10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About World War II

10. The Skies Are Alive With The Sound Of Saucers

Today they're called UFOs, but in 1944 World War II pilots had no idea what to call them at all. Even though they have always existed it was in this year and subsequent decades after up until recent times UFOs began being sighted in large numbers. If you've never taken UFOs seriously, never even considered the possibility they could be actual aircraft, you should take a little time to read their history. The military takes them very seriously, has scrambled jets against them, and has even silenced citizens through threats to keep them from talking about sightings. Perhaps that is because they still have no idea what the UFOs are. During the last year of the war several reports detailing strange balls of light being seen by pilots in the night skies began flooding up the chains of command. These pilots always reported the same thing; the lights would follow them at a safe distance and then disappear. They could not be outmaneuvered or shot down, much to the frustration of the officers. The conclusion was drawn that these "foo fighters" (foo being a popular word for nonsense at the time) were secret Nazi reconnaissance aircraft or Japanese Fire Balloons (highly explosive balloons the Japanese made to drift over the Pacific and kill people randomly in California). The only problem with the theory was after the war Germans and Japanese also confessed to seeing the foo fighters and having no idea what they were either. The rational explanation is these strange sightings can be attributed to light phenomena like St. Elmo's Fire or Will-o'-the-Wisp, but those are just educated guesses. Confused and consistently out flown by these strange objects in the sky the military began calling them a giant hoax made up by crazy people who wanted attention. They reiterated the theory so much over the last fifty years it eventually stuck.