Foo Fighters: U.S. Army WWII reports from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron

PURSUE Release 01's earliest record is a 1944-1945 Department of War numerical file containing the 'foo fighter' reports filed by U.S. Army Air Forces pilots, principally from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron operating with the XII Tactical Air Command in the European theater.

American crews reported small, glowing, controlled objects that paced their P-61 Black Widow night fighters during operations over Germany and occupied France in the winter of 1944. The Royal Air Force Air Ministry's analysis, captured in the same record, concluded that the phenomenon remained 'still something of a mystery.'

The foo-fighter reports predate Kenneth Arnold's June 1947 sighting by two and a half years. Their inclusion in PURSUE Release 01 extends the publicly documented U.S. government record of UAP encounters back into wartime — a period from which little material had previously been declassified at scale.