- History Channel
- 96th Bombardment
Group - proposed 96th BG Memorial at Snetterton Heath, UK
- Groups &
Squadrons in WWII in Norfolk and Suffolk - OPERATION APHRODITE:
"war-weary B-17 bombers as robotic 'flying bombs'" - Joe Kennedy's last
mission
- Clark
Gable
- Mighty Eighth Air Force
Heritage Museum, Savannah, GA
- The Mighty Eighth
Heritage Museum - The Unofficial Page - Links
- 8th Air Force Fighter
Groups
- 8th Air Force
Message Board
- Eighth Air
Force Museum - Aircraft Exhibit Reference
- Aces of the
Eighth Air Force in World War Two
- Mighty 8th Air Force Museum at
Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana
- HQ 8th Air Force history -
Barksdale Air Force Base
- The Mighty
Eighth Voice - HQ Newsletter
- Mysterious
8th AF HQ Fire at Barksdale, March 12, 2002
- Eighth Air Force Historical
Society - Milwaukee, Wisconsin Chapter
- Link-Sammlung
zur Geschichtswissenschaft - History-Links
- "Third Reich and
World War II" of Virtual Library Geschichte (University of
Erlangen-Nuremberg)
- General
Dynamics F-111E
- Museum of
Aviation - General Dynamics F-111E
- RAF Upper Heyford
Memorial Web Site
- RAF
UH F111 Crashes in factory parking lot - melts all cars - May 1992
- 13th
RAF UH F111 Crashes on landing missing houses - pilot capsule ejected
but both crew DOA - Sept 18, 1992
- James
Bond in Octopussy - terrorist nuke at RAF UH circus - Watch for 007
Tail Number
- Pierce Brosnan nukes RAF UH - before he was Bonded
- 520th Aircraft Generation Squadron (AGS) - Weapons Loading Section
- 20th Tactical Fighter
Wing at RAF WETHERSFIELD Subterranea
Britannica: Research Study Group: RAF Upper Heyford, July 2001
- 77th
Fighter Squadron
- 20th Fighter
Wing Patches
- 20th
Fighter Wing
- 3rd
Air Force
- United
States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE)
- RAF
Upper Heyford
- USAF Units deployed in
Operation Desert Shield/Storm
- NATO United Nations Air Force invades
USA 2001
- Military Corruption.com
- Gulf War Vets
- Power Hour Radio Show
- Smokey
Stover Comix - Color photos
- Smokey Stover cartoon
- Chicago Tribune - a popular name for boys and planes
- The war experiences of the
pilot and crew of the B17 "Smokey Stover" - from the 486th Bomb
Group, 832 BS (1944-1945) A chronology of the events and places from the
personal archives of Albert I. Pierce.
- Smokey
Stover - The Foo Fighter - By syndicated cartoonist Bill Holman - Based on
the Famous Comic Strip - Whitman Publishing Company - Copyright 1938 . .
Number - 1421 . . 425 pages. Holman's luck changed when he created
'Smokey Stover' in 1935, a strip about firemen. In the Second World war,
the figure of Smokey Stover appeared as paintings on several American
bomber planes. The strip ran until 1973, and had a great, funny style
with witty punchlines. In 1961, Bill Holman became president of the
National Cartoonists Society. He died on 27 February, 1987.
- foo
/foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very common] Used very generally
as a sample name for absolutely anything - When `foo' is used in
connection with `bar' it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang
acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Repair'), later modified to foobar.
Early versions of the Jargon File interpreted this change as a post-war
bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that FUBAR was itself a
derivative of `foo' perhaps influenced by German `furchtbar' (terrible)
- `foobar' may actually have been the original form. For, it seems, the
word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar history in comic strips and
cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in the "Smokey Stover" comic
strip published from about 1930 to about 1952. Bill Holman, the author
of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal contrivances,
including other nonsense phrases such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 nix
nix". The word "foo" frequently appeared on license plates of cars, in
nonsense sayings in the background of some frames (such as "He who foos
last foos best" or "Many smoke but foo men chew"), and Holman had Smokey
say "Where there's foo, there's fire". One place
"foo" is known to have remained live is in the U.S. military during the
WWII years. In 1944-45, the term `foo fighters' was in use by radar
operators for the kind of mysterious or spurious trace that would later
be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced in popular American
usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better grunge-rock bands).
