foo fighters

[pigfarmer]

I posed this in another thread and thought it might be worth it's own to kick around.

Had my nose in both of these. Paperclip is well written non-fiction and it unintentionally compliments UFOs Before Roswell. Not sure how to classify the latter as anything other than special interest. The title alone assumes there was a crash at Roswell in the first place, although it may just be descriptive to say there were earlier accounts and may have little do do with Roswell itself. I'm not done with either one yet but already picked up on a few things.

UFOs is dull as cow's teeth. I really have to saw my way through it but I am sticking with it because unlike any other book I've read about WW2 encounters the author takes great pains to research the accounts in detail and consider alternatives. All other books I've seen are almost purely anecdotal. To be fair, corroborating documents are rare. He tries to answer the most important question first: did this really happen? Sadly the answer so far is 'unknown'. Again, I'm not done but at the point I'm at it's still fairly early in the war before '43 when the US Army Air Forces came to town and got busy. The British and Free Polish accounts are spotty at best as there was no universal method of collecting after action reports and it varied from unit to unit. Reports from action over France, Italy and North Africa are included.

I'll be curious to see how US involvement is treated - we know that the famous Black Thursday raid produced a UFO report. On a personal note I remember my 6th grade teacher literally telling war stories. Apart from his description of a 'short arm inspection' as part of the first sex education class they forced him to teach - imagine that going over in 2022 - I remember a few about his experiences as a bomber crewman in Europe and later the Pacific theaters. He recalled seeing jets for the first time over Italy. Didn't know that was possible honestly, but he described them as moving so fast they looked like 'flying telephone poles' . I seriously doubt his personality would have ever considered 'flying saucers' or 'Martians' or whatever they may have called them at the time. Context is important and I just don't think that mindset was at all prevalent at that time.

In an era when you had large numbers of people in the air, many of which were very new to it all, experiencing combat etc it isn't surprising that under tremendous stress people see things. The author actually points that out - some reports were literally a case of being frightened of their own shadow. That said, reports of different color orbs splitting to pieces, dripping molten fragments, outperforming any known aircraft are dammed interesting and sound an awful lot like much more contemporary cases.

Paperclip illustrates how disorganized and amateurish collection of technical intelligence was during that period. There was such institutional thick-headedness in that regard as to be almost criminal. I smell a certain bias out of the author but he literally describes exactly what Nazi Germany had at it's disposal at that time and how it was regarded and does a much better job than Rendall illustrating it. Again, the mindset of the time failed to believe obvious examples of German technical superiority even with it literally in hand, so more esoteric explanations just would not have been part of the picture. Like my teacher. Connecting the reports to UFOs came later - as far as I know.

Bottom line is that I think that amongst a lot of irrelevant stuff there probably are some accounts in there that wouldn't look out of place today and that has me wondering. AAWSAP and BASS too it seems. I also see the genesis of the Cult of Nazi Science and how remnants have survived for decades after the war. They make great villains for Indiana Jones but once the war was over their further achievements were under the auspices of the US and USSR and not some secret South American entity. I am saying I can see the seeds of pop culture mythos in there.

 

[Todd Feinman]

Thanks Pigfarmer! Very interesting.

 

[pigfarmer]

The more I dig into this the more I begin to see the vague outlines of the ufological archetypes we are familiar with. I really do wonder if that AAWSAP BASS team included sociologists as part of their review. I'd think they would be an essential part of it and that's not being snarky.

There are some mighty peculiar reports to be found from aviators for sure but with only a few exceptions the descriptions sound more like air war over Europe than anything else. Rockets, flares in abundance and the intriguing accounts of orbs and even a huge black triangle are completely anecdotal and/or uncorroborated. Can't go back and cherry pick to fit a current narrative, you have to let the data speak for itself and right now it's telling stories we have no way to confirm.

When you read about what the Nazis were actually doing in terms of scientific advancement, they were almost a generation ahead of most in their technical development. Technology which is recognizable but as yet unknown with extreme performance characteristics, some that may have been considered impossible whose existence is denied by the highest levels of government. Any of that sound familiar ?

 

[Standingstones]

My Dad’s older brother fought in the European Theater during WWII. In particular, the Battle of the Bulge. Unfortunately, my Dad didn’t tell me this until it was too late to pose any questions to my Uncle. My Dad wasn’t too big on talking about war stories.

