The term foo fighters is often used to refer to UFOs that are reported by pilots flying at night as being mysterious moving lights. The first use of the term in this regard occurred during World War II, when fighter pilots, both Allied and German, flying at night over Germany often saw strange lights moving across the sky. Allied pilots, thinking these lights represented a new kind of German high-speed fighter plane, started referring to them as foo fighters. However, there is no evidence that such planes existed at that time or place, and the lights have never been explained. As to how the pilots came up with the word foo, some say they pulled it from their imaginations, while others say that it developed from the term kung fu, a type of martial art whose practitioners employ quick, erratic movements during fights. Still others think that the term came from a phrase uttered by a popular comic-strip hero of the 1930s, Smokey Stover the firefighter; instead of using the common saying of the time, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he would say, “Where there’s foo, there’s fire.”

SEE ALSO:

• UFOs

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning