1944.10c
Jenny Randles interviewed comedian Michael Bentine, who in late 1944 was an intelligence officer stationed in eastern England dealing with free Polish troops.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
[Bentine was an] intelligence officer with the bomber wing of 626 Squadron.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
He had to debrief bomber crews after a raid on the German secret weapons site at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast, where deadly aerial technology was developed.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
“Three or four crews came back with identical stories…”
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
They spoke of being “pursued by a light which was pulsating and had flown round the aircraft”. He suggested that they were observing St Elmo’s fire, a static electrical discharge that sometimes creates balls of light around pointed metal objects like ship’s masts. But the crews were insistent that they had seen St Elmo’s fire elsewhere and that these phenomena were nothing like it.
Bentine continued: “As far as they were concerned it was some form of weapon. So I said: ‘What did it do to you?’ and they said ‘Nothing.’ So I said it was not a very effective weapon!”
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
Then another crew came in, then another. And in the end it was obvious that these people had seen it.
(UFOs and How to See Them, Randles)
“About 48 hours later an American officer came in. He’d been going around the group and he said, ‘I understand your crews have seen it… We call them “foo fighters” and they appear in daylight as well. We don’t know what they are.’ So I said, ‘No, neither do I and nor do the air-crew.’ That was probably the manifestation of what is now called a UFO.”