 

[pigfarmer]

The Nazis tested chemical weapons and nerve agents on humans. I think a lot of what Mengele was up to, apart from some macabre fascination with twins, amounted to endurance testing for high altitude research. There were many such scientists and no lack of well funded state programs for advanced research that had no qualms about human testing.

Couldn’t help but wonder if that might be part of the genesis of the abduction phenomenon.

 

[pigfarmer]

Yeeeeeeeup.

Clinical laboratory setting where involuntary testing is done my inhuman agents, or at least sociopaths appearing that way.

Advanced technology that is a few decades ahead of what is current and yet recognizable in function and form if not method. Performance characteristics astound technical observers including military pilots, aeronautics engineers, etc. Some of whom simply refuse to believe what their own eyes are telling them.

A government conspiracy at the highest levels to obtain and utilize this advanced game changing technology that must be kept secret for a variety of reasons, only some of which can be justified by national security considerations. This includes the intimidation of witnesses, compartmentalization of information so that one agency is literally ignorant of another's by design and deliberately ignoring moral and legal encumbrances. Sanitizing what the public at large nows while concealing a less than pleasant truth.

Any of that stuff sound familiar?

 

[Todd Feinman]

Yeeeeeeeup.

Clinical laboratory setting where involuntary testing is done my inhuman agents, or at least sociopaths appearing that way.

Advanced technology that is a few decades ahead of what is current and yet recognizable in function and form if not method. Performance characteristics astound technical observers including military pilots, aeronautics engineers, etc. Some of whom simply refuse to believe what their own eyes are telling them.

A government conspiracy at the highest levels to obtain and utilize this advanced game changing technology that must be kept secret for a variety of reasons, only some of which can be justified by national security considerations. This includes the intimidation of witnesses, compartmentalization of information so that one agency is literally ignorant of another's by design and deliberately ignoring moral and legal encumbrances. Sanitizing what the public at large nows while concealing a less than pleasant truth.

Any of that stuff sound familiar?

I agree that a lot of early sightings were advanced US craft developed with the help of Nazi science and scientists after the war, but for me it doesn't explain the UFO phenomenon completely. My own experiences aside, the actions of the UFOs and the government responses to them demonstrate to me that there is a legitimate anomalous phenomenon that is engaging in asymmetric contact with civilians and world militaries in a form of surveillance / long-term contact.
For me, regardless of the technology behind the phenomenon (which could include some kind of persistent nanotechnology delivered long ago), it seems to come from somewhere outside this planet. The first UFO(s) I saw were seen by Leroy Chiao heading into space, flying by the ISS (though he later changed his story to "fishing boats"(!). The second experience I had involved an object flying off into deep space. A number of historic UFO sightings describe them coming in like shooting stars.. And then leveling off...

 

[pigfarmer]

doesn't explain the UFO phenomenon completely

Agreed but THAT whole question is an interesting pickle nobody can answer, so in some respect it's still a level playing field at this point. Could be anything and we won't know until we do. If we do.

My own experiences

Ahh, now here's the hair splitting

Believe it or not I think we are saying about the same thing it's just a question of degree. I do think there is a real phenomenon at work and don't think there is any panacea explanation for it. Thing is, you have arrived at your conclusions based on your experiences and so have I. This includes a 'haunting' and ghost hunting and genuine UFO experiences. I have been able to logically pick apart what I encountered and realized that the prosaic explanation is the correct one in my case(s). In the course of that I found that people will lie through their teeth, even trusted loved ones, to a ridiculous degree to fan the flames of belief in others. Why is anybody's guess, it's not always money it's usually some personality trait seeking attention or control or both even when it isn't obvious. As a result I play Devil's Advocate with myself about these things.

So what I am getting at about these foo fighters is that reading the accounts from the Organizational Record Books which are about the only records extant and they are very, very spotty I find rockets, sparks, flaming trails, portholes, all sorts of non-high-tech stuff and more like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon; the pop culture of the day that these young men would probably draw their references from. Not saying they didn't see anything, just saying that's how they might describe it. Then you have a very, very few recorded incidents what I think would be scientifically classified as 'really weird **** that sounds just like modern reports' but no way to vet those records.

Those are what interest me.

There's been no lack of analysis from photographic experts, aeronautical engineers, military personnel, physicists, what have you. What's missing is an analysis of the medium on which the event was recorded. If it were a picture or video you'd be looking at the camera - and that's common. In most cases it's only a human witness and more often that not it's casually disregarded. I really think that sociologists should be included in any deep dive on this subject, it would be interesting to have them pore through the multiple databases that AAWSAP and BASS claim to have collected. It would be more interesting to have AI have a look through it with a an emphasis on the human, cultural components. That's an aspect that's been overlooked, IMO

 

[pigfarmer]

Thinking about this stuff as I get ready for work - which is why this can be a bit disjointed.

