The Gdynia Harbour "UFO Crash": Poland's Roswell

Wednesday, 21 January 1959. The Port of Gdynia. Some accounts place it at about 05:00, in a storm with strong wind and frost. Others say 06:05. At Basin IV, by the Polish Quay, dockers were loading the PLO ship Jarosław Dąbrowski. According to Michał Miegoń of the Gdynia City Museum, the sailors noticed it first. A large, burning, red object, flying towards the basin.

The accounts disagree. Włodzimierz and Jadwiga Ponczowie reported a flying saucer shining with intense light. Wieczór Wybrzeża printed: "This saucer was orange, its edges tinged pink." Workers of the firm POSTI said it hung over the city near Plac Kaszubski for a dozen or so seconds.

Over the harbour it came in from the north-west, red-hot and trailing a streak. It hung over the port. Then it suddenly glided down in a skimming flight and hit the water with a loud hiss. Docker Jan Blok said only luck and its flight path prevented a collision with the ship. Port engineer Alojzy Data heard "a high-pitched sound like pieces of metal plate grinding against each other." Crane operator Władysław Kuczyński, working in a hold with five colleagues, saw it turn from pink to redder and redder. Water sprayed up to about 1.5 m. "The 'something' was about a metre long, semi-circular rather than round." Port worker Stanisław Kołodziejewski ran to the ship. The lookout confirmed it. "It was the size of a two-hundred-litre barrel!"

Police and Security Office officers lifted something from the basin floor and took it away. Data described a cylindrical container resembling glass foil, filled with a rust-coloured liquid much heavier than water. A UB officer confiscated it at once. Other reports say Navy divers recovered only a small, corroded metal fragment containing iron, aluminium, magnesium and silicon. Later claims send the remains to the Soviet garrison at Borne Sulinowo.

About a week of press silence passed. Then the story broke. The Polish Academy of Sciences offered a 1,000 złoty reward for pieces of the object. On 30 January, Dziennik Bałtycki mocked the hunt: "They looked for a saucer and found… zilch."

Later, UFO researchers at home and in the West added a stranger chapter. A small, burned being with six fingers and toes crawled onto the city beach. At a military hospital, examiners found a spiral circulatory system. Removing its bracelet killed it, and its body went to Moscow in a refrigerated truck. No 1959 source found so far contains any of this. Strefa Historii calls it "a Gdynia rumour." A Japanese NHK crew later searched for hospital records with ufologist Bronisław Rzepecki. They found only a few clues.

Jerzy Pokrzywnicki of the Polish Academy of Sciences concluded in 1960 that it was probably a meteorite, buried deep in the basin floor. None was ever produced, and the Meteoritical Bulletin Database reportedly lists the fall as doubtful. Miegoń rejects the meteorite because the port showed no damage. He favours the American SCORE satellite, which re-entered on 21 January 1959. The date fits. The orbit may not. SCORE was inclined at 32.3°, and Gdynia lies near 54.5° N, well beyond its ground track. Rocket or spy-satellite remains and cargo dropped by an aircraft have also been suggested.

Today the case is called the Polish Roswell. It frames Łukasz Orbitowski's 2022 novel Chodź ze mną, and it has returned in podcasts, radio and the Polish press. As Gdynia paranormal researcher Eugeniusz Leciej put it: "We can smile at this story, but we must not forget that we have not fully understood the reality around us."