The modern era of UFOs began on June 24, 1947, when American amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold encountered objects in the sky, similar in shape to saucers, which flew at great speed over the Cascade Mountains. New encounters followed, and after a while the flying saucers began to be called unidentified flying objects (UFOs), in English - Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO). Hence the name of the science that emerged soon afterwards - ufology.
However, there are many indications that people have met with UFOs before the above date, and such meetings took place in ancient times. This era of contacts of earthlings with UFOs, in contrast to the modern one, is called historical.
The most reliable information about encounters with UFOs in the historical era refers to the period of World War II, when in the armies of both belligerents from time to time they observed in the sky either shiny disks and balls (during the day) or bright colored lights (at night). These objects could move at tremendous speeds, suddenly stop, and also abruptly change the direction of movement at any angle. At that time they began to be called "footers" (from the French feu - fire and the English fighter - warrior, fighter).
It is known that many Polish pilots fought on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition. Some of them have seen footers during combat missions. Extensive information about the meetings of Polish pilots and other military personnel with footers and UFOs was collected by the former commander of the First Fighter Regiment "Warsaw", a class I pilot, author of several books on Polish aviation, Colonel Ryszard Grundman and a prominent ufologist and writer, editor-in-chief of the CZAS UFO magazine Bronislaw Repetskiy … This information became the basis of the book "Polscy piloci i UFO", co-written by both authors and published in Krakow in 1999. Below are some of the most striking episodes from the book.
“On March 25, 1942, Roman Sobinsky, a lieutenant from a Polish squadron of the British Air Force, drove his bomber to the base after a raid on the German city of Essen. Above the northern coast of the Netherlands, in the area of the Zuider-See Bay, an orange ball suddenly chased the plane flying at an altitude of 4500 meters. The gunner in the tail tower was the first to notice him and reported this to the commander. Sobinsky also saw a mysterious object, located about 150 meters behind the plane and rapidly approaching. Without thinking twice, the lieutenant ordered the shooter to fire the ball. He immediately complied with the order and was sure that he hit an outlandish target, only it did not affect her in any way. The balloon caught up with the plane, rushed past it, almost hitting the wing, and soon disappeared from sight. According to Sobinsky, the footer's speed was at least 1600 km / h."
The book also contains information about observations of footers in units of the German army. Here is the witnessed story of a former Wehrmacht soldier.
“During the war, I served in the Air Defense Forces. In the spring of 1944, our unit was on the territory of Poland, and one clear sunny day we heard the already familiar air raid signal. The early warning system of air targets detected a rapidly approaching object flying at an altitude of … 15,000 meters! Then, no enemy combat aircraft could reach such a height. Meanwhile, the object continued to rapidly approach us, losing altitude. When it decreased to 8,000 meters, long-range anti-aircraft guns opened fire on him. It was seen that the explosions of the shells surrounded the object from all sides, but it, remaining completely unharmed, continued to decline, while increasing its speed. The stunned operators shouted into the microphone almost continuously: “Two thousand, three thousand, five thousand kilometers per hour!” It was incredible,no one flew at such speeds! When the object dropped to 2,000 meters, anti-aircraft guns from quadruple heavy machine guns began to fire tracer bullets at it. But this also did not give any result. A few seconds later the object turned almost at a right angle in front of dozens of eyewitnesses and disappeared."
Anthony Shakhnovsky, a World War II veteran and later founder and chairman of the Anglo-Polish UFO Research Club, fought in Northern Italy in the summer of 1944. Once, when his unit was fighting on the Adriatic coast in the area of the cities of Castelfidardo and Osimo, Anthony and his associates saw a metal egg-shaped object hovering motionless in the sky. The Germans saw him and, like the allies, began to fire. However, such a dagger fire did not cause any harm to the "egg", and, hanging in the sky for a couple of minutes, it rushed swiftly to the side and upward, approximately at an angle of 50 °.