Databases are where you can really mine information. The more data you collect the more you can weed out deviation. I give you a picture of a pony from a hundred dots you have a crude but recognizable depiction. You lose just a few dots and maybe you don't anymore. I give you hundreds of thousands of dots and you have a much better picture and you can afford to lose a lot more dots without losing coherency.

I hand load ammunition and use a chronograph to record the loads and record them in a book. I'm not usually after the fastest or slowest shot - although sometimes extremes get my attention. I'm after the standard deviation, consistency. When I collect enough info, usually just a couple hundred rounds, I get a better idea of how my methods really hold up and maybe have to tweak something and start over testing again.

It would be too much to ask to think that the databases that were supposedly collected as described in Skinwalkers at the Pentagon could be evaluated that way. Weed out the fakers and the kooks and with enough data perceive some otherwise invisible trend. I think there are sociological elements that would readily appear and that there are recent historical examples that have fed into how we frame eyewitness acoounts and so forth. In reading about these old WW2 case and concurrently reading a non fiction account of Paperclip there are definite similarities and I can't help but sense certain 'archetypes' lurking in the shadows.

 

[nivek]

In general it seems that people in the present often consider that people in the past don't describe something as accurately as we would in the present...I've often wondered why that is when we have far more distractions and technology that furthers our imagination than they did in the past...

...

 

[pigfarmer]

In general it seems that people in the present often consider that people in the past don't describe something as accurately as we would in the present...I've often wondered why that is when we have far more distractions and technology that furthers our imagination than they did in the past...

...

I think they just described them in the vernacular of their era. Flying shields, religious imagery etc

There does seem to be some input that sparks the description in the first place. Like I said, if the input is recorded by a camera we have no problem dissecting that. If the input is recorded by a modern vehicle we overlook it. Recorded by a human we reach for hypnosis, testimony etc. Anything but an objective analysis. Probably impossible on an individual basis. Definitely possible from a statistical viewpoint. I think a few steps back and good look at that is important. Might explain the phenomena having something to do with the observer. Might shed some light on ‘the trickster’ and the ‘precognitive sentient phenomenon’

 

[Todd Feinman]

Agreed but THAT whole question is an interesting pickle nobody can answer, so in some respect it's still a level playing field at this point. Could be anything and we won't know until we do. If we do.



Ahh, now here's the hair splitting

Believe it or not I think we are saying about the same thing it's just a question of degree. I do think there is a real phenomenon at work and don't think there is any panacea explanation for it. Thing is, you have arrived at your conclusions based on your experiences and so have I. This includes a 'haunting' and ghost hunting and genuine UFO experiences. I have been able to logically pick apart what I encountered and realized that the prosaic explanation is the correct one in my case(s). In the course of that I found that people will lie through their teeth, even trusted loved ones, to a ridiculous degree to fan the flames of belief in others. Why is anybody's guess, it's not always money it's usually some personality trait seeking attention or control or both even when it isn't obvious. As a result I play Devil's Advocate with myself about these things.

So what I am getting at about these foo fighters is that reading the accounts from the Organizational Record Books which are about the only records extant and they are very, very spotty I find rockets, sparks, flaming trails, portholes, all sorts of non-high-tech stuff and more like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon; the pop culture of the day that these young men would probably draw their references from. Not saying they didn't see anything, just saying that's how they might describe it. Then you have a very, very few recorded incidents what I think would be scientifically classified as 'really weird **** that sounds just like modern reports' but no way to vet those records.

Those are what interest me.

There's been no lack of analysis from photographic experts, aeronautical engineers, military personnel, physicists, what have you. What's missing is an analysis of the medium on which the event was recorded. If it were a picture or video you'd be looking at the camera - and that's common. In most cases it's only a human witness and more often that not it's casually disregarded. I really think that sociologists should be included in any deep dive on this subject, it would be interesting to have them pore through the multiple databases that AAWSAP and BASS claim to have collected. It would be more interesting to have AI have a look through it with a an emphasis on the human, cultural components. That's an aspect that's been overlooked, IMO

I do agree with you on those points! And a multidisciplinary approach including sociologists makes perfect sense, especially given the nature of the contact.. All would be unnecessary if the government and those in the know would just come out and tell the truth, but that is very unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons, though the phenomenon has the largest vote, in the end. Some foo fighter accounts do seem to be like modern UFO encounters, and if one discards the wild journalism of the 19th century, there are accounts in the airship days that didn't make the front pages, and those encounters traumatized those experiencing them, and thee descriptions of them are exactly like UFOs in the later decades, and those being encountered regularly by our armed forces these days.

