Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency foreign-documents report, distributed 1 April 1954, translates three Dagens Nyheter articles from 18 to 20 December 1953. They describe how Transair pilot Ulf Christiernsson and flight mechanic Olle Johansson, flying a DC-3 over Hässleholm in Skaane on 17 December 1953, saw a metallic, circular object moving at about the speed of sound. Swedish experts suggested a daylight Geminid meteor or a balloon. A Malmö perfume firm later said the object was one of its advertising balloons.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
maybe still higher, depending on the weather. To each balloon was attached an advertisement card which the finder was to return to the firm in Malmö in exchange for a bottle of cologne. Some cards have already been returned from finders with addresses in Hässleholm, so it is clear that the balloons were driven by the prevailing winds to the place where the flyers observed the mysterious lozenge." As of Saturday evening, the Air Staff did not know about the Skaane balloons. On the other hand, the Air Staff had received a telephone call from another person in Malmö, radio technician Lundblad. On the day before the observation (16 December), he had sent up three weather balloons of a current model. The wind was so strong and in such a direction that it is not likely that any of the three balloons could have remained over Skaane. Meteorological balloons are from 1 to 2 meters in diameter. Whether the perfume advertising balloons, which are considerably smaller than meteorological balloons, could, through angles of refraction and radiation of light, take on the appearance and size which Captain Christiernsson reported the object to be, is a question which cannot be answered until detailed calculations are made. Very likely, composite photographs and other techniques will be utilized to determine the matter. No new observations have been reported during Saturday (19 December), and the experts are now working with the material which came in earlier. Telephone calls have been received from a number of persons with new theories, some of which will be tested. In the meantime, the balloon theory seems to have been strengthened through the latest reports from Skaane.(3) ## SOURCES 1. Dagens Nyheter, 18 Dec 53 2. Ibiq., 19 Dec 53 3. Ibid., 20 Dec 53 LIBRARY SUBJECT & AREA CODES
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 4 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.