Because informants connected the term directly to the Smokey Stover
strip, the folk etymology that connects it to French "feu" (fire) can be
gently dismissed.
- 1942 'Battle Of Los
Angeles' - Attack on UFO kills 6 Americans on ground - Including
Stunning New Photo Analysis! This UFO was photographed on the 25th
February 1942 and was featured in the Los Angeles Times. A strange
aerial intruder hovered over the Culver City area of Los Angeles during
that morning. It was described by one eyewitness as "enormous" and "pale
orange" in colour. The blobs of light are not UFOs but bursts of anti
aircraft shells being fired at the object. Nearly 2000 rounds of
ammunition were discharged before the object disappeared from view. The
beams of light are earth based search lights focussing on the object
which can just be made out.
- Smokey
Stover Yorktown Memorial Theatre - Patriots Point Naval and Maritime
Museum, Charleston SC lists 8,080 names of carrier aviation men lost
in World War Two and all wars thereafter - Stover's is the first of
those 8,080 names - Stover's name came to stand for all who never return
once they left the carrier's flight decks, yet who had no grave marker
and no place for families to go to love and remember
- USS
Yorktown recovery of NASA Apollo 8 "Moon" mission - Time Magazine's
"Men of the Year" Astronauts Air Force Col. Frank Borman, Navy Capt.
James Lovell, Jr. and Air Force Major (later Lt. Col.) William Anders
piloting their spacecraft through the final re-entry phase, the capsule
splashed down in the Pacific 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii at 4:52
a.m. (Yorktown time) on December 27, only 2 1/2 miles from this 25 year
old carrier.
- A
Staff Report by the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board - "Smokey
Stover" was probably the most screwball comic strip ever published. It
was begun in 1935 and distributed by the Chicago Tribune/New York Daily
News Syndicate. The cartoon was famous for putting little sight gags and
puns in almost every frame, including the words "foo", "1506 Nix Nix"
and the aforementioned "notary sojac," all of which Holman refused to
explain. Actually, Holman is better remembered for "foo." Stover drove a
truck called the "Foomobile" and the word was later picked up and used
by Bob Clampett in some of his cartoon work for Warner Brothers. There is some evidence that the phrase "foo-fighters," in
reference to pilots investigating alleged UFOs during World War II, can
be traced back to Stover.
- PROJECT 1947 - FOO FIGHTERS: THE STORY SO FAR
- The subject of Foo-Fighters, the mysterious aerial phenomenon seen by
aircrew during W.W.II, is probably the most neglected area of study in
the field of ufology. Once ufologists realised that their world did not
in fact begin on June 24th 1947 with Arnold's infamous sighting, it has
become fashionable to conduct research into "historical" UFO's which has
led to some useful insights into the nature of the UFO phenomenon as a
whole. The pre-Great War Airship and between the wars Mystery Flier
Waves plus the post-war Mystery Rocket waves have all been admirably
covered by researchers in the UK, USA and Sweden, but foo-fighters have
been virtually ignored. With this in mind I began in 1987 to seek out
all material extant relating to foo- fighters to try and put the subject
into much-needed perspective and with the hopeful intention of
publishing the end results in book form as a reference tool for other
ufologists. For a start even the name `foo-fighter' is problematic; did
it come from the old Smokey Stover cartoon character saying "Where
there's foo there's fire"; or was it from the French word feu, meaning
fire, or was it, according to one ex-B17 waist gunner I spoke to, from
"phooey". Needless to say, he didn't believe they existed! Also, what
exactly is the definition of a "foo-fighter"? For instance, if we
constructed a "family tram" of foo-fighter material we would find,
almost without exception, that the "grandpappy of them all" is the 1945
American Legion Magazine article, written by Jo Chamberlin. This article
forms the substance of almost every piece written on the subject of
foo-fighters. Fortunately this article is based on accounts which can be
(has been) checked with squadron records and appears largely correct.
This is a direct result of Chamberlin's article and has led to further
speculation that perhaps they were Nazi secret weapons pulled out of the
hat at the last minute, or even perhaps that the foo were
extraterrestrials keeping an eye on us before we used the atomic bomb.
This time scaling is false and the first record I have of a foo-fighter
being seen comes from 1940 and they were seen often throughout all the
war years. We have at least one outright hoax too in foo-fighter lore.