With my first experience, the most important of the two in my opinion, I found corroborating evidence for, in the form of other reports at NUFORC, which I only found a few years ago. The descriptions are EXACTLY like what I saw, and, one was from later in that year only a bit further south where I saw them go.. And one from the next year, a bit further south from that. I didn't write those accounts, and they are not included in my earlier posts on forums. I am happy to take any number of lie detector tests. That encounter folks should be paying attention to, imho, as it occurred DURING the McMinnville UFO festival.... 60 years exactly to the date from the photo, on Time magazine, etc., etc,, and Chinese drones can't do things like that.

 

[pigfarmer]

A recurring thought is that maybe some of the fish in the bowl can hear the TV when it's on, or you talking. What do they make of it?

If consciousness is really at the core of all this maybe what we have been experiencing is nothing more than an attempt at communication that we don't quite grok. It takes on familiar forms that we have infused into our culture and maybe it's simply a case of miscommunication. In other words, like the Mr. Stay-Puft marshmallow man perhaps we have chosen the form. A familiar theme of Carl Sagan's Contact. Maybe the last 80 years IS First Contact and we haven't figured it out yet.

I can definitely see how the reports from WW2, the pillage of advanced German science and the follow on Cold War created the underpinnings of all this. How we perceive it. It's become part of our culture and we have used the phenomenon for other, very earthly purposes, which is why I am saying that experts on that topic should have their turn at the podium.

 

[pigfarmer]

Thought this was an interesting quote to share:

“In a letter to the Dallas Times-Herald published on 10th July 1947, in the wake of reports regarding the flying disc allegedly discovered near Roswell, New Mexico, former Staff Sgt. C. A. Smith stated that the disc phenomenon was nothing new. He reported having seen clusters of discs on two separate bombing missions over Germany during WW2. The former tail gunner with the “598th Bombardment Group” wrote: “These disc-shaped objects would be in clusters until they reached a certain altitude, and then they would break up and attach themselves to bomber formations as if a metallic force drew them toward the bombers,” “I saw these disc-shaped objects only twice during my tour of duty, but both times we drew an unbelievable flak (…) into our formation, which accounted for several bombers. It was useless to try to lose them by a sudden burst of speed, or by evasive actions, because when attached to your formation you couldn't shake them until the bombs were away. Then they would disappear at incredible speed.” Smith said the discs he saw appeared to be five or six feet in diameter and two or three feet thick. If the dimensions were correct, then these discs were twice as large than those reported on the Stuttgart and Schweinfurt raids. There was no such unit as the 598th BG, but there was a 598th Bombardment Squadron, part of the 397th BG based at Rivenhall in Essex, some forty miles north-east of London. The unit was equipped with twin-engined Martin B-26B Marauder medium bombers and moved to Hurn (now Bournemouth Airport) in order to support the D-Day landings in June 1944. Once airfields were captured on the Continent, the 598th began operations from sites in France to support the Allied advance across Western Europe. I have not been able to find a “C. A. Smith” who served with the unit, however, that does not mean someone with that name was not with the squadron. Kevin Mahoney, author of the book about Fifteenth Air Force operations in the Mediterranean, also included more information about strange German tactics over northern Italy:”

— UFOs Before Roswell: European Foo-Fighters 1940-1945 by Graeme Rendall

 

[Todd Feinman]

German and Japanese pilots saw them too:
Smokin' rockets : Patrick Lucanio : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Here is my favorite pic of them:



Foo Fighters during Korean War:
West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Wednesday 20 February 1952, page 2

 

[Todd Feinman]

Another from the Korean War:




"Ferris wheels" like Charlie Red Star:
Charlie Red Star

 

[Todd Feinman]

Possible Foo Fighters from antiquity --observing a siege. From the Book of Miracles:
The Book of Miracles: 16th-century apocalyptic visions – in pictures

 

[pigfarmer]

Still sawing through these two books - just haven't had the reading time I normally do.

