Intelligence Review of “Ghost Rocket” Incidents, 1947

This is a feature article from the War Department Intelligence Division's secret intelligence review, dated January 1947, on the 1946 "ghost rocket" reports over Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. It covers witness descriptions, including one from a Swedish Air Force pilot, and says Swedish Defense Staff statements on the objects contradicted each other. It concludes there were perhaps only 2 to 10 real incidents of low-flying V-1 type missiles. The high-altitude sightings, it says, were probably meteors or fireworks.

From the source: Release of 2026-08-07 Incident: 1/9/47, Sweden. This document is a U.S. Department of War General Staff intelligence review assessing incidents involving unidentified “Ghost Rockets” reported over Sweden and other Scandinavian countries beginning in May 1946. The review includes an analysis of observational reports, statements from the Swedish government, and reporting from the U.S. military attaché in Stockholm. The review highlights the inconclusive nature of the contemporary evidence available to substantiate reports from civilian and military observers. The review also documents a change in the public stance of the Swedish Defense Staff, which privately attributed the objects to Soviet V-1 missile tests launched from Peenemünde. Peenemünde is a then-occupied municipality in northeastern Germany that had been associated with the development of the V-1 and V-2 rocket program during World War II. The Swedish assessment publicly shifted from an unknown technological origin to one of a “celestial origin.” The review suggests that this shift was a deliberate effort to avoid diplomatic conflict with the Soviet Union. The report’s final assessment concludes that while most reported incidents were likely misidentified natural phenomena, the “best evidence” suggested a small number of “real incidents” involving low-flying V-1 type missiles, likely attributable to Soviet tests of captured German technology.

GHOST ROCKETS 8:SORR1'
6 August and IO October 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.
Conclusions
The Soviets are known to be working on various guided
missiles. They have the ability to produce, and probably
have tested, missiles of the V-1 type. Without warheads
and with slightly improved motors, these missiles could
have a range of 500 miles, and are the only available German
missiles believed capable of horizontal flight at low altitudes.
There is some evidence that such work has been carried out
at Stolp (in Polish-administered Germany) or on the Baltic
islands of Oesel or Dago. Three of the people reporting
sightings have 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 have reported little or no sound, a condition which
may indicate the use of a turbo-jet instead of a pulse-jet.
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
Swedish Defense Staff probably has taken 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 that there actually
were any such missiles. This was done at a time when the
Swedish public was demanding reductions in defense expendi
tures.
20 8ECRE1'