THE DEADLY FLYING MONKEY

[Owen]

I heard that in the last few months of the war the Germans were developing a secret weapon, or should I say weapons called flying monkeys. These little buggers were essentially monkeys armed with jet packs and panzerfausts. Their sole mission was to infiltrate behind enemy lines and take out as many tanks as possible before being exterminated. There are roomers of eye witness accounts, of these deadly killing machines, does anyone know where I could pick some more information on this interesting subject? Perhaps a possible inclusion in the game? - What are your views BTS

[This message has been edited by Owen (edited 03-23-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Owen (edited 03-23-2000).]

[Fionn]

Ah hell. And here I thought you were going to ask about Foo Fighters .

5 Cool points to the first person who gets what I'm referring to ( WW2 ETO).

10 Cool points to anyone who can provide a physics-based explanation for the Foo-Fighters (including behaviour when shot at).

20 Cool Points for anyone who can give the design team and how it worked

First one is easy. The other two should test virtually all of you.

[Guest KwazyDog]

Hey Fionn, how many cool points do i get for actually seeing one of those things?

Tis a long story I can tell if your interested. Whatever those things are, they are not an uncommon occurance around the area in which I like. Ive seen them twice myself, the last time was about a year ago, rather too close for comfort too.....but thats another story.

[Lorak]

Foo Fighters.. "craft" that allied pilots said followed them on raids over germany. Often described as balls of light.

lots of stories as to what they were. A psyics explination is that they were a reflection of the spotting craft that is reflected below them due to an upper atmosphere inversion layer. hence the apperance of the plane being followed, flown with. As for characteritics when shot at. Jerky movement could have been likewise caused by the jerking of the spotting planes when flying. More so when the reflection my have been from another aircraft flying in formation on the spoting one.

(this is of course assuming they were not real craft.)

Another story has it that they may have been projections that were shown in the air also.

I'm not expecting cool points, just thought I would throw out what I have heard.

My father was in the SAC and i'm not even going to go into some of the stories he has.

Lorak out

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http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/combatmissionclub

[Guest PeterNZ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>... to close for comfort <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

did they give you an anal probe?!

hey everyone KwazyDog has an satelite dish sticking out of his ass!

PeterNZ

[Compassion]

I hate rainbows

[Guest KwazyDog]

Oh, and for those interested what the hell we are on about

FOO FIGHTERS

UFOs: Foo Fighters and Ghost Rockets

What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade

Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

(Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady

- Alexander Pope)

What's a Foo Fighter? If you said it's a band started by ex-Nirvana drummer

David Grohl, you'd be right. But where did he get the name? He's interested

in UFOs, and is an X-Files fan, y'know...

During World War II, there was a cartoon character named Smokey Stover who

used to say, "Where there's foo, there's fire." When U.S. pilots and sailors

began seeing odd balls of light or shiny metal that could fly circles around

our planes and which followed ships at sea, somebody called them Foo

Fighters, and the name stuck. Others called them kraut fireballs because it

was thought that they were some sort of German secret weapon.

In reality, though, no one knew what they were. Hitler thought they were a

U.S. secret weapon, and set up an organization to study them. The British

thought they were German and allegedly set up a group called the "Massey

Project" to study them. The U.S. 8th Army also scrutinized them, but once it

was determined that they were not of German or Japanese origin, the studies

were dropped. The Foo Fighters, however, kept appearing, as these examples

from Timothy Good's Above Top Secret demonstrate:

12 August 1942

Tulagi, Solomon Islands

Sergeant Stephen J. Brickner of the 1st Paratroop Brigade, 1st Marine

Division, U.S. Marine Corps, reported that air raid sirens went off, and he

observed over 150 objects fly over in straight lines of 10 or 12 objects,

one behind the other. No wings or tails were visible to Sergeant Brickner,

and the objects seemed to "wobble" slightly as they flew over at a speed

that was "a little faster than Jap planes." Sergeant Brickner said that

their appearance was that of highly polished silver that shimmered brightly

in the sun. He said, "All in all, it was the most awe-inspiring and yet frig

htening spectacle I have seen in my life."

10 August 1944

Palembang, Sumatra

Captain Alvah M. Reida of the 486th Bomb Group, 792nd Squadron, 20th Bomber

Command, based at Kharagapur, India was on a mission from Ceylon to bomb

Palembang, Sumatra, flying a B-29 Bomber at an altitude of 14,000 feet and

an indicated airspeed of 210 mph. The right gunner and copilot reported a

bright red or orange spherical object pacing the plane about 500 yards off

the starboard wing. It was about 5 or 6 feet in diameter and seemed to

vibrate constantly.

Captain Reida attempted evasive action, but the object followed every

maneuver for about eight minutes, then suddenly made an abrupt 90 degree

turn and accelerated away rapidly.

Various explanations were given for Foo Fighters. The official explanation

was that they were the effect of magnetic fields created across the wings of

aircraft. But why none of these effects are present on modern aircraft and

why the objects were not always observed in contact with the wings and were

often seen far away from aircraft has never been explained.

Military censorship kept reports of these phenomena out of the newspapers

until December 1944. Throughout the war, similar objects were sighted by

both military and civilian observers in the United States.

Ghost Rockets are even stranger than Foo Fighters, if that's possible...

