In the 1930's and 1940's, a comic strip called Smokey Stover seems to have captured the public imagination. Smokey, the brainchild of cartoonist Bill Holman, became a syndicated strip in 1935 and continued until Holman's death in 1973.
Smokey Stover was a fireman whose boss was Chief Cash U. Nutt. His wife was Cookie and they had a son named Earl. Smokey drove around in a two-wheeled fire truck called the Foomobile, and he called himself a foo fighter rather than a firefighter. The word foo turned up often in the strip, in such places as on car tags and on menus. Holman claimed that he got the word from a Chinese figurine and that it meant "good luck", but he used foo in many contexts in which that meaning didn't fit. The French word for fire is feu, and that may somehow fit in as well. Holman used other nonsense phrases in the strip such as notary sojac and 1506 nix nix. Some people read the strip more for the oddball stuff in the background than for the main humor of the strip. The word foo caught on outside of the Holman strip, and was also used by other cartoon characters, including Daffy Duck.
During World War II, when U.S. pilots and sailors began seeing odd balls of light or shiny metal that could fly circles around our planes and that sometimes followed ships at sea, somebody called them Foo Fighters, and the name caught on. Others called them kraut fireballs because it was thought that they were some sort of Nazi secret weapon, but foo fighter was the name that stuck.
August 10, 1944
Palembang, Sumatra
Captain Alvah M. Reida of the 486th Bomb Group, 792nd Squadron, 20th Bomber Command, based at Kharagapur, India was on a mission from Ceylon to bomb Palembang, Sumatra, flying a B-29 Bomber at an altitude of 14,000 feet and an indicated airspeed of 210 mph. The right gunner and copilot reported a bright red or orange
spherical object pacing the plane about 500 yards off the starboard wing. It was about 5 or 6 feet in diameter and seemed to vibrate constantly.
Captain Reida attempted evasive action, but the object followed every maneuver for about eight minutes, then suddenly made an abrupt 90 degree turn and accelerated away rapidly.
Various explanations were given for Foo Fighters. The official explanation was that they were the effect of electrostatic or electromagnetic fields created across the wings of aircraft. But why none of these effects are present on modern aircraft and why the objects were not always observed in contact with the wings and were often seen far away from aircraft has never been explained.
Unusual aircraft and lights in the sky were seen from the ground and from ships, as well.
August 12,1942
Tulagi, Solomon Islands
Sergeant Stephen J. Brickner of the 1st Paratroop Brigade, 1st Marine Division, U.S. Marine Corps, reported that air raid sirens went off, and he observed over 150 objects fly over in straight lines of 10 or 12 objects, one behind the other. No wings or tails were visible to Sergeant Brickner, and the objects seemed to "wobble" slightly as they flew over at a speed that was "a little faster than Jap planes." Sergeant Brickner said that their appearance was that of highly polished silver that shimmered brightly in the sun. He said, "All in all, it was the most awe-inspiring and yet frightening spectacle I have seen in my life."
September, 1941
Indian Ocean
In September, 1941, two sailors on board the British troop ship S.S. Pulaski watched a strange greenish glowing globe follow the ship for an hour.
In reality, no one knew what foo fighters really were. Hitler thought they were a U.S. secret weapon, and is said to have had them investigated. The British thought they were German and allegedly set up a group called the Massey Project to study them. The U.S. 8th Army also scrutinized them, but once it was determined that they were not of German or Japanese origin, the studies were dropped. The Foo Fighters themselves didn't go away until the war ended, and possibly not even then. After the war, new names for unidentified aerial phenomenon came into use, such as flying saucer.