For years rumours had been flying round that the Germans had been fully
aware of the foo-fighter phenomenon (perhaps that's where the above
canard originated) and that they had a special study group formed to
look into the problem under the name of "Project Uranus," backed by a
shadowy group by the name of Sonderburo 13 (reminds you of Majestic 12
doesn't it?). This was first detailed in La Livres Noir De Soucupes
Volantes (The Black Book of Flying Saucers- 1970) by French ufologist
Henry Durrant. When I checked this out with Durrant he informed me that
the whole "Project Uranus" affair was a hoax which he had inserted in
his book precisely to see who would copy it without checking. None of my
respondents had fired on the phenomena, in some cases fearing it to be a
secret weapon which would explode when fired upon and in others just
attempting to evade it on the basis that as long as it wasn't firing at
them they weren't going to antagonise it. A few pilots and crew chose
not to report their experience at the time for fear of ridicule or for
fear of being grounded for having hallucinations. Many though did record
and report what they saw however and the response of the intelligence
de-briefing staff varied considerably from total disinterest or hilarity
to, in one case only, great interest and a further interview by
intelligence officers. This was more than likely to be concerned with
the possibility that the crew had seen one of the new German jets than
anything else. The German secret weapon hypothesis (GSWH) promoted by
such writers as Renato Vesco is unlikely to be valid. Out of all this
some clear facts are apparent. Hundreds of aircrew saw and recorded what
we now call foo-fighters during W.W.II. There must be many thousands of
ex-aircrew who have stories to tell.
- Historical UFO
photographs - Pre 1947
- Foo
Fighters - World War Two UFOs - What's a Foo Fighter? If you said
it's a band started by ex-Nirvana drummer David Grohl, you'd be right.
But where did the name come from? In the 1930's and 1940's, a comic
strip called Smokey Stover seems to have captured the public
imagination. Smokey Stover was a fireman whose boss was Chief Cash U.
Nutt. His wife was Cookie and they had a son named Earl. Smokey drove
around in a two-wheeled fire truck called the Foomobile, and he called
himself a foo fighter rather than a firefighter. The word foo turned up
often in the strip, in such places as on car tags and on menus. Holman
claimed that he got the word from a Chinese figurine and that it meant
"good luck", but he used foo in many contexts in which that meaning
didn't fit. The French word for fire is feu, and that may somehow fit in
as well. Holman used other nonsense phrases in the strip such as notary
sojac and 1506 nix nix. Some people read the strip more for the oddball
stuff in the background than for the main humor of the strip. The word
foo caught on outside of the Holman strip, and was also used by other
cartoon characters, including Daffy Duck. During World War II, when U.S.
pilots and sailors began seeing odd balls of light or shiny metal that
could fly circles around our planes and that sometimes followed ships at
sea, somebody called them Foo Fighters, and the name caught on. Others
called them kraut fireballs because it was thought that they were some
sort of Nazi secret weapon, but foo fighter was the name that stuck.
Various explanations were given for Foo Fighters. The official
explanation was that they were the effect of electrostatic or
electromagnetic fields created across the wings of aircraft. But why
none of these effects are present on modern aircraft and why the objects
were not always observed in contact with the wings and were often seen
far away from aircraft has never been explained. In reality, no one knew
what foo fighters really were. Hitler thought they were a U.S. secret
weapon, and is said to have had them investigated. The British thought
they were German and allegedly set up a group called the Massey Project
to study them. The U.S. 8th Army also scrutinized them, but once it was
determined that they were not of German or Japanese origin, the studies
were dropped. The Foo Fighters themselves didn't go away until the war
ended, and possibly not even then. After the war, new names for
unidentified aerial phenomenon came into use, such as flying saucer.
- Feuerball -
Nazi UFOs and Secret Bases - The year was 1945. Even as it became
apparent that the tide of the war was turning in favor of the Allies,
German scientists working for the Nazis still had a few tricks up their
sleeves. Secret devices were being built in the labs and factories of
the underground complexes in the Harz Mountains and elsewhere. Late in
the war, Allied pilots began to see unusual lights and silvery globes
flying at their wingtips. They nicknamed these foo fighters and kraut
fireballs thinking they were some new secret weapon of the Nazis. The
objects, however, never attacked an allied plane, they just flew near
them. These feuerballs were unmanned, remote controlled devices whose
main purpose was to jam the radar of the Allied planes and to confuse
and intimidate them. They would have been great offensive weapons, but
no satisfactory method of arming them was found in time. A larger,
manned version, called the kugelblitz, was being built and tested, but
the war ended before it could put into service. In 1938, Hitler had sent
an expedition headed by Captain Alfred Richter to the part of Antarctica
just opposite the tip of South America to locate a site for a secret
base, and by 1945 the base was completed. In the spring of 1945, when
the fall of the Third Reich had become inevitable, the untested
kugelblitz, along with the engineers overseeing its construction, were
loaded into a submarine, the U-977, and taken to this ultra-secret
underground Nazi base. After delivering this cargo, the U-977 and those
of the crew who did not wish to spend the rest of their lives in an
underground base put in at Mar del Plata, Argentina on August 17, 1945.