It would seem that the Scandanavian countries, particularly Norway and

Sweden, have been seeing mysterious things in their skies and under their

seas for quite some time. Even as recently as a few years ago, you might

recall, there were mysterious "submarines" being detected off Norway and

Sweden.

As early as 1933, the Swedes, and even the British, were investigating

mysterious unmarked aircraft that flew over their countries, according to

Above Top Secret. Oddly, these craft flew in weather that grounded other

aircraft of the time.

These could not compare, however with the ghost rockets that appeared in the

skies after WWII.

What was a ghost rocket?

In 1946, according to Good, the Scandanavian countries reported over 2,000

unidentified flying objects over their airspace. These objects usually

looked like rockets with fiery exhausts, and they sometimes performed

unusual maneuvers as they passed overhead. At first they were thought to be

captured German V-2 missiles that were being tested by the Russians, but

British radar experts said they did not come from the U.S.S.R. Experts said

that 80% of the reports were due to natural phenomena such as meteors, but

they had no explanation for the other 20%. Oddly, the objects appeared over

some of the southern European countries also, such as Greece, where an

official investigation was conducted in 1947. The leader of that

investigation, Professor Paul Santorini, revealed in 1967 that their

investigation showed that the objects were not missiles. He also said that

before they could proceed any further, the army ordered the investigation

stopped. Even today, fifty years later, official files on the ghost rockets

are still classified documents.

[Guest KwazyDog]

Hehe, ermm, no Peter But it was last seen heading your way.

Hehe, I wish I had a satelite sticking out of my butt, they wait for cable modem over here is up to 6 weeks!

[Guest mch]

Hello!

to further increase the trivia.....

who can guess where FOO came from?

hint:ask someone who speaks french

[Guest Captain Foobar]

Foo came from Captain FOObar.

everyone knows that...

[Hundminen]

Yes Owen, the flying monkeys were a last-ditch effort to counteract the dreaded Russian hundminen (dog-mines) - dogs carrying a harness packed with high explosives specially trained to crawl under enemy tanks, thereby detonating the charge. The dogs were (unfortunately for the Russians) often unable to distinguish a MkIV from a T34.

It turned out, however, the flying monkey program was grounded due to a lack of jet fuel.

The hundminen program, on the other hand, was continued until the end of the war, thanks to the secondary benefit of providing a tasty high-protein snack to friends and foes alike.

[iggi]

I had to look long and hard for this:

[Goanna]

Too bad KwazyDog, I got my cable modem on here in Sydney already (took three weeks). One of the few benefits of living in Sydney. BTW are you taking in borders during the Olympics? It's gonna be yank hell down here.

OK, I was imagining the Wizard of Oz monkey above, but where's his faust?

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desert rat wannabe

[This message has been edited by Goanna (edited 03-23-2000).]

[Lorak]

Duh.. Goanna... This is most likely a support monkey with his ammo basket.

[Guest KwazyDog]

Hehehe There is a bit of a waiting period up where I am goanna, but the time is getting closer. I only have telstra where I am but that isnt such a scarey prospect now they have their unlimited downloads in place.

No boarders with me up here Mind you, I am 1000km away from the Olympics

[Major Tom]

Hell, my first experience on the internet was on a cable modem in Residence @ university. Damn, that thing could download like a mutha! Now I am on an internet line.

[Mostro]

From the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing:

foo

/foo/ A sample name for absolutely anything, especially programs and files (especially scratch files). First on the standard list of {metasyntactic variable}s used in syntax

examples. See also {bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux}, {corge},

{grault}, {garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh}, {xyzzy}, {thud}.

The etymology of "foo" is obscure. When used in connection with "bar" it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym {FUBAR}, later bowdlerised to {foobar}.

However, the use of the word "foo" itself has more complicated antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons.

"FOO" often appeared in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip by Bill Holman. This surrealist strip about a fireman appeared in various American comics including "Everybody's" between about 1930 and 1952. FOO was often included on licence plates of cars and in nonsense sayings in the background of some frames such as "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but foo men chew".

Allegedly, "FOO" and "BAR" also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. In the 1938 cartoon "The Daffy Doc", a very early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!". Oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. It has been suggested that this might be related to the Chinese word "fu" (sometimes transliterated "foo"), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs").

Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker usage actually sprang from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody", the title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint project of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in his mid-teens) later became one of the most important and influential artists in underground comics, this venture was hardly a success; indeed, the brothers later burned most of the existing copies in disgust. The title FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. However, very few copies of this comic actually circulated, and students of Crumb's "oeuvre" have established that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics.

An old-time member reports that in the 1959 "Dictionary of the TMRC Language", compiled at {TMRC} there was an entry that went something like this:

FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.

For more about the legendary foo counters, see {TMRC}. Almost the entire staff of what became the {MIT} {AI LAB} was involved with TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.

Very probably, hackish "foo" had no single origin and derives through all these channels from Yiddish "feh" and/or English "fooey".

(04 Oct 1994)

Salut!

[Sarge]

1st: they were weather balloons - everyone in the government knows this! and they know everything...

2nd fu (cleaned up for public consuption "foo") as in FUBAR was military for -****ed up beyond a......

so it only carries thru that a foo fighter is one that is not "normal"

[Fionn]

Although it should be noted that "Foo" as in not normal is a misnomer when applied to the "Foo fighter".

Really they should be called " Quite Normal Meteorological Events" according to our benevolent governments