ACUFO-1944-12-00-GERMANY-2
On December 13, 1944, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Paris issued a press release, taken up by the International News Service, Reuter, and Associated Press news agencies, and first printed in newspapers on December 13, 1944 and in The New York Times on December 14, 1944, then in numerous newspapers in the U.S.A. and around the World.
The press release officially told that “a new German weapon has made its appearance on the western air front”, by airmen of the U.S Army Air Forces who reported that they are encountering silver colored spheres, either singly or in clusters, in the air over German territory. It was said that “sometimes they are semi-translucent.”
The dispatch told that the “new device, apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the huge glass balls that adorn Christmas trees.”
The press reports said that the dispatches from the front “have been heavily censored” and that there was “no information available as in what hold them up like stars in the sky, what is in them, or what their purpose is supposed to be.”
In the following days and weeks, the Press published comments by “experts” - or non-experts - who tried to explain what the “new German weapon” was, sometimes adding details that did not really appear in the official dispatch.
C.E. Butterfield, an Associated Press radio editor, told in a second article about the “silver balls” in the New York Times that he thought the “floating” silver balls were “another” attempt - different from the usual radar chaff air forces used for this - “to create interference for radio communication and detection signals.” He speculated that because the balls had been described as silver in color, they may be of a metallic nature, “and thus would react on any type of electronic mission, that is, they would mess up the signals.” He nevertheless noticed that “apparently, these were not too satisfactory as gravity soon drew them to earth,” but though he speculated they were metallic, he speculated that “particularly if made of some light material”, they “would have greater buoyancy and thus stay aloft longer and maintain a more extended interference period.”
The The New York Times for December 21, 1944, added that the supposed new German weapon was “described as silver, or silver-covered, but the AAF [Army Air Force] does not know whether they are metal”, according to an AAF spokesman, who said that the “descriptions had been contained in newspaper reports and that headquarters here had had no reports from the theatre.”
And: “No 'detectable effects' have been noted from the mysterious 'silver balls' that American pilots recently reported were floating over Berlin, an official Army Air Forces spokesman said today.”
In 1996, U.S. ufologist Jan Aldrich found that although in the New York Times of December 21, 1944, a spokesperson for the Air Forces headquarters had stated that the reports came from the newspapers, no report having been received from the theater, he found in the Intelligence Information Bulletin No. 6 of January 28, 1945 of the XII Tactical Air Command, under the headline “Flak developments”:
“There have however been several reports of the phenomenon which is described as “silver balls”, seen mainly below 10,000 feet; tentative suggestions have been made as to their origin and purpose, but as yet no satisfactory explanation has been found.”
| Date: | Mid-December 1944 |
|---|---|
| Time: | ? |
| Duration: | ? |
| First known report date: | December 13, 1944 |
| Reporting delay: | Days, weeks. |
| Country: | |
|---|---|
| State/Department: | |
| City or place: | Germany |
| Number of alleged witnesses: | Several. |
|---|---|
| Number of known witnesses: | ? |
| Number of named witnesses: | 0 |
| Reporting channel: | ? |
|---|---|
| Visibility conditions: | Night. |
| UFO observed: | Yes. |
| UFO arrival observed: | ? |
| UFO departure observed: | Yes. |
| UFO action: | |
| Witnesses action: | |
| Photographs: | No. |
| Sketch(s) by witness(es): | No. |
| Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): | No. |
| Witness(es) feelings: | Puzzled. |
| Witnesses interpretation: | ? |
| Sensors: |
[ ] Visual:
[ ] Airborne radar: [ ] Directional ground radar: [ ] Height finder ground radar: [ ] Photo: [ ] Film/video: [ ] EM Effects: [ ] Failures: [ ] Damages: |
|---|---|
| Hynek: | ? |
| Armed / unarmed: | Armed, machine guns. |
| Reliability 1-3: | 2 |
| Strangeness 1-3: | 2 |
| ACUFO: | Unidentified. |
[Ref. sjl1:] NEWSPAPER "THE SHREVEPORT JOURNAL":
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Paris, (AP). -- As the Allied armies ground out new gains on the western front today, the Germans were disclosed to have thrown a new “device” into the war - mysterious balls which float in the air.
Pilots report seeing these objects, both individually and in clusters, during raids over the Reich.
(The purpose of the floaters was not immediately evident. It is possible that these represent a new anti-aircraft defense instrument or weapon.)
(This dispatch was heavily censored at supreme headquarters.)
