In both camps, high-ranking officials of the intelligence services started to study these strange objects and investigation committees composed of military and scientific personnel were set up in various countries. They had a double purpose: first of all to determine the nature of these flying objects and then to see if they constituted a threat to the security of the nation.
During world war II, the Allies, just like the Germans, noticed the presence of these enigmatic flying objects above their secret bases. The first reaction of each side was obviously to suspect espionage on the part of their enemy.
In 1943 the British were the first to set up a special group to enquire into the question of these object. The British set up a small organization to collect evidence. It was headed by Lieutenant General Massey and was inspired by reports from a spy who, in fact was a double agent operating under the orders of the Mayor of Cologne. He had confirmed that the "Foo-fighters" were not German devices, but that the Germans thought that they were Allied weapons which, of course, the British knew was not so.
Later in 1966, was learned from the British Aviation Minister that project Massey had been officially classified in 1944. Perhaps it was pure coincidence, but the double agent was denounced and executed at the beginning of that year. For their part the Germans did not remain inactive. But in 1944, the Wehemacht asked Oberkommando of the "Luftwaffe (aviation)" to set up a center to collect information on all the various sightings of these mysterious celestial objects.
This was known as Sonderburo No 13 which, until the time of the German defeat scrupulously applied itself to its job. The short time that this commission was in existence prevented it from coming to any definite conclusions, but it collected an impressive amount of information.
The first sighting, studied by the Sonderburo, went back two years and came from Hauptmann Fischer, an engineer in civil life. On March 14,1942, at 5:35 p.m., Fischer landed at the secret air base at Banak, in Norway. At that instant the radar picked up a luminous object and Fischer was asked to go up and identify it. At about 10,000 feet the pilot caught sight of the object, and gave a description by radio to the base: an enormous streamlined craft about 300 feet long and about 50 feet in diameter. The "aerial whale" which was Fischer's title for it stayed horizontal for a long moment before rising vertically and disappearing at great speed.
It was not a machine constructed by the hand of man, Fischer stated in his report. On reading the report, Air Marshall Hermann Goering concluded that the solitude of the north does not seem to have done much for this pilot.
The report of another interesting incident was carefully preserved in the archives of the German Investigation Committee: that of the launching of an experimental rocket on February 12, 1944, at the Kummersdorf test center.
On that day the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, S.S. Reichsfuhrer Himmler and S.S. Gruppenfuhrer Heinz Kammler were present at the launching which was being filmed. Some days later the authorities at the base organized a showing of the film. The astonished spectators, could see very clearly a spherical body which followed the rocket and circled around it.
The authorities immediately suspected Allied espionage. However, an agent informed Himmler that the English were themselves victims of the same sort of phenomenon and thought that it was a new type of German prototype craft. However, the most convincing evidence filed away by the Sonderburo came from a military flying ace.
On September 29, 1944, at 10:45 a.m., a test pilot was trying out a new Messerschmitt jet, ME 262 Schwalbe, when his attention was suddenly caught by two luminous points situated on his right. He shot at full speed in that direction and found himself face to face with a cylindrical object, more than three hundred feet long with some openings along its side, and fitted with long antennae placed in front up to about halfway along its length. Having approached within about 1,500 feet of the craft the pilot was amazed to see that it was moving at a speed of more than 1,200 m.p.h.
