The word ‘foo-fighter’ is inst­antly recog­nised by rock fans and ufo­log­ists alike, and most fort­eans are aware of World War II stor­ies of the balls of fire and other extra­ordin­ary phen­om­ena that paced, buzzed and pur­sued war­planes over the Europ­ean and Pac­ific theatres of con­flict. Foo-fight­ers are freq­uently ment­ioned in early UFO lit­er­at­ure, but little was known about the orig­ins of the myst­ery until rec­ently.

An acc­ount by the late UFO re­search­er Len String­field of his sight­ing of three tear­drop-shaped, wing­less ob­jects during the summer of 1945 piqued the int­er­est of film­maker and UFO re­search­er Keith Chest­er, lead­ing him to write this book.