The Ghost Rockets of Scandinavia

In the summer of 1946, residents of Sweden and Finland began reporting strange objects in the sky. They were described as rocket, or missile-like, fast-moving, sometimes glowing, and often silent. Many appeared to plunge into lakes without exploding, and strangely, without wreckage. The Swedish press soon gave them a name: spökraketer, or ghost rockets. A meteor such as this could easily be mistaken for a rocket. Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA The phenomenon unfolded during a brief but anxious moment in European history, when the technologies of the Second World War were colliding with the uncertainties of the emerging Cold War. The timing was not accidental. Only months earlier, Nazi Germany’s V-2 rocket had demonstrated that long-range missiles were not theoretical weapons but operational ones. After the war, the Soviets captured many Nazi rocket hardware as well as scientists. The German rocket facility at Peenemünde, where V-2 rockets were developed, itself came under Soviet control. Scandinavia, and particularly neutral Sweden, lay uncomfortably close to Soviet territory. Swedish airspace was carefully monitored, and reports of unknown aerial objects were taken seriously. Unlike later UFO waves, the ghost rockets were not dismissed out of hand as fantasy or hysteria. 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. Possibly the only surviving photograph of an alleged ghost rocket.