[Ref. nyt1:] "THE NEW YORK TIMES":
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SUPREMES HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionnary force, Dec. 13. -- A new German weapon has made its appearance on the western air front, it was disclosed today.
Airmen of the American Air Force report that they are encountering silver colored spheres in the air over German territory. The spheres are encountered either singly or in clusters. Sometimes they are semi-translucent.
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, Allied Expeditionary Force, Dec. 13 (Reuter) -- The German s have produced a “secret” weapon in keeping with the Christmas season.
The new device, apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the huge glass balls that adorn Christmas trees.
There was no information available as in what hold them up like stars in the sky, what is in them, or what their purpose is supposed to be.
[Ref. nyt2:] "THE NEW YORK TIMES":
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By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
Associated Press Radio Editor
NEW YORK., Dec. 14 -- It could be that those floating silver balls encountered by American airmen in raids over the Reich are another attempt to create interference for radio communication and detection signals.
Dispatches from the front have been heavily censored, but the fact that the balls are described as silver in color would indicate that they are of a metallic nature, and thus would react on any type of electronic mission, that is, they would mess up the signals.
In previous attempts at creating interference, particularly anti - radar, the Germans were reported to have used lightweight tinfoil - like strips of material which they loosed in the air.
Apparently, these were not too satisfactory as gravity soon drew them to earth.
The silver ball, particularly if made of some light material, would have greater buoyancy and thus stay aloft longer and maintain a more extended interference period.
[Ref. rer1:] REUTER IN UNKNOWN U.S. NEWSPAPER:
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SUPREME HEADQUARTERS. Dec. 13 (Reuter) -- The Germans have produced a “secret” weapon in keeping with the Christmas season.
The new device apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the hige glass balls that adorn Christmas trees.
There was no information available as to what holds them in the sky, what is in them, or what their purpose is supposed to be.
[Ref. ins1:] INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE IN UNKNOWN U.S. NEWSPAPER:
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PARIS (INS). -- The Germans on the western front have produced a “secret” weapon in keeping with the Christmas season, it was disclosed officially Wednesday.
This new device, apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the huge glass balls which adorn Christmas trees.
They hang in the air sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters. They are colored silver and other shades and are apparently transparent.
No information was available as to what holds them up like stars in the sky, what is in them, or to their purpose.
Lately, they have been seen several times floating over German territory.
[Ref. nyt1:] ASSOCIATED PRESS IN UNKNOWN U.S. NEWSPAPER:
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(The Associated Press)
Paris, Dec. 18. -- As the Allied armies ground out new gains on the western front today, the Germans were disclosed to have thrown a new “device” into the war - mysterious balls which float in the air.
Pilots report seeing these objects both individually and in clusters, during forays over the Reich.
(The purpose of the floaters was not immediately evident. It is possible that these represent a new anti-aircraft defense instrument or weapon.)
(This dispatch was heavily censored at supreme headquarters.)
[Ref. sss1:] "STARS AND STRIPES" MAGAZINE:
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The Nazis, inadvertently, keeping in Yuletide spirit, have produced a new secret weapon, apparently for air defense, resembling the huge multi-colored glass balls used to decorate Christmas trees.
These transparent spheres, colored silver and other shades, hang in the air either singly or in clusters. No information has been revealed as to what holds them up like stars in the sky, what they contain, or what their purpose is supposed to be. However, they have been seen several times floating over German-held territory.
Despite the new “secret” weapon there won't be a “Merry” Christmas in the Reich this year. Instead, according to German radio, “Christmas this year must be marked by hard work.” Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler nevertheless assured the Nazis that “this war will end in victory for us.” Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Nazi chief of staff, warned the Wehrmacht to continue giving the Hitler salute.
[Ref. wts1:] NEWSPAPER "MELBOURNE WEEKLY TIMES":
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LONDON - The background of von Rundstedt's offensive is a desire to gain time for the perfection of secret weapons, such as rocket-shells, mysterious silver balls in the sky and jet-propelled fighter planes, says the Daily Mail's special correspondent with the American forces. He adds: “It is possible that these may be perfected and produced next summer on a scale sufficient to affect the Allied operations and this, it is believed, has prompted General Eisenhower to maintain the utmost pressure, despite the worst weather Europe has experienced for 80 years.
”The appearance of a large number of jet-propelled fighters with a speed of more than 800 miles an hour, might tend to reduce the present overwhelming Allied air superiority.