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And here is what story Ryszard Grundman heard in 1999 from a former colleague, a retired colonel, who asked not to disclose his name, “It happened in September 1944, when the war was still going on and the front line passed somewhere near our former border with Germany. I was then 17 years old, we lived in the small village of Zbarazh, not far from Podol, the northern part of Kiev. Soviet military units were stationed in Zbarazh, at night the Germans bombed railway tracks and echelons, anti-aircraft guns fired at enemy aircraft. One evening, already at dusk, my friend and I were walking on the outskirts of the village along the street, beyond which the field began, and behind it was a forest. Over this field, in the clouds, we saw the reflection of the anti-aircraft searchlight beam, slowly moving from side to side. We stopped to look. And then I realized that there were no clouds in the sky and that there was no column of light coming from the searchlight from the ground. So, I thought, this is not a reflection moving back and forth,but some kind of "independent" light spot, a luminous object, as if looking out for something from above. The object was at an altitude of about 700 meters and was visible to us as a slightly flattened circle. But soon it changed its shape, became very elongated and looked like a thick spindle. We observed the object for about a minute, then it suddenly jerked to the side and after a moment “went out”. I emphasize, it went out, as if someone turned it off. My friend and I were very puzzled by what we saw, but we decided that it was a test of some new military lighting device. I have never seen anything like it again in my life. We observed the object for about a minute, then it suddenly jerked to the side and after a moment “went out”. I emphasize, it went out, as if someone turned it off. My friend and I were very puzzled by what we saw, but we decided that it was a test of some new military lighting device. I have never seen anything like it again in my life. We observed the object for about a minute, then it suddenly jerked to the side and after a moment “went out”. I emphasize, it went out, as if someone turned it off. My friend and I were very puzzled by what we saw, but we decided that it was a test of some new military lighting device. I have never seen anything like it again in my life.
A few years later, probably in 1948, when we already lived in Poland, I first learned that similar phenomena (or objects) are observed over the ocean, in the USA. I realized that, most likely, my friend and I saw then in the sky over Podol a flying saucer, a UFO. But all these years I have not told anyone about the case, so that people do not think that I just want to draw attention to myself or that my head is not all right. On one of the days of the famous Warsaw Uprising, which broke out in August-September 1944, one of its participants, Zenon Sergish, during a German bombing raid on Warsaw, noticed three luminous points high in the sky, clearly visible even in bright sunlight. When the enemy planes disappeared, these points began to rapidly decrease, at the same time increasing in size to small balls. After two or three seconds, the balls dropped so low that they disappeared behind the houses on the opposite side of the street. But in a moment they again rose above the houses and in a formation of a triangle - two in front, one in the back in the middle - flew north and soon disappeared from sight. But a few seconds passed, and Zeno saw that one of the bombers was returning from the north to the city at an altitude of about 500 meters, and under it, several tens of meters below, those same luminous balls were flying in the previous formation of the triangle. Only now they seemed very flattened and looked more like discs. Each of them was much smaller than an airplane.one in the back in the middle - flew north and soon disappeared from sight. But a few seconds passed, and Zeno saw that one of the bombers was returning from the north to the city at an altitude of about 500 meters, and under it, several tens of meters below, those same luminous balls were flying in the previous formation of the triangle. Only now they seemed very flattened and looked more like discs. Each of them was much smaller than an airplane.one in the back in the middle - flew north and soon disappeared from sight. But a few seconds passed, and Zeno saw that one of the bombers was returning from the north to the city at an altitude of about 500 meters, and under it, several tens of meters below, those same luminous balls were flying in the previous formation of the triangle. Only now they seemed very flattened and looked more like discs. Each of them was much smaller than an airplane.
The first known occurrence of a flying saucer over Poland in the modern UFO era dates back to 1954. A story about him from the words of an eyewitness, a former soldier who served in the Air Defense Command Center, Ryszard Grundman wrote down several years ago.
Once, during the night watch of this soldier, the Center was informed from the radar station about the discovery of a large object in the Bialystok area at an altitude of 400 meters. The duty officer contacted the Bialystok police department and asked to send a squad to the location indicated in the message to clarify the situation. The militiamen returned an hour later and said that there, at an altitude of about 200 meters, some object was indeed hanging motionless. It is clearly visible in the moonlight, has a cigar-like shape, its surface gives off a silvery sheen, and it casts a long and wide shadow on the ground.
