The peculiar red orb hung motionless in the summer sky. A boy at the time, Keith Chester vividly recalls that day in 1966. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up," Chester said. "I was so scared that I ran into my neighbor's house. I still think it was a UFO." The incident sparked an interest in unidentified flying objects. In recent years, Chester's interest has grown into a passion that led him to write Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII. The ... book contains descriptions of UFO sightings by American and British service members culled from research that included documents at the National Archives. In 1989 ... he met Leonard Stringfield, who was ... a sergeant in the 5th Air Force during World War II and ... told him about how he was among the first people to fly into mainland Japan after the bombing of Nagasaki. Stringfield said that he was on a plane flying between Le Shima and Iwo Jima, when he looked out the window and saw three luminous, disk-shaped objects flying in formation. "He told me that the objects had no outline, no exhaust, and no wings," Chester said. Stringfield heard a commotion in the cockpit - the engine was malfunctioning. But when the objects disappeared, the plane was able to land safely. In 1999, [Chester] began visiting the National Archives ... to study military records for information about UFO sightings during the war. Throughout almost four years of research, Chester found documents detailing sightings described as objects, lights, flares, strange lights or rockets [including] a silver, cigar-shaped object that looked like an airship. He also found ... information about unexplained objects reported by members of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, a former Army Air Forces fighter squadron that fought during World War II. "Some of the soldiers thought the objects they saw were beyond the realm of conventional technology," Chester said.