The wave of missile-like objects reported over Scandinavia in 1946, named by the Swedish press. First reported over southern Sweden in late May 1946, then over Finland and Denmark in June, with Swedish reports increasing sharply in July and several also over Norway. The two commonest descriptions were a ball of fire with a tail and a shiny cigar-shaped object; reported altitudes ran from treetop height to 160,000 feet, the highest almost exclusively from Finland, and speeds from 65 mph to “lightning fast”.
The contemporary U.S. assessment is PURSUE Release 05 record DOW-UAP-D099, the feature article of War Department Intelligence Review Number 47, 9 January 1947. It records that the Swedish Defence Staff received almost 1,000 public reports by the end of July, that no fragments were recovered other than material described as nonmetallic slag, and that Swedish spokesmen repeatedly told the U.S. Military Attaché the objects were Soviet launches from Peenemünde while producing no evidence for it. The Swedish communiqué of 10 October 1946 reversed course and indicated that the great majority of incidents were of celestial origin.
The Review’s own conclusion was that there had been only two or three real incidents, perhaps as many as five or ten, of low-flying V-1 type missiles, that the high-altitude reports were meteors or fireworks, and that the Swedish Defence Staff had probably taken advantage of the situation for political purposes. The December 1947 analysis inside Air Materiel Command’s correspondence file states that no connection was found between the Swedish sightings and the American and Pacific reports of 1947.
Connections
PURSUE · Department of War · WWII Foo Fighters · Air Materiel Command · Project Sign