DOW-UAP-D099: The "Ghost Rockets" over Scandinavia - The War Department Intelligence Review, January 1947

Source file: DOW-UAP-D099_Intelligence-Review-of-Ghost-Rocket-Incidents_1947.pdf Originating agency: U.S. Department of War; Intelligence Division, War Department General Staff (WDGS) Document type: Feature Section of a periodic intelligence review, copy no. 597 Date: 2 January 1947 (the incidents: from May 1946 onward) Classification: SECRET (declassified) Page count: 8 (the "Ghost Rockets" feature runs to pages 17-20 of the original review) VIRIN: 260807-D-D0360-1088 PURSUE Release: 5

Summary

This is the feature section of a periodic intelligence review circulated by the Intelligence Division of the War Department General Staff in early January 1947. The review as a whole covers a range of strategic subjects of the moment, including the military implications of Soviet foreign policy, guided missile countries, and United Nations trusteeship. The section devoted to the "Ghost Rockets" over Scandinavia runs to four pages and is the earliest document in the archive to address the 1946 wave of sightings.

The section is organized in five parts: a description of the missile, official investigations, the attitude of Swedish officials, and conclusions. It presents a picture of a mass wave of reports that began in Sweden in late May 1946 and spread to Finland, Denmark and Norway, and of a Swedish security establishment that could not, or would not, reach a conclusion.

The American assessment is measured: the best evidence points to only two or three genuine incidents, perhaps as many as five or ten, of low-flying V-1 type missiles, while the high-altitude missiles reported were almost certainly meteors or fireworks.

Research Article

The scale of the wave and the character of the reports

The section opens with the spread. Flying missiles were first reported over southern Sweden in late May 1946 by the press, which is what gave them the name "Ghost Rockets." In June, missiles had also been reported over Finland and Denmark. By July the number of sightings over Sweden had greatly increased, and several had been reported over Norway.

The review immediately notes the limits of the data: "The great majority of these reports were made by untrained observers and, as would be expected, varied widely in the description of the actual missiles as well as, of their course, altitude, and speed."

The two most common descriptions were "a ball of fire with a tail" and a "shiny cigar-shaped object." The reported direction of flight covered all points of the compass, with a northerly direction slightly predominant. Altitudes ranged from treetop height to 160,000 feet, the higher altitudes almost exclusively reported from Finland. Speeds reported ranged from 65 mph to "lightning fast," with the majority described as having great or very great speed. The missiles were generally described in horizontal flight; a few were reported as diving into the ground or into lakes, or exploding in the air.

Then comes what is arguably the most significant line in the whole section for assessing the evidence: "In no case have fragments been found other than bits of material described as 'nonmetallic slag.'"

The Swedish Air Force pilot's account

The review gives space to one report considered more reliable and competent than the average, that of a Swedish Air Force pilot. On 14 August, at 1000 hours, he was flying at 650 feet over central Sweden when he saw a dark, cigar-shaped object about 50 feet long and 3 feet in diameter, flying 200 feet above him and approximately 6,500 feet away, at an estimated speed of 400 mph. The missile, he reported, had no visible wings, rudder, or other projecting part, and there was no indication of any flame or light as had been reported in the majority of other sightings.

The American analyst, however, does not accept the account at face value. The pilot stated that the missile was maintaining a constant altitude over the ground and consequently was following the large features of the terrain, and the review observes: "The last statement casts doubt on the reliability of the entire report because of the inability of a missile, without wings, to maintain a constant altitude over hilly terrain." Against that, the review notes that the pilot himself implied there may have been wings he was unable to see, since he stated it could not have been a Swedish jet plane as there was none flying in the vicinity at that time.

This passage is a good example of how contemporary intelligence analysis was written: neither blanket dismissal nor acceptance, but a test of the account's internal consistency against the available engineering knowledge.

The press, the censorship, and General Doolittle

A separate part is devoted to the media reaction. The Scandinavian press, with the exception of the Communist papers, initially reported the incidents in some detail and openly attributed them to missiles fired by the U.S.S.R. In August a partial censorship was imposed on the press, restricting publication of exact details or of the localities where missiles were seen.

The Communist press, by contrast, continued to ridicule the entire matter and claimed there was no basis for the reports that the missiles were of Soviet origin. The review adds, with a trace of amusement: "In fact, a charge was made that they came from the United States and that Gen. Doolittle was sent over to observe the effects of the missiles."

"In a very peculiar manner"

The section's sharpest criticism is directed at how the Swedish investigation was conducted. Official investigations began in June, when the Defense Staff requested the public to report any unusual observations, and by the end of July almost 1,000 such reports had been received.

