1941.09
June 24, 1947 – the date Kenneth Arnold’s Mt Ranier sighting would firmly plant the phrase Unidentified Flying Objects in the public consciousness – was more than five years away when the first known sighting of a “foo” took place. The witnesses were two sailors on the deck of the SS Pulaski, an old Polish vessel which had been converted into a British troopship for use in ferrying soldiers between Durban, South Africa, and Suez, Egypt. While the ship was cruising through the Indian Ocean during the early morning hours of a clear, starry night in September 1941, seaman Mar Doroba happened to look up and saw, as he recalled some years later, “some strange globe glowing with greenish light, about half the size of the full moon, as it appears to us.”
He called out to one of the English gunners and the two of them watched the strange light, which they estimated to be at an altitude of 4,000 to 5,000 feet, as it followed them for the next hour. Finally the thing “just disappeared.”