World War II: Secrets of the 'Ghost Rockets', page

What were 'Ghost Rockets'?

Ghost Rockets (also called Scandinavian ghost rockets) were mysterious rocket- or missile-shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries.

Source

After the war the sightings escalated. There were reportedly over 2000 sightings between May and December 1946. Most of the sightings were seen over Sweden, but there were reported sightings in other European countries aswell.


GR photographed from air surveillance tower 80 km W of Vasteras by photographer Eric Reutersward.

Meteors? Or Something more sinister?

Some investigators came to a conclusion that the rockets were in fact meteors. Some Ufologists suggest that after the 'ghost rocket' events the term unidentified flying object first came into circulation.

Case for meteors: Some of the meteors fell during the period of the Persian meteor shower.

Case against meteors: Not all did however. Many were reported to maneuver in different directions and some appeared on radars.


[size=1]US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics study for "High-Altitude Test Vehicle" single-stage-to-orbit satellite rocket using hydrogen fuel[/size]

Descriptions of sightings

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.

Source

When Bartoll was later interviewed in 1984 by Swedish researcher Clas Svahn, he again said their investigation suggested the object largely disintegrated in flight and insisted that "what people saw were real, physical objects."

Source

What did the Swedish military think?

In 1997, a Top Secret USAFE (United States Air Force Europe) document from 4 November 1948 was declassified regarding the 'ghost rockets'. The document had this to say:

"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."

Declassified Document from USAFE

Could this indeed have something to do with Nazi's and their experimentation with flying saucers? (more ATS info)

So it's clear that not everyone was fit with the idea that these were just simple meteorites or test missles.

After a reported crash of one of these objects into Lake Kölmjärv, Swedem, the document had this to say:

"we are inclined not to discredit entirely this somewhat spectacular theory [extraterrestrial origins], meantime keeping an open mind on the subject."

Good (2007), 106-107, 111; USAFE Item 14, TT 1524, (Top Secret), 4 November 1948, declassified in 1997, National Archives, Washington D.C.

More information

The Njurunda fragments:

Svenska Dagbladet, 11 July: After some time we found the crater, which however was rather modest in size (couple of decimeters deep and a meter in diameter.) Spread all around was discovered thus a mass left by they mysterious sky-projectile. It mostly looked like porous slag of various colors -- from burned yellow to black. Some small bits were in powdered form, and when they were taken in the hands, they began to smart as if from lye...."

The sightings apparently did not only happen over Scandinavian countries. Greek officials reported sightings over Thessaloniki and Macedonia in early September. While reports also came in from Belgium, Italy and Portugal.

Events became very hazy and suspicious after Greek officials gave their physicist, Dr. Paul Santorini, the chance to investigate. He was supplied with Greek army engineers and other government resources to conduct his research.

Below is the recount of what happened with the research, source

In a 1967 lecture to the Greek Astronomical Society, broadcast on Athens Radio, he first publicly revealed what had been found in his 1947 investigation. "We soon established that they were not missiles. But, before we could do any more, the Army, after conferring with foreign officials [U.S. Defense Dept.], ordered the investigation stopped. Foreign scientists [from Washington] flew to Greece for secret talks with me." Later Santorini told UFO researchers such as Raymond Fowler that secrecy was invoked because officials were afraid to admit of a superior technology against which we have "no possibility of defense."
Good (1988), 23; Keyhoe, 142

Conclusion
Whether the result of simple military experiments, or extra-terrestrials presence, it is clear that a lot of effort was used to suppress these occurrences and the studies that aimed to prove their origins even 20 years after the events had occured.

Originally posted by serbsta
Some of them were most likely real rockets, but there are many testimonies from officials stating otherwise. I suppose we'll never know. The Greek research on the matter is what really gets me though.

Serbsta,Great thread - theres some realy interesting info posted here and I'd never heard of the Njurunda fragments before.

Don't know if you've read Richard M Dolan's book 'UFOs and the National Security State' but he goes into quite some detail about the ghost rocket phenomenon and makes some interesting comments here:

While the Swedes,Norweigans and Danes investigated and clamped down ,Britain and America provided some assistance. On August 23rd,British radar experts,back from Sweden, submitted secret reports to the British Government on the origin of the rockets.
Their conclusion: the objects were not of Soviet origin.
The scientific advisor to MI6, Prof R.V. Jones found it doubtful that "the Russians were supposedly cruising their flying bombs at more than twice the range that the Germans had acheived".
On September 9th the British Air Ministry's Directorate of Intelligence (Research) summarized the main features of the ghost rocket phenomenon and included eight types of sightings.

keyholepublishing.com...