What it apparent is that very, very few of the WW2 sightings can be corroborated with written reports. Lots of second and third hand testimony. The bulk of what has been documented talks about all sorts of things that don't sound very ET to me; smoking rockets, flames trails, etc. Even the silver discs from the Schweinfurt raid seem more mundane in context. There's that pesky word again. Context. The speculation at the time was a sort of aerial mine, some sort of flak weapon - and I tend to agree. This book seems far better researched than any other I've seen.

Fair to say there were an awful lot of people in the air and on the ground with an incredible lot of ordnance being shot back and forth. Recording it all accurately for posterity's sake afterwards probably wasn't a top priority and if it was it was handled in an uneven fashion to say the least. I'm surprised there weren't reports of actual kitchen sinks flying past because if the Germans could have launched them they would have. It's also easy to see the genesis of the generation-ahead-technology mythos and how that fed into the space race, the Cold War, all that. When you get down to the nitty gritty there was a bit too much Nazi sauce in everyone's lunch after the war.

But once the fat is rendered there are still enough reports of multicolored orbs exhibiting non-ballistic motion like the ones described over Korea. So far all I've read is from Allied airmen, only a single Luftwaffe reference and that pilot was just as puzzled by what he had seen. Sounded like an orb. There's something to it that persists today but I think it's premature to speculate about their origin. At one time not that long ago we thought there were canals on Mars and, well, no. Faces and ziggurats maybe-ish-not really, weird machines stamped Made in USA definitely, but no I, Martian.

I've seen that pic of the Japanese plane before. I think it may be a Nakajima Ki-27 (Nate). Imperial Army aircraft. I'll have a look through it for any Axis accounts. I wonder if any are as thoroughly researched as the ones I've been reading about.

 

[pigfarmer]

About through both of these. Wasn't easy. Both books have spots that really are challenging to get through. A few things stick out about all this.

The term 'foo fighters' comes from an old comic strip and many of the WW2 reports originate with a relatively small group of night fighter squadrons. Not all by any means but a lot. Largely American as that's the origin of the term but not exclusively. The book deals mainly with the European Theater of Operations. The vast majority are anecdotal and lack any supporting documentation whatsoever. Those that do are not describing what we think of as a UFO.; more conventional if unidentified munitions, etc. You have thousands of young men both in the air and on the ground doing comparatively unusual things in a wartime condition. Meaning, tensions are certainly heightened and honestly, the majority of the descriptions are of 'rockets and jets' and a few 'barrage balloons' or the like. I'd bet the 'fog of war' would account for the vast majority of what was reported.

But there are a few that seem very, very contemporary; as if they are seeing the same thing the Navy pilots still do. Tantalizing but I think a mistake to cherry pick to fit a current narrative. Honestly, in a very few instances I bet they were seeing what we see now but I have to point out that all the reports put together are hardly conclusive.

Then we get to Paperclip. The book describes a bureaucratic dogfight between the State and War Departments. This was actually three programs; Overcast, the admitted Paperclip and the real Paperclip. It was hardly a smooth, well thought out or administered program. Typically, a few motivated individuals stood out to make things happen. To be blunt, yes we took in many scientists who performed heinous experiments on people and lied about it because we felt they had value. How much was the subject of argument. There were real, practical, write them all down on a sheet of paper reasons to want them. In terms of technology, depending on what area of interest, they were 10-20 years ahead of most of us. Not in everything, but you can easily see the framework for the Korean conflict and Cold War shaping right up. We're talking about medical testing for aerospace applications, chemical and biological testing and enough weird prurient stuff mixed in to turn anyone's stomach.

In all this you can almost see certain archetypes moving just below the surface. Advanced technology and shadowy government activity. Strange craft in the sky, people being forcibly abducted and experimented on - right down to anal probes, breeding experiments, etc. Take those basic ingredients and add what we know about the '50s and '60s and it isn't hard to see how ufology got it's start and why it tends to change with our expectations.

If there is some connection to human consciousness and whatever this phenomenon is, and I think there is, I can't help but wonder if we stick it in this sort of framework ourselves. Maybe ET is trying to say hello but like yelling at the fish tank can't quite get the message across - instead it triggers this weird response.

 

[Todd Feinman]

Yes, I agree --there is only a small number of cases / encounters that are real; the vast majority are and have been misidentified conventional or secret aircraft, natural phenomena, and hoaxes.
This is why I rarely look at new UFO footage if it is from a civilian source, and with the image manipulation technology, it really muddies the water. I've seen other unidentifiable things in the sky over time, but I don't think they were a non-human technology, or couldn't be construed as such, so I just ignored those --and they were probably mundane things. However, the two real experiences I had were completely different.