“Perfection and mass production of silver balls, on the effect of which no speculation is permitted, might also prove more than a nuisance in air operations. Likewise, the use of flying bombs and rocket-shells on a greatly increased scale could undoubtedly prove a considerable annoyance to the Allied supply lines.”
[Ref. nyt3:] NEWSPAPER "THE NEW YORK TIMES":
Special to The NEW YORK TIMES.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20. -- No “detectable effects” have been noted from the mysterious “silver balls” that American pilots recently reported were floating over Berlin, an official Army Air Forces spokesman said today.
The objects were described as silver, or silver-covered, but the AAF does not know whether they are metal, the spokesman said. He added that the descriptions had been contained in newspaper reports and that headquarters here had had no reports from the theatre.
[Ref. nek1:] "NEWSWEEK" MAGAZINE:
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A massive assault by the United States Army Air Forces based in Britain and Italy last week brought the air war in Europe to a new peak of size and technique. At a season when bad weather ordinarily reduces air activity, the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces surpassed“ all previous records and in a single day sent a total of 2, I 00 heavy bombers and 1,150 fighters against the Reich.
From Britain, 1,600 heavies, escorted by 800 fighters, flew east in five waves stretching over 300 miles. They were manned by 16,800 American airmen; they carried 4,000 tons of explosives and incendiaries. Once over Germany, in cloudy weather that grounded the Luftwaffe and required the Americans to use electronic bombing devices, the Fortresses attacked rail yards at Frankfort and Giessen; the Liberators bombed rail yards at Hanau. From the south, the Fifteenth's heavy bombers hit the Moosbierbaum oil refinery near Vienna.
But though German defense was limited to anti-aircraft fire, the Luftwaffe was still ready for battle, still ingenious in defense. Dispatches heavily censored by Supreme Headquarters revealed that American pilots have recently encountered a new phenomenon over Germany, silver-colored spheres resembling huge, glittering Christmas-tree ornaments.
Sometimes translucent, floating singly or in clusters, the balls are presumably a new form of aerial interference. Recalling the Allied and German use of tinfoil strips dropped by attacking planes to confuse Radar instruments on the ground. Hanson Baldwin, military analyst of The New York Times, made this 'educated' guess on the new German weapon:
“The new 'silver spheres' might represent... the reverse of this idea, Such spheres, drifting about in the sky, might interfere with and confuse the radar in the attacking planes, thus making 'blind' bombing impossible, or far more inaccurate than it normally is.”
[Ref. cbz1:] CHARLES BERLITZ:
There is no shortage of hypotheses according to which UFOs are of terrestrial origin. Those who support it point to a strange coincidence: the first flying saucer was seen in 1947 and, immediately afterwards, space technology took off suddenly in the West as well as in the Soviet Union... There must be something fishy going on, they say.
Moreover, we know from various sources that, towards the end of the last war, the Nazi German air force, the Luftwaffe, which had produced the first jet fighter, was in the process of develop a complex and ultra-secret air weapon. If we are to believe a report issued on December 13, 1944 by a correspondent for the Reuters Agency, Marshall Yarrow, “the Germans have produced a “secret” weapon well suited to the Christmas holidays. The new device, presumably a defensive aerial weapon, resembles the balls that decorate Christmas trees. They have been seen floating over Germany, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. They are silver in color and appear transparent.”
The Italian writer Renato Velasco [sic] claimed for his part that the Germans had produced an aerial machine in the shape of a flat disc which they nicknamed Feuerball, ball of fire. They used it, according to him, as an anti-radar and psychological weapon against the Allies.
The gas-fired turbine engine of the Feuerball was then replaced by the jet engine of the Kugeblitz. This, if we are to believe Velasco, was the first powered aerial vehicle capable of taking off and landing vertically. It was designed by Rudolph Shriever [sic] and was said to have been manufactured at a BMW factory near Prague. It first flew in February 1945 over the vast Kahla underground complex in the German province of Thuringe. It was also in this region of the Harz Mountains that Hitler intended to build his final resting place, which would have been protected by a terrifying deployment of these Luftwaffe “secret weapons” of which Goering had continually announced imminence.
But the end of the war was approaching and the Nazis did not have time to use their secret weapons. However, nothing prevents us from thinking that the Soviets or the Americans succeeded in seizing flying saucer technology, that they experimented with it to improve it and that all of this was at the origin of these flying saucers birds that we began to see from 1947.
