Customer Reviews

Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II

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Keith Chester's book concerns anomalous aerial phenomena sighted by allied and enemy pilots during World War II in Europe and the Far East. It is a must read for UFOlogists and the general public will find it of great interest. Keith spent years digging out hard data for the book and keeping me informed of his progress along the way. It is well documented and very revealing about PRE-1947 UFO sightings and government reaction and confusion about them.

Raymond E. Fowler
MUFON Director of Investigations Emeritus
UFO Researcher and Author

Sadly, the subject of post-1947 UFO sightings has become so corrupted by shoddy research, gullible believers, and (most importantly) pop cultural overlay. Thus, pre-1947 sightings are interesting from the standpoint that they are "purer" in terms of anecdotal evidence, even if they are harder to research.

"Foo fighters"--mysterious unexplained aerial phenomena that appeared to or shadowed aircraft in World War II certainly existed. There are too many sighting reports from competent pilots and aircrew to suggest otherwise. But what were they?

Author Keith Chester rightly points out that the subject is almost always a footnote in other UFO books. The subject was ripe for a serious study. So I commend Mr. Chester for his attempt. Sadly, his account falls short on several grounds.

Chester starts out with the accounts of mystery airplanes in Scandinavia in the 1930s as a sort of prologue. Ironically, these sightings are often the footnote to the footnote mentioned above. His discussion of World War Two proper begins with the "Battle of Los Angeles" in February 1942 where unexplained lights or aircraft triggered American anti-aircraft artillery in Southern California. This episode does have a public paper trail--including conflicting explanations from the Army and Navy--in the governmental archives and surely bears serious investigation in its own right. But Chester moves on to the bulk of his account which are mainly US Army Air Forces and Royal Air Force sighting reports.

The accounts of balls of lights or cigar shaped objects one after another certainly make the case that the phenomenon was widespread but I began looking at Chester's footnotes to see where the sightings came from. If the source was a US military document found in Chester's research at the National Archives or a RAF/Ministry of Defence document I tended to give the sighting credence. If the source was from another UFO book such as that of Timothy Good's Above Top Secret, I tended to dismiss it. My reasoning will upset "UFOlogists" but UFO writers far too often are slipshod in their accuracy or research.

Throughout his account, Chester tries to link prominent American civilian scientists like Howard P. Robertson and David Griggs to some sort of far more extensive covert foo fighter investigation. But there is no overt paper trail or definite proof of this. You cannot make an argument over and over again with words like "certainly" and "likely" when it is just as possible that these individuals did not involve themselves with foo fighters.

From the public record, what we do know is that various RAF and USAAF commands and groups made their own investigations of sightings but apart from accounting them to flak or secret Luftwaffe projects, they could come to no definite conclusion. As for the American civilians, only Robertson and Griggs are known to have been officially charged to look into foo fighters and only Griggs has commented publicly on the negative results of his investigation.

From the sighting reports themselves, it is obvious that some number were of enemy flak, enemy aircraft, and misidentified meteorological or astronomical events. Even Chester has to admit this late in his account. Some almost certainly came from war stress and fatigue. In particular, World War Two bombers were not the most comfortable aircraft to fly in. Having flown in a B-24 in the waist gunner position with the open airstream pounding at me, I know how uncomfortable such a long flight in the heart of Nazi Germany must have been. Several hours of that would have totally dulled my senses.

Chester's brief description of "radar ghosts" in the Pacific almost certainly were the result of atmospheric an environmental effects on the primitive radar systems of the time which were not known. I totally dismissed these accounts out of hand.

In addition, when you strip away the interviews and unsourced accounts that Chester got from other UFO books, you are left with just a few major flaps after the Los Angeles incident. These include balls of fire seen by one particular night fighter group in Central Europe and multi-colored circular lights seen by Pacific B-29 crews. This is not to say that foo fighters were not seen worldwide, but they were repeately appeared to multiple witnesses only in a few locations.

The fact that the USAAF night fighter squadrons saw strange objects in an area known to be the site of Nazi secret testing is certainly curious and of course, formed the basis for Nick Cook's Hunt for Zero Point hypothesis of Nazi and later US antigravity testing.

But Chester admits late on in the book that believer in the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the origin of foo fighters. Because UFOs are such a diverse phenomena, I believe it is dangerous to account for all or most sightings to one explanation. As fantastic as Cook's hypothesis is, it no more or less believable that extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth to monitor the war.

To digress for a moment, if extraterrestrials were visiting Earth surely would they not want to conceal their observations? Though their craft apparently had stealth capabilities, those at night that lit up surely revealed their presence. By flying in formation with human aircraft, they surely knew they would be spotted. To what purpose? Why not make contact with humanity at this point?

