Veteran Swedish Airmen Observe, Describe Disk-Shaped Aircraft Over Skaane

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

Both the Defense Staff and the Air Staff were working feverishly on Friday (18 December) to solve the mystery of the "flying lozenge." They arrived at no definite result, but the experts are mostly of the opinion that the observed object was a daylight meteorite. The possibility that it was a ballon or an unknown type of foreign aircraft is not ruled out, however. The theory of a meteorite was put forth by one of the persons in Sweden best acquainted with the region, Bertil Lindblad of the observatory in Lund.

According to Lindblad, precisely in December the earth passes a swarm of meteors known as the Geminids. The maximum occurred on 13 December. Studies of the meteors have shown that just at the time of day at which the object was seen -- about 1500 hours -- the meteors are approaching the earth at an angle of 3 degrees which means that their path is nearly parallel to the earth's surface. The direction of the meteors is from north to south with a displacement of 17 degrees which also seems to agree with the observations made. In space, meteors have a speed of 36 kilometers per second, but the speed is reduced very greatly when they come into the vicinity of the earth. It has not heretofore been possible to observe meteors during the day so it is not known how they look in daylight. When the earth passed the same meteor swarm last year, a lone meteor was observed some days after the swarm had disappeared. That meteor was plainly a straggler. It was observed at night, however, and therefore gave off a weak, red glow. It fell also at an entirely different angle since it was a different time of day.

Captain Kallenius of the Defense Staff stated that other possible explanations of the phenomenon have not been written off by any means. To be sure, no Swedish balloons have been sent up, but propaganda and weather balloons have been sent up from both Germany and Denmark. With the type of wind and weather prevailing in recent days, it would have been possible for a balloon to have been driven over Sweden. Captain Christiernsson and his mechanic; Olle Johansson, stated in their report that the speed of the object approached that of sound; however, there is great difficulty in judging speeds of suddenly appearing objects, even for experienced observers. Captain Kallenius commented that if a balloon prior to its observation had soared to a great altitude, it might have lost some of its gas, giving it a flat form.

In some quarters, Captain Christiernsson's report has been regarded as a prank. The Defense Staff, however, does not consider it a prank. Christiernsson, on returning from another flight to Malmb on Friday, gave heated assurances that his report was the absolute truth. He said, "To be sure, I joke a bit, but one does not joke about things like this. I saw something and reported my observations. What it was, I do not know."(2)

## Object Stated to Be Advertising Balloon

The mysterious "flying lozenge" over Hässleholm was probably neither a meteor nor a robot weapon, it was more likely an advertising balloon for a Skaane perfume firm. The object was observed at 1500 on Thursday (17 December) and on the same day between 1200 and 1300, Director Bertil Dahlström of Malmö had been up at Asphult on Linderodsaasen, some myriameters south of Hässleholm, to release 300 advertising balloons.

On Saturday evening (19 December) Dahlström telephoned Dagens Nyheter's Malmö office and said, "With all certainty, it is one of our balloons which the flyers saw. On Thursday-noon, we sent up over 300 balloons of various colors. Their sizes varied from 15 to 30 centimeters in diameter. According to what we know from previous occasions, the balloons ought to rise 1,000 meters and