Then comes the line: "The investigation has been carried out by the Swedish Defense Staff in a very peculiar manner." In the beginning, it records, many of the key personnel were on summer leave, and they were not recalled to deal with the problem.

The gap between what was said privately and what was stated publicly is the heart of the finding: "Spokesmen for the Defense Staff repeatedly have told the United States Military Attache that they definitely believed there were rockets over Sweden, and that they were launched by the Soviets from Peenemunde on the German Baltic coast. However, they have not been able to produce any evidence to support these statements." The review adds that to date no United States military or naval personnel in Sweden had seen any fragments, points of impact, or other direct evidence to prove that guided missiles had appeared over Sweden.

The official communiques issued to the press did not reflect the same tone, and varied among themselves. The last one, issued on 10 October, very strongly indicated that the great majority of the reported incidents were of celestial origin, "which is a complete change from the one of 6 August when it was reported that, except in a few cases, they could not be meteorites."

The American analyst's conclusion about the motive is explicit: the complete change in attitude between the two communiques indicates that the Swedish Staff was trying to minimize the entire matter, which had grown to such a size that the Staff was afraid of its having official repercussions on Swedish-Soviet relations.

A footnote to the section widens the geographic picture: in September and October, flying objects were reported over widely separate points in Europe and Africa, including Belgium, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Austria. In the main, it notes, these reports were not confirmed and appear to be due to explainable causes, such as meteors or Very flares, fireworks and the like.

The conclusions

The conclusions section opens by noting that the Soviets are known to be working on various guided missiles, that they have the ability to produce and have probably tested missiles of the V-1 type, and that without warheads and with slightly improved motors these missiles could have a range of 500 miles. The review notes they are the only available German missiles believed capable of horizontal flight at low altitudes, and that there is some evidence such work has been carried out at Stolp, in Polish-administered Germany, or on the Baltic islands of Oesel or Dago.

A further piece of circumstantial evidence is acoustic: three of the people reporting sightings mentioned the noise of an outboard motor, a characteristic of the impulse duct motor used on the V-1 by the Germans, and one of them stated that what he saw looked like the V-1 he had seen over London during the war. Others reported little or no sound, a condition which may indicate the use of a turbo-jet instead of a pulse-jet.

The final assessment is carefully calibrated: "The best evidence, at present, is that there have been only 2 or 3 real incidents, perhaps as many as 5 or 10, of low-flying missiles of the V-1 type. The high-altitude missiles reported seem definitely to have been meteors or fireworks." The review closes with the judgment that the Swedish Defense Staff probably took advantage of the situation for political purposes and allowed the newspapers to make a big story out of the missiles, without admitting that the Staff had any evidence to indicate there actually were any such missiles, at a time when the Swedish public was demanding reductions in defense expenditures.

Significance

The section matters because it documents the full template of the American intelligence case on this subject a full year before the term "flying saucer" entered use in the summer of 1947. All the elements are already present: a mass wave of reports, a gap between testimony and physical evidence, an allied state giving different accounts in private and in public, a political consideration shaping a technical conclusion, and an American analysis attempting to separate a possible signal from the noise.

Equally notable is what the section does not contain: there is no hint of a non-terrestrial hypothesis anywhere in it. The conceptual frame of January 1947 is exclusively one of an arms race. That casts an interesting light on later documents in the collection, including the USAFE Top Secret cable of November 1948 in which an American officer reports that "Swedes conclude that source of objects is non-terrestrial," and the Air Materiel Command reply of that same month in DOW-UAP-D100, which already explicitly considers and rejects for lack of evidence the possibility of "vehicles from another planet."

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"Flying missiles were first reported over southern Sweden in late May 1946 by the press, which gave the missiles the name of 'Ghost Rockets.'" -- page 17

"In no case have fragments been found other than bits of material described as 'nonmetallic slag.'" -- page 17

"The investigation has been carried out by the Swedish Defense Staff in a very peculiar manner." -- page 19

"Spokesmen for the Defense Staff repeatedly have told the United States Military Attache that they definitely believed there were rockets over Sweden, and that they were launched by the Soviets from Peenemunde on the German Baltic coast. However, they have not been able to produce any evidence to support these statements." -- page 19

"To arrive at any definite conclusion from the conflicting evidence available on these reported missiles is impossible." -- page 19

"The best evidence, at present, is that there have been only 2 or 3 real incidents, perhaps as many as 5 or 10, of low-flying missiles of the V-1 type. The high-altitude missiles reported seem definitely to have been meteors or fireworks." -- page 20