls.

Sometimes they grow in
size,

sometimes they split
into multiple parts,

they interact with each other,

and they interact
with the environment.

Plasmas can also take
on different shapes

and they can move
in different ways,

with some plasma
balls moving quickly

and others appearing
to just float in space.

Most documented
plasma ball sightings

have occurred high above the
Earth in the thermosphere.

In 1965, two astronauts
on the Gemini 4 orbiter

reported a strange metallic
object approaching their craft.

Six months later, the famed
astronaut, James Lovell,

reports seeing a bogey at 10
o'clock on another mission.

Decades after Lovell's
report,

shuttle missions being
conducted into low Earth orbit

on 10 separate occasions

captured images of
huge plasma blobs.

Scientists
believe these same plasma balls

occasionally descend
into the lower atmosphere

shared by aircraft.

And what happens when
plasma comes in contact

with flying manmade objects

may explain the Foo
Fighter sightings.

These plasma balls
exist almost entirely

in the thermosphere,

but they've been known
to be drawn downwards

through some sort of
electromagnetic presence.

Plasmas can also
occur around manmade objects

zipping through the sky

and emitting their own
electromagnetic energy.

So you have these
planes that are manmade objects

moving through this
electric field.

This can help those
plasma balls to form.

The Bristol
Beaufighters themselves,

moving through the sky,

would've generated their
own electrostatic field

to create the conditions
under which these plasma balls

might come from the thermosphere
into our atmosphere.

And this ties in perfectly
with the way the Foo Fighters

are described by the
airmen who saw them

as being drawn
towards the planes,

almost like they're
investigating

or attaching themselves to them.

According to the
research, when this happens,

these plasma balls have been
known to "toy with" military

and civilian aircraft.

The Foo Fighters were
variously described

as silver, white, or red, but
often pulsing and glowing,

and this is a very common
feature of plasmas.

The phenomenon is
visually astonishing

and attention attracting,

because when it's
being played out,

you see visible balls of
fire around the aircraft

while it's flying.

In 2020,

a study by scientists
at Cornell University

connects advanced technology
aboard the night fighter planes

to the appearance
of plasma balls.

The idea is that these
planes

that the Night
Fighters were flying,

the way that their radar worked

was that it was pulsing,

and it pulsed so that
it wouldn't overheat

all of the equipment.

The radar signals
that were sent out by these

airplanes were very
strong signals,

'cause they had to travel miles

and then reflect
back to the airplane

for them to get a signal.

Sending that strong radio signal

through the exhaust from the
plane, ionizing that gas,

could easily have
formed a plasma ball.

And any fireballs
that were created

would then stay
next to the plane.

And so, as the plane maneuvers,

the fireball would
maneuver along with it,

and so, that would match
exactly what the pilot saw

when they were observing
the Foo Fighters.

Since Foo
Fighters were first sighted

in November of 1944,

American military personnel
and civilians alike

have developed a
host of theories

to explain the Foo
Fighter mystery.

While some theorists believe
the Foo Fighters could be UFOs,

or the result of some obscure
meteorological phenomenon,

others propose a more
conventional explanation.

The common
denominator

with all of these Foo
Fighter encounters

is that they happen at night,

and that was a new
environment for the pilots

of the 415th Night
Fighter Squadron.

To keep from being spotted,

the pilots used airplanes
that were painted black

and even had darkened
instrument panels.

So these pilots,
when they're flying,

yes, they're looking at
their instrument panel,

yes, the radar operator's
looking at the radar,

but they're also staring
out into the darkness

with very few other
lights around them

trying to see what
they can make sense of,

and this is an incredibly
disorienting experience.

Flying at night
with a moonless sky

with very few reference points
and clouds coming over them,

maybe the pilot's eyes were
just playing tricks on them.

Back in 1799,

exploring scientist,
Alexander Von Humboldt,

was out at night and he
reported that he started to see

the stars swing
around in the sky.

He used the term
sternschwankung, swinging stars,

to describe these.

And it wasn't until almost
a hundred years later

that science was able to show

the stars aren't
actually moving.

What's happening
in the night sky

is actually a pretty
common phenomenon

known as autokinesis.

Autokinesis is a visual illusion

where a stationary light source,

set against a very
dark background,

can appear to be moving.

This could be a
problem for pilots

because it creates the illusion
that a stationary light

could be on a collision
course with their airplane.

In February, 1945,

The War Department actually
sets up an experiment

to try to determine
whether autokinesis

is the source of the
Foo Fighter reports.

They put together an experiment
within a simulated cockpit

of one of these
Bristol Beaufighters.

They were in this
pitch-black room,

and you have this
one little light

that's being shined
right in their eyes.

The pilots would stare at
that single source of light

with no reference around them.

And with the passage of time,

they would eventually
begin to hallucinate

that the light was moving;

it would swing
from side to side,

it would approach them, it
would retreat away from them,

and all of it was in their head.

During the
experiment that they conducted,

it only took six to 12 seconds
for this optical illusion

to take place.

When a pilot is
flying a plane,

that plane is rolling
and pitching and yawing

and moving through space,

that movement alone is
enough to create a sense

that a stationary light
outside of the plane

is actually the thing
doing the moving.

Even the best pilots
can get confused

and see things
that aren't there,

and that's something
that even happens today.

As recently as 2011,

a pilot flying a commercial
plane caused major havoc

when he mistook a planet
for an oncoming aircraft.

A 767 was en route
from Toronto to Zurich.

The co-pilot had been informed

that there was a cargo
aircraft in his vicinity,

and so he should
maintain awareness

for the possibility
of its presence.

The co-pilot saw a light
that was coming towards him,

and mistakenly identified
it as cargo aircraft.

To avoid hitting
that bright light

that the pilot thought
was coming at them,

they decided to
take a nose dive.

Thankfully, the
captain took over,

and it was not a deadly crash,

but it almost hit the
actual cargo plane

that was in the area about a
thousand feet below the 767.

Later investigation
demonstrated

that what he was seeing was
actually the planet Venus

60 million miles away.

We have almost
limitless amounts of information

about pilots becoming
confused in the sky.

Once that
disorientation sets in,

it's very difficult for
a pilot to overcome it

and regain
situational awareness.

This kind of
disorientation

means that pilots that
are flying straight

feel like they're turning,

or even worse, they're
so disoriented,

they think that
they're upside down

when they're actually
flying right side up

because of the lights and
things that they're seeing.

So with all this
aerial clutter

that they were seeing
in World War II,

this could account
for the Foo Fighters.

Is it possible
the Foo Fighter witnesses

were misled by stray
lights in the sky?

Some say that might be the case.

Proponents of this
theory

feel that this
autokinesis phenomenon

is an incredibly
powerful illusion

that these airmen
were never trained on.

According to a night
fighter commander

who was interviewed
after the war,

his men were never trained on
misperceptions or illusions

or disorientation
that could occur

during night air fighting.

So these pilots
racing over Germany at night,

you can see where the
power of suggestion

overrides rational thought.

For the men who
encountered the Foo Fighters

in those closing
years of World War II,

this remained an experience

that was to them profound
and unforgettable.

It was something that
would be with them

for the rest of their lives.

Maybe it was a German
weapon that's been lost to time,

maybe it is something literally
beyond our understanding.

It was certainly the
origin of UFO stories;

and to true believers,

that final chapter
has yet to be written.

Whether the Foo Fighters

were created by a state of
matter, a state of mind,

or something otherworldly,

we may never know
the complete truth

about what or who the
Foo Fighters really were,

or if they actually existed.

I'm Laurence Fishburne,

thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."