Just a quick follow up. The Wiki page on Foo Fighters has an interesting reference at the bottom. It's mentions a study by the United States Navy Bureau of Medicine called
Project X-148-AV-4-3.
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During April 1945, the US Navy began to experiment on visual illusions as experienced by night time aviators......This project pioneered the study of aviators' vertigo and was initiated because a wide variety of anomalous events were being reported by night time aviators.
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The head of the study, Dr. Edgar Vinacke leaves us this interesting quote...
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Pilots do not have sufficient information about phenomena of disorientation, and, as a corollary, are given considerable disorganized, incomplete, and inaccurate information. They are largely dependent upon their own experience, which must supplement and interpret the traditions about 'vertigo' which are passed on to them. When a concept thus grows out of anecdotes cemented together with practical necessity, it is bound to acquire elements of mystery. So far as 'vertigo' is concerned, no one really knows more than a small part of the facts, but a great deal of the peril. Since aviators are not skilled observers of human behavior, they usually have only the vaguest understanding of their own feelings. Like other naive persons, therefore, they have simply adopted a term to cover a multitude of otherwise inexplicable events.
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(
my emphasis).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter
Am I suggesting that vertigo is therefore the cause of all these sightings? No. And to even suggest the possibility that Gordo Cooper of all people may have suffered from vertigo is no doubt considered by some to be a slight upon his name.
Nevertheless, it demonstrates that pilots (trained observers or otherwise) are every bit as susceptible to disorientation as the rest of us mortals. And given our knowledge of these effects it really should temper our desire to cry ET when other, more mundane (and much more serious) factors are at play.