The U-977 crew thought that they would get a friendly reception in
Argentina, but they were immediately turned over to the United States as
prisoners of war. They were thoroughly interrogated several times by the
Americans and the British before going through the normal prisoner of
war process. As a result of these interrogations, the United States
invaded Queen Maud Land in January 1947 to determine for sure whether or
not there was a Nazi secret base there. Led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd,
the force consisted of thirteen ships, two seaplane tenders, an aircraft
carrier, twelve other aircraft, six helicopters, and a force of 4,000
men. The expedition was called Operation Highjump, and its cover mission
was that of mapping the entire Antarctic coastline. Byrd lost many men
and several aircraft to the Nazis the first day. The expedition, which
had been planned to last for several months, was cut short after a few
weeks. According to the newspaper Brisant, Byrd reportedly told a
reporter later: "...it was necessary for the USA to take defensive
actions against enemy air fighters which come from the polar regions.."
"...fighters that are able to fly from one pole to the other with
incredible speed." The United States then withdrew from the Antarctic
for several years, and UFOs began to be seen around the world in
increasing numbers.
- UFOs:
Foo Fighters and Ghost Rockets -
- MOON MULLINS - "Moon"
was short for "Moonshine" - Which in the Prohibition Era meant Mr.
Mullins was a drinking man. Chicago Tribune Syndicate - In the early
1920s, Frank Willard was writing and drawing a comic strip called The
Outta Luck Club for King Features Syndicate. Upset because he thought
some of his gag ideas were being rejected so they could be passed on to
George McManus for use in Bringing Up Father, he physically assaulted
the more successful cartoonist, knocking him to the floor. In 1958, when
Willard died, that he began signing his own name. Johnson stayed with
the strip until it folded, in 1991. His 68-year stint on Moon Mullins
probably stands as the longest tenure of a creator on a single feature
in the entire history of American comics. Moon's final fling as a
licensed property (and his only foray into animation) occurred in 1971,
when he became one of several rotating back-segment characters on a
Saturday morning TV show starring Archie. The series was called Archie's
TV Funnies, and other characters in the rotation included Broom-Hilda,
Dick Tracy and Smokey Stover. It was re-aired in 1978, without Archie,
under the title The Fabulous Funnies.
- THE
NAZI UFO MYTHOS - Foo Fighters - The following is, essentially, the
article published under the title 'Phoney Warfare' in Fortean Studies 7.
The relationship between the history of the paranormal, and the
'consensus' history that most of us, informed by historians and the
mainstream media, agree on as real, is usually pretty distant.
Forteanism could be said to lie somewhere between these two histories,
in that it notes the allegedly factual, but possibly anomalous accounts
recorded in the media of 'consensus' history, while often rejecting the
'consensus' explanations given for dismissing the strangeness of those
events, and the rationale and reasoning adopted in doing so. Fort was
lucky to live and work before the worst excesses of Ufology and the New
Age appeared. The article was titled 'The Foo Fighter Mystery', and was
written by one Jo Chamberlin. This account is enlivened with
contemporary "quotes" from the witnesses, making it that much more
immediate and appealing. It begins with an account of reports from
Japan, apparently after Germany had been defeated . . . During the last
months of the war the crews of many B-29s over Japan saw what they
described as "balls of fire" which followed them, occasionally came up
and almost sat on their tails, changed color from orange to red to white
and back again, and yet never closed in to attack or crash,
suicide-style . . " "The balls of fire continue to be a mystery -- just
as they were when first observed on the other side of the world -- over
eastern Germany. This is the way they began.
- Smokey
Stover TV cartoon comix - A segment on Archie's T.V. Funnies.
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