75yrs ago today, the first instance of what would become the UFO craze was originally reported (as a no-longer obscure mention) in the American national media for the first time. Before Dave Grohl brought the term into a more recognizable public lexicon, the name "foo fighter" was used by Allied pilots in WWII to describe mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over the European & Pacific theaters of operations. The first reportings came from the U.S. 415th Night Fighter Squadron in Nov 1944 with witnesses assuming they were seeing Nazi secret weapons (later conspiracy theories would suggest the Germans were using craft employed from captured alien technologies) which were described as glowing red balls of fire in formation, moving at incredibly high speeds and performing impossible maneuvers before simply vanishing. Aircrews also said the objects couldn't be shot down (the Messerschmitt Me 262 then Heinkel He 162 were the world's first operational jets which may have accounted for some of the unusal machines) and further investigations into possible enemy activity revealed that German & Japanese pilots had reported similar sightings. The actual name of "foo" was infact a nonsense word which had been popular in the 1930's & 40's from the comic strip 'Smokey Stover' who was a screwball fireman referring to fire as "foo" & drove around in his "foo mobile".
The borrowing/applying of the name "foo fighter" was said to have come from a radar operator from Chicago named Donald Meiers who was a fan of the comic strip. An Intelligence Officer named Fritz Ringwald stated afterwards in a mission debriefing that Meiers was so extremely agitated of a particular UFO experience, that the radarman had a copy of the comic strip in his back pocket to which he pulled it out, slammed it on the desk and said of the encounter, "...it was another one of those fuckin' foo fighters!" before storming out of the room. Ringwald said for lack of a better term, the name - with the leading profanity - stuck. Paris press correspondent, Bob Wilson, soon began writing of the unusual incidents (although earlier ones mentioned in military dispatches which were often vague & met with skepticism, had occurred from 1940-43) by which time the 415th Unit Commander, Capt. Harold Augsperger, shortened the term in the outfit's historical records.

By Dec, Allied forces were pushing through France & Belgium towards a crossing of the Rhine river as a final thrust into Germany. The first official press release issued from the supreme Allied Headquarters, was featured in the New York Times as a mundane piece calling the UFO phenomena a new German weapon with follow-up stories also appearing in Britain (and a scattered handful of newspapers across the USA picking up the odd coverage from the Associated Press). While the Nazis were simultaneously firing V-1 and V-2 rockets into London, those projectiles absolutely could not be mistaken for the burning spheres of colored lights or silver balls which hung in the sky and sometimes followed/chased Allied planes. (Some, such as scientists would say the UFO's could be explained as the campaigns of Japanese fire balloons or the static/electromagnetism of St. Elmo's Fire). The 415th was soon joined by 29yr old war correspondent from Vermont, Robert C. Wilson, who give the most complete & contemporaneous account of the stories (of which pieces appeared in newspapers in Texas, Missouri and Chicago on Jan 2, 1945). Then on Jan 15, came the two main magazine articles (Time and Newsweek). Afterwards, no further mention would be found in the press for the duration of the war (inspite of incidents reported in France and Italy and what was amounting to the accumulation of numerous classified documents). At war's end however, the 415's experience was revisited in various publications, most notably in the Dec 1945 issue of American Legion magazine.
That same month saw what went on to become of one the most famous air/naval mysteries: the disappearance of Flight 19 over the Bermuda triangle (aka 'The Devil's Triangle' named for the region's physical boundaries inbetween Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico). On Dec 5th, 5 TBM Avenger torpedo bombers vanished without a trace over the Atlantic Ocean during a US Navy training flight from an air station in Fort Lauderdale,FL. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of the PBM Mariner group sent on the search & rescue mission. For decades afterwards, professional investigators have theorized, that both squadrons exploded in mid-air (particularly since a tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion with witnesses observing a widespread oil slick while unsuccessfully looking for survivors). Navy investigators determined the cause to be pilot disorientation & navigational error resulting in the planes crashing in rough seas after running out of fuel. To this day (outside of violent tropical weather), the patternology of strange occurrences in the region which have been attributed to the dissapearance of several planes & ships, have been blamed on UFO phenomena, magnetic anomaly interference and perhaps the most outlandish: a supernatural belief of leftover technology from the mythical submerged lost continent of the kingdom of Atlantis(!)

On Jun 24, 1947 came the first highly publicized sighting of a UFO. 32yr old Kenneth Arnold (a skilled & experienced pilot with over 9000 total flight hrs), said he saw 9 unusual objects in the sky while flying near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. (He later claimed to have seen others on many subsequent occasions particularly his 2nd sighting on Jul 25 when he said he saw 20-25 small brass-colored objects that came within 1200 feet of his plane while flying over La Grande Valley in Oregon). At the time, he was quoted as saying the shape of the objects were like a "saucer, disk, flat like a pie-plate, half-moon shaped, and oval in front & convex in the rear". Their erratic motion was described as "like a fish flipping in the sun or a saucer skipped across water". From this came the media-coined term "flying saucer" (which Arnold never specifically used) which was used commonly & interchangeably until the early 1950's when the name was officially supplanted by the US Air Force in 1952 with the broader term "UFO" (further proliferated through sci-fi b-movies). Decades onward, the Arnold case is still a source of controversy as some researchers claim the Air Force listed his reportings as a mirage while others dispute their was never a military explanation of the sightings. Arnold later added that one of the objects infact resembled a "crescent or flying wing". He went on to became a minor celebrity as he was somewhat involved in interviewing other UFO witnesses and those claiming to have had alien contact. He wrote a book, several magazine articles, compiled research and exactly 30yrs to the day in 1977 (after having declined all interviews in the 1960's), attended the First International UFO Congress in Chicago, organized to mark the "birth" of the modern UFO age. Some of his comments at the event expressed his displeasure at the general ignorance from the public sector concerning the matter. 1977 also saw the release of Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND which had a back story involving Flight 19. The movie was a huge box office success and brought a sci-fi fantasy element to the public imagination. Arnold died in Jan 1984 at age 68.

On Jul 8, 1947 occurred the mother of all UFO incidents. A happening still presently unsurpassed (remaining the most famous case in the world) and an ever-sprawling legendary story involving a desert crash landing; an eyewitness rancher; the retrieval of alien bodies; the collection of craft debris; a weather balloon press release; rumored evidence housed in the secret military base of Area 51 (tied to one bizarre belief that Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin was using infamous Nazi war criminal and ex-Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, in a collaboration to create a hybrid of child-alien pilots to be launched against the USA in an emulation of Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds'(!); cover-ups; government conspiracy; missing nurses; conflicting stories rife with contradiction; outrageous theories; bitter disagreements; accusations of hoaxes; bizarre claims; false testimony; cloudy memories; and deliberate deception further resulting in the creation of Project Blue Book in Mar 1952 (meant to analyze both national security threats and scientific data each pertaining to UFOs)... all still an ongoing source of fascination.