Many foo fighter sightings that Chester writes about sound much like the still unknown atmospheric plasmas that the British Ministry of Defence recently declared UFOs to be. Of course, explaining one unknown with another is not the most satisfying bit of science.

While I believe Mr. Chester is more honest than most UFO writers, the subject of foo fighters still needs more research to come to a conclusion. I will give Mr. Chester credit in his observation that it is curious that no documents as yet released reveal the results of David Griggs' investigations. But if such records exist, it is yet more proof fo what most already assume: that the US Government has not told the public all that it knows on the subject. But what it "knows" is still debatable. The government might be just as confused as the rest of us.

Thus, Keith Chester starts out much like the S-2 intelligence officers of the day who looked into foo fighters--interested and intrigued but ultimately unable to prove conclusively just what foo fighters were.

C. Husing
former Historian, US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center

Strange Company is a down-to-Earth view of strange sightings of UFO's in World War II before the idea of flying saucers from other worlds were imbedded in our collective conciousness. It is very well researched and well-written.

Considering what passes for research and supporting evidence in most UFO books, Keith Chester's "Strange Company" is a most welcome addition to the field of ufology. Meticulously footnoted, the book cites dozens of official military and government documents/reports that Mr. Chester must have spent countless hours unearthing from the US and UK National Archives. Personal interviews with WWII aircrew and intelligence personnel add to the impressive telling of the story of this long neglected facet of UFO study.

The author actually opens his book pre-WWII when mystery aircraft were being reported the world over, but hits his stride early on with the telling of the story of the February 1942 "Battle of Los Angeles". From that point on, Chester relates sighting after sighting of unknown phenomena by aircrew and other military personnel throughout most, if not all, operational theaters of WWII. Inter-spliced with the sightings narratives, the author reviews numerous studies and investigations of the phenomena by some of the best and brightest in the fields of science and military intelligence from the US and UK. Admittedly there is a degree of speculation on Chester's part as to the level of involvement of some of these experts, but for the most part those speculations do not seem unreasonable based on the information presented.

While a good read overall, "Strange Company" does have some warts. WWII buffs, especially those with an in-depth knowledge of military aviation history and flying, will note the odd gaffe. Chester has a tendency to wander a bit geographically at times, done primarily to tell his story chronologically I assume. With a few exceptions, the photos/illustrations included in the book add little, and his readers would probably have been better served with the inclusion of even basic maps to show where the various sightings occurred. I personally referred to my trusty copy of "The Historical Atlas of World War II" multiple times while reading the book. I would also like to have seen a copy of the questionnaire the author asked those who'd reported sightings to complete while conducting his research.

To me, it's what I didn't see in the book I find most credible. Missing are the more outrageous conspiracy theories, lunatic fringe ideas, and psychobabble/pseudoscientific favored by many in this field. I think the author is both honest and fairly objective. When he speculates, he makes that clear. When he cites less than official sources, such as other UFO authors/lecturers, they are identified as such. Chester did allow late in the book be believes some of the UFOs he discusses are of extraterrestrial origin, he also points out many could be explained away as anti-aircraft weapons, jet/rocket powered aircraft, radar malfunctions, weather anomalies, and even combat-related stress of aircrews. Chester never claims he has solved the mystery of the aerial phenomena of which he writes, but he does chronicle it well. Whether you be a believer or a skeptic, the story is a fascinating one.

It is important to understand that American history, as told by news organizations, is constantly being censored and rewritten to support government policy objectives. The "free press" did not exist during World War II because the War Powers Act had put an end to it. Thus, when UFO activity began to manifest in an obvious way to military pilots, it was almost entirely hidden from public view by the vast wartime censorship and propaganda apparatus. It was only after the war, when vestiges of the once-free press began to reappear, that Americans learned about this startling new phenomenon. Consequently, we tend to think of the UFO era beginning with Kenneth Arnold, Roswell, etc. The author of this useful book makes it clear, however, that U.S. military intelligence officials became aware of the UFO situation long before the American public was able to read about it in their newly unshackled newspapers.

The author has done a great service in filling in some of the big blanks that still exist in America's story. I highly recommend this book to those who want to understand our complete history, free from CIA and Air Force disinformation and dirty tricks.

Strange Company fills a need that many of us didn't know was there. With careful research, great sources, and solid writing, the author builds a convincing case that the modern UFO era did not start with Arnold in 1947, but rather began a decade or two earlier. It also becomes abundantly clear how disengenuous the government was in denying any knowledge of the "flying saucers". In fact, they had abundant evidence of strange objects in the skies from at least the start of WW II. This books ties two eras together in important ways and manages to be a great read in the process.

things have been seen too many to deny and here are stories from some of the best witnesses you could ask for.