Having received this information, the officer on duty of the Center contacted a military unit stationed not far from the location of the mysterious object, and soon a group of armed soldiers led by a sergeant drove out there in two vehicles. The sergeant confirmed by radio the presence of the object, which was still hanging motionless in the night sky, and asked for permission to “shoot” at it once. But the officer on duty at the Center forbade the "firing" and ordered to continue observing the object, which remained motionless for several hours, and then suddenly soared upward and rushed away with great speed in an easterly direction. Radars at the Bialystok station recorded the movement of this UFO and determined its flight speed. It exceeded 18,000 km / h!
In January 1959, three issues of the Wieczor Wybrzeza (Evening seaside) newspaper published an extensive essay by journalist Andrzej Trepka, "Flying Saucers over Poland?" The material was the recording of the journalist's conversations with the officers of one of the flight units stationed near Poznan. Here is what, in particular, a graduate of the General Staff Academy, Captain Apollonius Chernov, later the commander of the Wroclaw Air Force Corps, and now a retired Air Force Brigadier General, told Andrzej: “It happened in August 1956, as they say, in broad daylight. I was returning to base after a long training flight, driving at an altitude of 8000 meters. At some point in front and about 1000 meters above me, a clearly visible object appeared, resembling in shape a cigar put on the bottom. At this time my "MiG" was in the south-west of the country,over Swidnica, where at that time other people's meteorological probes and various balloons often flew, and I thought that I saw one of them in front of me, only of some new, unusual shape. Having reported my observation to the base and having received the order to shoot down the ball, I rushed to attack it.
The more I got closer to the probe, the more strange it seemed to me. In addition to its unusual, cigar-like shape, its color was also somewhat outlandish: the silvery-gray shell seemed to fluoresce, and the lower part of the "cigar" shone with a matte, but very bright light. I drove the car to approach a mysterious object at a speed of about 800 km / h and suddenly realized that the distance between us was no longer decreasing, but increasing. The object was rapidly leaving me, at the same time rapidly gaining height. According to my estimates, now its speed exceeded 5000 km / h! Continuing the pursuit, I lifted the car to its maximum height for it - 14,000 meters, while my failed goal continued to fly ahead and a couple of thousand meters higher.
After informing the base of the situation, I received an order to stop pursuing and return, especially since I was running out of fuel. By the way, I was told that during all this time only one object was visible on the radar screens - my fighter.
On earth, I did not say much about my adventure, fearing ridicule or, what good, doubts about the soundness of my mind. But from conversations with fellow soldiers, I learned that something similar happened a couple of days ago with Captain Stoyarsky and that, in his opinion, he saw not a balloon, but a flying saucer.
However, the strange incidents with my participation did not end there. In the autumn of the same year, at the beginning of October, we, together with Captain Jaromin, made a night training flight. The sky was cloudless, the moon was shining brightly. At about 21.30, when we were flying at an altitude of 4000 meters, my wingman suddenly reported on the radio: “Look, there is a yellow thing nearby, it seems to be chasing me.” A moment later, a luminous oval-shaped object flashed by next to my right wing and quickly rushed forward. After contacting the ground and being instructed to pursue the object, we rushed in pursuit. But he suddenly disappeared from sight, as if the outside lights were turned off. Discouraged, we began to descend for an approach. During the third turn, the object suddenly appeared in front of us again, and we rushed after it, quickly gaining a speed of 900 km / h. However, he easily moved forward from us, “without turning off the light,” and soon disappeared from sight. I am sure that its incredible speed at that time was no less than 2600 km / h, which, by the way, is twice the speed of sound.
After landing, we learned that many of our comrades also saw this mysterious object from the ground. According to them, the diameter of the luminous ball (or disk) was one and a half times the apparent diameter of the Moon. And, strange to say, the radars did not detect anything this time, except for our two planes - Yaromin and mine.
That same night, four more pilots from our squadron saw "flying lights" in the sky. In their common opinion, the speed of the luminous balls was much higher than the speed of sound. And, of course, these mysterious lights, given their size, could not have been the position lights of some top-secret, super-high-speed aircraft."