Note: all the talk about the “nazi saucers” is pure rubbish, as explained for example in my 2006 article about this mythology.
Renato Vesco, cited here, was a promoter of fantasy “nazi saucers” who claimed the “Foo-Fighters” in WWII were a secret nazi weapon called “Kugelblitz” - all interviewed German officers and technicians who were involved in advanced aerial programs denied any involvement or knowledge that the “Foo Fighters” may have been anything German.
Vesco made many claims, which started here, in 1969 only, that were proven fraudulent, mainly by ufologists Kevin McClure and Maurizio Verga.
For example, he claimed that he had “commanded the technical section of the Italian Air Force” in 1944. But he was born in 1924, so that it is impossible that he received such a prestigious position at age 20. He claimed to have studied at the “German Institute for Aerial Development”, but he would have been 15 then.
Vesco claimed in his second book that the British landed on the moon in 1951 and on Mars in 1954 using secret Nazi technology! (The “nazi saucer” buffs keep this under wraps because they do not want you to find out that the person they are claiming to be an “aviation expert” was just one of many scammers.)
The German Rudolf Schriever came up only after the first nazi saucers claims appeared in the Press by one Giuseppe Beluzzo, in 1950. He told in an article of Der Spiegel magazine of March 30, 1950, headlined “Sie Fliegen Aber Doch” (“but they do fly”), that he had drawn plans of a German flying saucer in 1942, which was never built, he specified, and that these plans were maybe in the hands of the Russians or Americans now. He was the first to publish a sketch, with absolutely no serious technical comment or documentation to accompany it and presented a quite whimsical aircraft. Vesco called him a fraud.
[Ref. jah1:] JAN ALDRICH - "PROJECT 1947":
Jan Aldrich wrote that in December 14 and 21, 1944, the New York Times reported that American pilots over Germany were reporting silver spheres, and a spokesman at Army Air Force headquarters said that the only reports reaching Washington were from the newspapers, no reports having been received from the theater.
But Aldrich explained that in the XII Tactical Air Command's Intelligence Information Bulletin, No. 6 of January 28, 1945, under the heading “Flak Developments”, it was said that:
There have however been several reports of the phenomenon which is described as “silver balls”, seen mainly below 10,000 feet; tentative suggestions have been made as to their origin and purpose, but as yet no satisfactory explanation has been found.
[Ref. mgr1:] MICHEL GRANGER:
The press only got word of the thing [the “Foo-Fighters”] in December 1944 "through a leak". Thus, Newsweek of December 25, 1944 carried a headline on the “puzzle of the silver spheres”. “Heavily censored dispatches from headquarters (sic) reveal that American pilots recently encountered a new phenomenon over Germany. Sometimes translucent, flying singly or in groups, the spheres are supposedly a new form of aerial interference.
The New York Times of January 2, 1945 ran its front page in these terms: “Fireballs chase away US fighters in their night assault on Germany.”
There is no information available for now about the planes involved in this case of these cases, except that they were U.S. Army Air Forces military planes.
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In may be tempting to reconcile the December 1944 Press information with the case in Neustadt in the winter 1944-1945; but I do not think it is correct. In the Neustadt case, two pilots separately talked of having encountered unidentified ball-shaped objects in the sky, but they both said they were gold-colored, not silver-colored.
In this case, we have an official Press release by the U.S. Army Headquarters of the European front in Paris, but with very little information as of what the “silver balls” were actually doing. C.E. Butterfield in the second New York Times article was the first to call them “floating”, whereas the Army press release did not contain this detail, as far as we can see.
Balls-shaped objects, silver-colored, and appearing semi-translucent, do not have any obvious ordinary explanation. Planes, jet planes, flak, Me-163 rocket plane, V2 rockets, nothing really fits.
And, once again, as can be noted with all the unidentified aerial phenomena airmen reported in WWII, as clearly indicated in the third New York Times article, quoting an official Army Air Forces spokesman, the silver balls had no detectable effects; which made it totally dubious that they were a German weapon.
Because the information about the reported phenomenon here is so meager, I cannot claim these were extraterrestrial craft and I leave it as “unidentified.”
Unidentified.
* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.
| Main author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editor: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Create/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | July 4, 2024 | Creation, [sjl1], [nyt1], [nyt2], [rer1], [ins1], [aps1], [nek1], [wts1], [nyt3], [sss1], [jah1]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | July 4, 2024 | First published. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | July 19, 2024 | Addition [cbz1], [mgr1]. |
