Brief Encounters, Episode 17, the Foo Fighters of World War II, 1944.

By late 1944, World War II was in its final and most desperate phase.

In Europe, Allied forces were pushing deeper into Nazi-occupied territory.

Air battles raged across the skies of France and Germany.

Fighter squadrons flew daily, navigating freezing winds, flak bursts,

and mechanical failures at altitude. Every mission carried risk. But during these flights,

something unexpected began to appear, something that couldn't be explained by the enemy's

aircraft. All known technology, pilots from the US 8th Air Force and the British Royal Air Force started reporting strange lights in the sky,

bright orbs that followed their planes, objects that danced around bomber formations, keeping pace without any visible means of propulsion.

Some were red, some were orange. Others appeared to be metallic. They didn't attack. They

didn't communicate. They just hovered, tracked and vanished. Soon the pilots had a name

for them.

They called them Foo Fighters,

though reports would eventually surface from all theatres of war.

The most consistent and detailed accounts came from Allied pilots flying over Germany

and parts of occupied France.

Between late 1944 and early 1945.

The phenomenon wasn't entirely new.

Pilots on both sides had long told stories of strange things in the sky,

but these new sightings were different.

They were frequent, consistent, and shared across nationalities.

One of the earliest documented incidents came from the 415th night fighter squadron of the

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