But how could these mystery rockets turn and maneuver so fantastically? The British came up with at least one head-scratching explanation: Defects in the rockets themselves were causing “erratic behavior.”
Thus the extent to which some in Allied intelligence went to explain away the unexplainable.
A related incident halfway around the world lends a measure of credibility that something out of the ordinary was going on over war-torn Europe.
It happened in 1943, though the exact date is unknown. A military training plane stationed at Long Beach, California, took off and climbed to 5,000 feet. Suddenly an unidentified aerial object appeared off in the distance. It was bright orange and was shaped like the fuselage of a typical aircraft, but without wings or propellers.
The object approached the training plane at high speed, made a radical turn and was very quickly flying in formation with it. The object stayed on this parallel course for about a half minute, astonishing the pilot and his student, before accelerating up to 5,000 miles per hour and disappearing.
Whether the Allied air commands in Europe had been made aware of this sighting is also unknown — but one thing is clear: The object seen that day off Long Beach was extremely similar in description to the “rockets” being reported over Europe.
Which presents a baffling question: If the aerial phenomena being seen by Allied airmen over Europe were being excused away as German “rockets,” then how could almost the exact same kind of unidentified aerial object be seen off the coast of California?
By February 1944, RAF Bomber Command was pummeling Germany mercilessly.
On the night of February 19 alone, six major cities — including Munich, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf — were being bombed by waves of RAF aircraft.
In among the bomber streams coming and going in this brutal nighttime pounding, RAF crews saw many unidentified aerial objects.
During a raid on the Berlin area, two aircrews witnessed a glowing ball that came up from behind their airplanes at high speed, flying a steady horizontal course. In both cases the mystery object flew parallel to the aircraft before disappearing. The odd thing was that one crew saw this ball as orange red and the other saw it as pure white, meaning these crews must have seen two separate mystery objects.
But this was not the strangest thing to happen that night. Two RAF bomber crew, one taking part in a raid on Aachen, another near Coblenz, saw an object that both described as being silver and resembling an airship.
In one instance, this object flew a parallel course with the RAF bomber, same altitude, same heading, off its starboard wing. At one point this object fell behind the airplane, adjusted its course and then moved from the starboard side of the plane to the port side — an indication of some kind of intelligent control.
Five days later, on February 24, 1944, U.S. bombers were on their way to attack another heavily defended target: the city of Schweinfurt. Located in northern Bavaria, like Stuttgart, Schweinfurt was a crucial place for the Nazis because nearly all of the ball bearings for Germany’s airplanes, ships, U-boats and tanks were made there.
The city had been bombed before, most notably on August 17, 1943, and then again on October 14. Combined, these raids cost the U.S. Eighth Air Force more than one hundred B-17s, enough to put an end to U.S. deep penetration raids for nearly six months.
Things had changed by February 1944, though. Where the raids of 1943 were conducted without fighter escort, leaving the big bombers very vulnerable to German fighters, by 1944, long-range P-51 Mustangs were able to stay with the bombers all the way to the target and all the way back, holding off those German fighters and significantly increasing the survival rate of U.S. bomber crews.
But during the February 24 bombing raid another strange incident took place. Three large silver objects were spotted below the main force of bombers. The U.S. crews who’d seen them were convinced they were zeppelins, even though the objects seemed to be moving in unison and not at the mercy of the wind.
If anyone made the connection between these weird aircraft and the scareships of 1909, it was not reported publicly.
But a larger question remains: It’s extremely unlikely the Germans would send up three of their antique war blimps when they knew a huge allied bombing raid was on its way.
So, if they weren’t zeppelins, what were they?
The Allies’ massive invasion of Nazi-occupied France, famously known as D-Day, took place on June 6, 1944.
While the landings were costly in terms of lives lost and casualties suffered, they were ultimately successful. German forces were unable to push the Allied armies back into the sea or prevent them from establishing a permanent beachhead on the coast of Normandy. This foothold would be expanded gradually and serve as the starting point for the liberation of France and the Low Countries and the occupation of western Germany.
As was anticipated, the first day of the invasion was the most chaotic and bloody. Hundreds of Allied ships sat off the Normandy beaches, some unleashing volleys from their deck guns while others delivered thousands of troops in smaller craft below.
One of these ships was the SS George E. Badger. A Liberty-type cargo vessel, it was positioned just off Omaha Beach, the scene of the worst fighting. Crewman Ed Breckel served as a gunner aboard the ship and had a front-row seat for the immense battle. Yet in the midst of all the confusion and gunfire, Breckel saw something very strange: a dark object, long and tubular, flying along just 15 feet above the water. Breckel said it was traveling on a steady circular course and in plain view. He could see no appendages on it, things an aircraft would have. But it was moving much too fast to be a blimp or a balloon.
Breckel had it in sight for at least three minutes before it finally got lost in the tumult of the battle onshore.
His would be the first of two unusual sightings over the Normandy battlefield.
The second came about a month and a half later.
Breaking out of Normandy had been no quick thing. The rough hedgerow-dominated terrain played in the Germans’ favor, so the fighting just inland from the beaches was fierce for many weeks. It was late July before the Allies were finally able to push eastward into more open territory and battle the Germans on better terms.
George Todt, a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, was attached to a U.S. Army unit taking part in this breakout. One night Todt saw something streaking over Omaha Beach. He described the object as a pulsating red fireball. It was flying about a half mile high and made no noise.
Because the Germans had started launching their V-1 revenge rockets at England around mid-June, just after the D-Day landings, Todt at first assumed what he was looking at was a “buzz bomb.”
There was a problem, though. The object was heading west to east, toward German lines. If it were a German weapon, it would have been going the other way.
Now with other people watching, including a lieutenant colonel, the object, which appeared to be several times larger than the largest star in the sky, slowed and came to a stop right above the nearby German-American lines.
And there it stayed, without moving, for almost fifteen minutes, before suddenly flying away again.
Strangely, there was an incident similar to the Todt sighting that same summer. But this one happened in Italy — and it wasn’t so peaceful.
The Allies had invaded Italy in September 1943, their first assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europe coming nine months before the D-Day landings in France. The Italian campaign had been a tough slog, however, as the Germans fought a brilliant defensive withdrawal, giving ground to the Allies only one inch at a time.