The Ghost Rockets of Sweden

I

Ivan Seeking

Registered Senior Member
Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I'm only posting this out of interest. I had never heard about this and don't have any opinion on the veracity or proper interpretation of any claimed sighting.

Ghost rockets (Swedish: Spökraketer, also called Scandinavian ghost rockets) were rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries.
The first reports of ghost rockets were made on February 26, 1946, by Finnish observers.[1] About 2,000 sightings were logged between May and December 1946, with peaks on 9 and 11 August 1946. Two hundred sightings were verified with radar returns, and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to ghost rockets.
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One thing that makes this interesting is the conclusion reached by some Swedish Military officials or technical experts that ET could be involved.

Although the official opinion of the Swedish and U.S. military remains unclear, a Top Secret USAFE (United States Air Force Europe) document from 4 November 1948 (at right), indicates that at least some investigators believed the ghost rockets and later "flying saucers" had extraterrestrial origins. Declassified only in 1997, the document states:
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For some time we have been concerned by the recurring reports on flying saucers. They periodically continue to pop up; during the last week, one was observed hovering over Neubiberg Air Base for about thirty minutes. They have been reported by so many sources and from such a variety of places that we are convinced that they cannot be disregarded and must be explained on some basis which is perhaps slightly beyond the scope of our present intelligence thinking.

"When officers of this Directorate recently visited the Swedish Air Intelligence Service, this question was put to the Swedes. Their answer was that some reliable and fully technically qualified people have reached the conclusion that 'these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth'. They are therefore assuming that these objects originate from some previously unknown or unidentified technology, possibly outside the earth".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost...Secret_USAF_UFO_extraterrestrial_document.png
 
You beat me to the punch. This is a very strange case of ufo sightings and defies what we commonly see from them. Note these unusual details:

"The early Russian origins theory was rejected by Swedish, British, and U.S. military investigators because no recognizable rocket fragments were ever found, and according to some sightings the objects usually left no exhaust trail, some moved too slowly and usually flew horizontally, they sometimes traveled and maneuvered in formation, and they were usually silent.

The sightings most often consisted of fast-flying rocket- or missile- shaped objects, with or without wings, visible for mere seconds. Instances of slower moving cigar shaped objects are also known. A hissing or rumbling sound was sometimes reported.

Crashes were not uncommon, almost always in lakes. Reports were made of objects crashing into a lake, then propelling themselves across the surface before sinking, as well as ordinary crashes. The Swedish military performed several dives in the affected lakes shortly after the crashes, but found nothing other than occasional craters in the lake bottom or torn off aquatic plants.

Swedish Air Force officer Karl-Gösta Bartoll searches for a "ghost rocket" seen to crash into Lake Kölmjärv on July 19, 1946.

The best known of these crashes occurred on July 19, 1946, into Lake Kölmjärv, Sweden. Witnesses reported a gray, rocket-shaped object with wings crashing in the lake. One witness interviewed heard a thunderclap, possibly the object exploding. However, a 3-week military search conducted in intense secrecy again turned up nothing."===https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_rockets

 
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The occurrance of these ghost rockets back in 1946 implies a sort of psychosocial origin to at least some ufo phenomena. Whole flaps lasting months of particular types of flying objects that express the unconscious collective fears of a nation. The fear of the Soviet Union was big at that time in Sweden, and the threat of rockets and missiles was quite real. But there was never any evidence that the ghost rockets were of such a source. And why did they defy the Soviet missile paranoia, never exploding and often seen maneuvering around like intelligently controlled craft? Why did they almost always land in lakes and bodies of water, submerging there and leaving no trace of themselves? This simply compounds the ufo mystery. Later reports of contacts with alleged Venusians and Martians in other countries certainly confirms the culturally attributive nature of this phenomena rather than being actual beings from outer space. But how do psychoid externalizations of the current zeitgeist leave burned marks on the ground and on the skin of the contactees?
 
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What strikes me most is in the last paragraph of the declassified report. "...we are inclined to not discredit entirely this spectacular theory..."; meaning the Swede's suggestion that ET is involved.

I have read thousands of declassified reports, some of which allude heavily to the idea of ET but never state it directly. It is implied by the context of the report. But these guys concluded that ET must be considered a possibility. I think the only reports that suggest ET explicitly are a few individual investigations in Blue Book, the Project Sign memo, and the COMETA report.

Of course this ignores claims around the so-called Majestic 12 documents. But that was not retrieved from publically available archives. That document magically appeared through mysterious sources. [To be fair, I didn't believe the Iran '76 document was legitimate until I downloaded it from the NSA myself. So I've been surprised before by documents that I thought were bogus]
 
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Why would this be credited to anything other than post-war experimental testing by some unknown nation or organization?
 
DaveC426913 said:
Why would this be credited to anything other than post-war experimental testing by some unknown nation or organization?
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I guess you would have to ask the Swedes and the US investigators. But for one, no one had crafts that could fly in and out of lakes. Another example cited might be the UFO reported to hover over an AFB for thirty minutes. The stock answer is that people tend to think exotic solutions when the technology allegedly observed or tracked on RADAR far exceeds any known or expected technology. The limits of aircraft in use are generally well known.

More specifically, have you read the actual reports? That might be a good place to start. You are asking us to defend the conclusions of a US military report and at least some Swedish technical experts who investigated this almost 70 years ago. I'm sure they were most worried about it being the Russians. But that wasn't where they tended to go.
 
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Hah, funny what comes up in the history of Ghost Rockets. Speaking of the Twining Memo [Project Sign Memo]...

Note that as soon as that is done Project SIGN requests all the intelligence reports that AF Intel has on ghost rockets and all other UFO reports at AF Intel are sent to AMC for duplication.
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http://www.nicap.org/twining_letter.htm

I thought the Twining Memo suggested explicitly the idea of ET. But it only goes as far as to say saucers-shaped crafts are real; that they demonstrate extreme accelerations and maneuverability, act evasively, and are intelligently controlled.
http://www.nicap.org/twining_letter_docs.htm

I think there was an earlier version that Vandenberg demanded be changed [toned down], but I'm not sure. I know that at one point he got hot over this issue and rejected the conclusions of his staff. That led to project Grudge, and eventually, Blue Book. [I haven't read some of these reports for 15 years or more so I'm a little rusty]
 
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