UFO history

The Foo Fighters of WWII: The Glowing Lights That Paced the Bombers

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A Northrop P-61 Black Widow night fighter in flight — the type of aircraft flown by the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, whose crews first reported the foo fighters in November 1944

About 6 min readIn the last winter of the Second World War, Allied aircrews began reporting small glowing orbs that paced their aircraft, matched their manoeuvres, and vanished. The pilots named them foo fighters — and eighty years later, no single explanation covers all the reports.

The Battle of Los Angeles, 1942: 1,400 Rounds Fired at Nothing — or Something?

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The famous 1942 photograph of searchlight beams converging in the night sky over Los Angeles during the anti-aircraft barrage of 25 February 1942

About 6 min readEleven weeks after Pearl Harbor, Los Angeles opened fire on its own sky. For over an hour, anti-aircraft guns poured more than 1,400 rounds into the darkness at an enemy that was never found — and the photograph of the night became one of the most famous UFO images ever printed.

The Nuremberg Celestial Phenomenon of 1561: A Battle in the Sky, or a Trick of the Light?

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Hans Glaser's 1561 woodcut broadsheet showing the sun with a face, surrounded by spheres, crosses, cylinders, and a large black spear-like shape above the city of Nuremberg

About 6 min readAt dawn on 14 April 1561, the people of Nuremberg watched spheres, crosses, and cylinders fight in the sky for over an hour. A printer named Hans Glaser recorded it in a broadsheet that still survives — and the argument over what it shows has never ended.