This will establish a pattern for this blog, I think, [one should never claim control on the future; it always laughs at you]. What I intend is to generally comment on spiritual matters, and change the pace with the more mundane mystery [but fascinating] of UFOs. Maybe "two this, two that". World War Two, overall, was one of the least spiritual moments in human history, even though there were countless individual acts of heroic spirituality by just us folks. One wonders if the horrific general behavior of War got the attention of whatever is behind the UFO phenomenon? Well, you can decide whether there was UFO phenomena at all in the skies over Germany and the Pacific. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
---No one can say when the first possible UFO encounter occurred during the War. The military documents and occasional media reports indicate a handful of aerial mysteries during May of 1943 over Germany [Duisburg; Dortmund; Essen] and the English Channel. The military paid little attention to these. Back in the states, scientific powerhouses headed by Vannevar Bush were dreaming up all manner of ways that a somewhat desperate Nazi high command might employ to stop mass bomber raids. None of these ideas resembled "flying disks" or spheres of light or anything like that. On September 6th 1943 this changed. On a raid to Stuttgart, allied bombers encountered what looked like a cluster of small silvery disks. As the bombers proceeded through the cluster, one of them had one or more of these disks strike the wing of the plane. The wing caught fire and the plane went down. The bombers were in a fire-fight at the time, so the fire could have been caused by weapons fire, but the crews who observed it felt otherwise and reported it.
This report went immediately to Washington (to General Hap Arnold, the man on the left above, and to the science teams of Vannevar Bush). According to the FOIA releases, this was a very big deal in many minds. General Ira Eaker, commanding the USAF in Europe, wanted to know if this posed a wide spread significant danger to his bombing missions. Back home, chief of staff Arnold wanted to know the same thing. One general felt that this could mean the end for mass bombing raids. Bush said that it seemed too inefficient for that and we probably had bigger troubles. ---------------------------------------------------------------
Such an event didn't happen again until October "16th" (exact date uncertain) on one of the disastrous Schweinfurt runs. Here again were the small silver disks flying in a cluster, and once again a bomber could not avoid flying through them. This time they missed the wings, but did knock into the tail section, but did not ignite anything nor cause any damage at all.
When 1944 arrived, our fighter pilots began to encounter odd objects in both German and Japanese skies more regularly. These were often Red-Orange balls-of-light but there were some silvery disks and spheres thrown in as well. They weren't doing any damage but one couldn't help but be concerned. General Arnold and the home-base scientific establishment assigned an adventurous young physicist, David Griggs (the man in the middle above), to go to Europe and join the fighter/bomber teams and try to figure out these "things" which were now going by the nickname "foo-fighters".
Griggs could never figure them out. But he did find out two interesting things: 1). there were a lot of cases and whatever this phenomenon was it was real; 2). the Germans and the Japanese didn't know what they were either. Griggs' reports have never been released by FOIA so that the rest of us can read them. We know what he learned because, in the late 1960s, University of Arizona atmospheric physicist, James McDonald (the man on the right above), interviewed him and left the notes from that interview in the University archives--which is where I had a chance to read them. Through the FOIAs we have, and the gift of McDonald's interview, we know that all the WW2 flyers who returned and told of their encounters with the Foo-fighters were not telling tales. Its one of our great mysteries. And its a bit mysterious why after all these years the military won't release all the documents.
Agreed, a high coincidence that the foo-fighters appeared during WW II. BTW, do you read the Fortean Times? They infrequently cover UFO history and current trends appear in each issue.
ReplyDeleteTerry W. Colvin
Don't have a subscription; so reading is hit-and-miss. Some of those same regular contributors have been extremely personally-smearing to me in the past --- most uncollegial --- and I've felt little "warmth" towards them due to that. There's a difference between arguing against an idea and demeaning a person. Many of these people seem to take enjoyment out of personal attacks [particularly when cloaked in a thin veil of academic-sounding verbiage, and safely at a distance.]
ReplyDeleteProf
ReplyDeleteDo you know if anyone ever correlate the foo figher location data and see if the places that they appear are above grounds that have seen many human bloodshed ? IIRC europeean history are pretty much bloody since before even the romans and there must be many places of killing on europe. would BoL also prefer sites with war history ?
The US military has never released their foo fighter information so that we could even begin to try any correlations. These were mainly reconnaissance flights and the logs I've seen are scantily written, so precise locations are probably tough to do anyway.
DeleteDear Prof
DeleteDo you research the South American UFO Phenomena ? do you have opinion on them ? since i found that the South American UFO phenomena are more 'brazen' toward man , as if they are more free to do that in South America compared to USA (because if incidents like COLARES happened in America there will be massive public uproar).
The reason i mention South America in this 'FOO fighter related' thread, is because i am curious to know if there are correlation between the UFO phenomenon numerous appearance and South American History. Your post here also struck a chord with me because i also think UFO phenomena are heavier on sites where much blood has been spilled, Thus my curiosity on South American Cases. As side note , here in Java much of the history is violent too but there is no UFO in the traditional sense, but many many many form of high strangeness usually in traditional 'ghost/apparation/mystical/BoL' stuff.. no silver disc here
regards
milo
I have an unpopular opinion about the NE Brazilian "attacking and harming" UFOs, which gains me no fans in the UFO community as far as I can tell. If this is what you mean by "The South American" phenomenon, then my answer to just THAT part of it is: I have the hypothesis that there was a "normal" [I.E. not hostile] claim of a flap in that area which attracted Brazilian military attention. This attention imprinted ideas in the minds of the locals. Some initial local got hurt in the rural bush. Some rumor or claim was made that it was by a UFO. Some sympathetic health worker gave the person TLC, and may or may not have encouraged the thought. Slowly, via stuff like this, it grew into a series of such claims by locals getting treatment and TLC at care stations, or perhaps by one very UFO friendly health worker/administrator. The thing grew in numbers and elaborate claims. Westerners got wind of it, and took "vacation" forays to the area where they were regaled with amazing tales by the administrators and locals alike. Myths were made out of no UFO phenomena other than maybe occasional nocturnal lights. [I have no doubt that people were injured "in the jungle" and needed serious health care, what I doubt is their accompanying tales.]
DeleteNow if by the South American phenomenon you mean the "hairy dwarves" episodes of the 1954 wave, then I don't read those cases as particularly hostile. In those cases the reports could be read as saying that "we started the fights". Either way, no serious harm befell. If you're talking about something like Fort Itaipu, then the damages seem secondary effects of exposure to the close encounter and still not obviously deliberate. One might as well accuse UFOs of deliberately damaging people like Michalak in the Falcon Lake case if one wants to take that position.
The "South American" phenomenon is a bad label unless defined. The whole range of the UFO phenomenon occurs there.
Regarding UFO phenomenon favoring sites where blood has been spilled, I'm afraid that I see no evidence for that. Most UFOs manifest high in the air, and Ted Phillips' landing trace catalog shows no such correlation on the ground to my reading. UFOs seem interested in the living not the dead.