During WWII, when a series of incomprehensible events suddenly erupted
over battle zones from North Africa to Guadalcanal to the Rhineland,
hundreds of fliers and infantrymen on both sides of the conflict had
occasion to look into the skies at a mystery that has never been
explained. Whatever the cause, these weird aerial apparitions, which
came to be known as "foo fighters", were enough to make witnesses forget
momentarily the life and death concerns of men in combat.





June 24, 1947--the date Kenneth Arnold's Mt. Ranier sighting would
firmly plant the phrase Unidentified Flying Objects in the public
consciousness-- was more than five years away when the first known
sighting of a "foo" took place. The witnesses were tow sailors of the
deck of the S.S. Pulaski, an old Polish vessel which had been converted
into a British troopship for use in ferrying soldiers between Durban,
South Africa, and Suez, Egypt. While the ship was cruising through the
Indian Ocean during the early morning hours of a clear, starry night in
September 1941, seaman Mar Doroba happened to look up and saw, as he
recalled some years later, "some strange globe glowing with greenish
light, about half the size of the full moon, as it appears to us."





He called out to one of the English gunners and the two of them watched
the strange light, which they estimated to be at an altitude of 4,000 to
5,000 feet, as it followed them for the next hour. Finally the thing
"just disappeared."