He also goes on to state that ,as well as Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, ghost rocket reports were also coming in from Portugal, France, Tangiers, Italy, Belgium, Greece and India and witnesses numbered in their tens of thousands - 'many described luminous cigar type objects which gave off no vapour trail and were completely silent - the objects were reported to be seen in formation, breaking formation, maneuvering and hovering'.



Theres a great interview here with Clas Svahn from 'UFOs Sweden' who goes into more detail about the incidents:

Clas Svahn Interview ~ UFOs in Sweden

Cheers.

More on the Swedish Ghost Rockets:

Many sightings were of elongated, cigar-shaped, objects. On May 24, 1946 at 2 a.m., for example, several Swedish witnesses saw a wingless cigar shaped object, a scant 300 feet above the ground, spurting "bunches of sparks" from its tail. The object moved at the speed of an ordinary airplane. On the 31st, just before noon, a wingless huge metallic cigar was seen moving rapidly at about 1,000 feet altitude. From these kinds of descriptions, the objects acquired the name of "ghost rockets." It soon became clear, however, that these could not be conventional rockets. In the first place, they left no exhaust trail. Secondly, they were almost always silent. Thirdly, many of them moved too slowly to be rockets. Fourthly, they were often seen in formation, breaking formation, maneuvering, or hovering. Finally, the longest trajectory recorded by observers was 1,000 kilometers: this was three times the range of the German V rockets. Strange rockets, for sure.

Still, the Swedes, Americans, British, and other interested parties (which included just about everybody) looked into the possibility that these were Soviet missiles of some sort, constructed with the help of their cache of German scientists from Peenemunde, the home of the V rockets. Many investigators realized even at the time that this was so unlikely as to be nearly impossible. Still, few could rule it out completely. To this day, however, there is no evidence whatsoever that the objects were of Soviet origin.

keyholepublishing.com...

Keith Chester 'Strange Company -Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II' (pdf)

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

A dual ghost rocket in this series of photos:
www.youtube.com...

A stranded craft that just hung suspended started glowing and stayed
until evening when two illuminated columns appeared.

A lot of other photos as well, each with a UFO.
Usually a wide view and then the isolated object.

reply to post by serbsta

---

Here's something I found on Nick Pope's site written by - "Flying Saucer" Working Party.
There was two terms used "Ghost Rockets" or "Spook Bombs".

1. Unidentified flying objects were first reported after the war from Sweden in the summer of 1946 and for some months there was a considerable number of alleged sightings mostly in Sweden but a few also in Norway,Finland and Germany.The descriptions given were usally of some sort of wingless missile travelling at high speed,cigar shaped or cirular sometimes omitting bright lights and occasionally sound.The reports attracted considerable attention in the press,where the objects became known as "Ghost Rockets" or "Spook Bombs".The reports died away after the summer of 1946 and very few have appeard since the end of that year.

Zelong.

[edit on 30/11/09 by Zelong]

More reading on the Swedish Ghost rockets taken from the Rockefeller Briefing Document

Incident:

On 14, August,1946 at 10 a.m. a Swedish Air Force pilot was flying at 650 feet over central Sweden when he saw a dark, cigar-shaped object about 50 feet above and approximately 6,500 feet away from him travelling at an estimated 400 mph. The missile had no visible wings, rudder or other projecting part; and there was no indication of any fuel exhaust (flame or light), as had been reported in the majority of other sightings.

"The missile was maintaining a constant altitude over the ground and, consequently, was following the large features of the terrain. This statement casts doubt on the reliability of the entire report because a missile, without wings, is unable to maintain a constant altitude over hilly terrain.

Statement:

"I would like to say that everyone on the committee, as well as the chairman himself, was sure that the observed phenomena didn't originate from the Soviet Union. Nothing pointed to that solution.
On the other hand, if the observations are correct, many details suggest that it was some kind of a cruise missile that was fired on Sweden. But nobody had that kind of sophisticated technology in 1946."
Air Engineer Eric Malmberg - Secretary of Sweden's Defence Staff committee

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

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