The Ghost Rockets of 1946
This weekend, I managed to sneak away from the house long enough to catch a showing of Mamma Mia with a friend at our local, ridiculously-overpriced-popcorn-selling theater, and I had a blast. That was hands down the most fun I’ve ever had watching a musical of any kind, and was a much needed respit from real life. So, as the play-turned-movie is based off of the music of the fabulous ABBA, and I have had “Dancing Queen” stuck in my head for well over 24 hours now, I thought I should pay them homage by doing a piece on their native Sweden.
When you attempt to research Sweden and anything having to do with the paranormal, some of the first stories you will run across are regarding what have been termed the “Ghost Rockets,” which appeared in the sky over Sweden and her neighbors during the course of several weeks in the summer of 1946.
The sole photograph documenting these occurrences was taken by one Erik Reutersward while vacationing with his wife, Asa, and their one-year-old son in Guldsmedshyttan. On July 9, 1946 at around 2:30 p.m., they had climbed up a forest watchtower, which afforded an apparently incredible view of the countryside, and right when he snapped a picture of the scenery, he and his wife saw the “greenish white gleam of light” streaking across the sky. Reutersward reported the incident to Sweden’s Ministry of Defense, claiming that the object streaked, made a hissing noise, and appeared to explode and disappear. The whole thing happened in the blink of an eye. Upon having his film developed after his vacation, Reutersward found that he had captured the strange object on film. He turned the picture over to the authorities, they examined it, and they found they could make nothing of it. The light did not appear to have a “nucleus,” and they drew no concrete conclusions about what the object was. The Ministry, under pressure from the press, distributed the photograph, which landed in newspapers around the world. Later it was learned that the Ministry of Defense had been overwhelmed with reports of light phenomenon in the sky that day at that time from all over central Sweden.
The Reutersward “Ghost Rocket” Picture
On July 12, 1946, the London Daily Telegraph wrote about this phenomenon. “For some weeks a fair number of ‘ghost rockets’ going from south-east to north-west have been reported from various parts of the eastern coast of Sweden. Eye witnesses say that they look like glowing balls and are followed by a tail of smoke more or less visible. So many reports cannot be put down to pure imagination in the matter. As there is no definite evidence that the phenomena are of meteoric origin, there is growing suspicion that they are a new kind of radio-controlled V-weapon on which experiments are carried out.”
Keeping in mind that science in the 1940s is not much like what science is today, there was a fair amount of alarm in the public and in various military circles regarding these sitings, and determining just what was causing these ghost rockets was easier said than done. Two events were happening during the height of these sitings that led to the conclusions drawn by the London Daily Telegraph: 1) The Post WWII world (namely the USSR and the US) were in a bit of a race to come up with bigger, badder, longer traveling, remote controlled rockets; and 2) the perseid annual meteor shower was ongoing. Though many people reported the lights looking like meteors, this was basically ruled out because not only did these streaks of light change course and speed at times, they were also visible on radar, all things which are not possible with meteors.
Paths of Ghost Rockets as Tracked by Swedish Radar on July 22, 1946
Though it is likely, given the arms race that was underway at this time, that these object were some kind of cruise missile in its infancy, there were those in the military who seemed to think there might be another explanation for this phenomena (see this memo), as well as other UFO phenomena reported over the next couple of years. In part, it states, “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.”
Sightings increased in Sweden through August, 1946, and there was even a Swedish Air Force Lt. who tried to fly up on one that he spotted three or four miles away from his training flight in a B-18. He described it as cigar shaped, or shaped like a “disc seen from its side,” but when he tried to catch up to it, it sped off and avoided him. He claims it was definitely not another airplane. These sightings continued through the end of the year, and all told there were around 2000 reports of these strange flying objects, and around 200 of these were confirmed by radar. Some fragments were recovered in areas where these ghost rockets were seen to touch down, but the materials they were made of led to no conclusive results as to their make-up and origin.
So on that note, I give you…
Now it can be stuck in your head too.
GhOsTwRiTeR KiM
Tags: 1946, ABBA, arms race, Dancing Queen, Erik Reutersward, ghost rockets, Mamma Mia, Post WWII, rockets, sweden, ufo, USSR