Wednesday 31 August 2016

UFO Paper:
“The Swedish ‘Ghost Rocket’ Crisis of 1946”


By Robert E. Bartholomew, Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn

Source: Archives For the Unexplained (AFU), Norrköping, Sweden

Quote from the document:
“Between early May and September 30th, 1946, a widespread panic occurred across Sweden as tens of thousands of citizens reported observations of phantom missiles. This led to the widespread folk theory that remote-controlled German V-rockets confiscated by the Soviets at the close of World War II, were being test-fired as a form of political intimidation, or a prelude to an invasion. Despite the widely publicized views of Swedish and foreign politicians, military officials, newspaper editors and scientists supporting the rocket’s reality, and voluminous press reports often treating their existence as factual, no concrete physical evidence was ever found. By the episode’s end, Swedish military investigators concluded that most observations were of meteors and related celestial phenomena, and of those unexplained, none were V-rockets.

Active American assistance supplied to Sweden during the ghost bomb crisis, reflected their concern over the Soviet’s long-range missile deployment capacity given the widespread conviction that they would soon develop atomic weaponry. American aerial warfare expert General James Doolittle flew to Sweden, discussing the sightings with Swedish Air Force commanders on August 21st, the same day it was reported that Swedish officials had approached Great Britain about buying radar equipment to track the ‘rockets,’ as British radar experts reportedly visited Sweden to provide first-hand evaluations of radar investigations. Curiously, a British intelligence report (‘Investigation of missile activity in Scandinavia,’ dated September 9) bears no evidence of such a visit. Most of the data in this report is from Norway, and nothing is said about radar sightings or analysis thereof. The radar cases that have been documented in the Defense Staff Archives, are not impressive and could be judged as such by competent Swedish Air Force personnel. Meanwhile phantom rockets were occasionally sighted during the episode in other Scandinavian countries, and to a lesser extent in Europe, but none matched the Swedish reports in terms of volume and social reaction.

On October 10th, the Defense Staff announced the results of its four-month investigation. It concluded that 80 percent of approximately 1,000 reports were attributable to ‘celestial phenomena,’ and of the remainder that were unexplainable, there was no conclusive evidence that any were V-type rockets or other objects of foreign-government origin.”



















The Coat of Arms of the Swedish Armed Forces (wikimedia.org)
(wikimedia.org image)