ARCHIVES FOR UFO RESEARCH

AFU

[Installment 1 of a series of translations from the official documents concerning the 1946 ‘ghost rocket’ wave. Quotes are from original documents at The Military Archives in Stockholm. Notes in squared brackets are comments by the editor]

TO THE AIR DEFENCE DEPT. AT THE DEFENCE STAFF, STOCKHOLM

FROM LIEUTENANT I.

I have the honour of reporting an observation while flying on August 14, 1946, at 10.02-10.04 a.m.. I saw a flying missile of the kind that is mentioned in order nr 7:49 of June 12, 1946 from the Defence Staff. The circumstances were as follows.

I was the pilot, on a navigational training flight with a B18 A, at an altitude of 100 m, on the route F1 [Swedish Air Force base at Västerås] - Malingsbo (18km NW of Skinnskatteberg) – Krylbo – F1. Sergeant M. was the [back seat] signaller/observer [and wireless controller].

On the route Malingsbo - Krylbo we noticed, after about 2 minutes, an aircraft-shaped object, on the left front, abt 60 degrees, on a south-easterly course, slightly over the horizon. I estimated the altitude over terrain of the object to be abt 250 m. My own altitude was abt 200 m above the ground. The distance to the object was abt 2000 m. Weather conditions were as follows:

Cloud altitude abt 800 m

Amount of clouds 6-8/10

Horizontal visibility 30-40 km

With the latest newspaper reports, regarding overflights of Swedish territory by the above-mentioned missiles, on my mind, I immediately got suspicious. Furthermore I could not identify the object as any Swedish aeroplane.

Therefore, I decided to keep eye contact with the object and attempt to overtake it at a suitable opportunity. After about 10 seconds (I had to look down at the instruments to switch over to maximum cruising speed) the object was gone.

I suspected it had disappeared under the horizon, therefore I reduced our own cruising altitude. It appeared that both the object and I had come over a relatively low countryside, and we had both reduced the cruising altitude thus maintaining a constant altitude above the ground.

After about 20 seconds my [back seat] observer sergeant M. discovered the object again, 30 degrees to our right. We had, meanwhile, kept our own course all the time. Immediately, I made a [right] turn ending up on a parallel course with the object, and switched to maximum speed.

A SAAB B-18 bomber as seen from above. B 18 was manufac-tured in 245 copies 1944-1948, two-seated, twin-engined. In service by the Swedish Air Force until 1956. Note the asymmetric position of the cockpit on top of the fuselage, restricting somewhat the view to the right...?

The shortest distance between us was abt 1000 m. It immediately appeared that I would not be able to keep pace with the object, whose speed I estimated to be at least 600-700 km/h. After about 2 minutes the object had vanished in a south-easterly direction. A storm with heavy rain and a cloud height of 100-300 m lay straight ahead of the object’s course, and the object disappeared into it.

My observations in summary:

The object kept a constant cruising altitude of 250 m. Thus (on the whole) it followed the topography of the ground.

Speed was considerably higher than the speed of an aeroplane. Estimated speed of the object at least 600-700 km/h. Own speed 380 km/h.

Appearance of the object: reminding me of the fuselage of a B18. No wings, rudder or protruding parts visible at observation distance, colour: dark.

Length estimated at approximately 15 m, cross-section abt 1 m, shaped like a cigar. No light visible. I had noticed, however, lights emitted from a missile passing over Västerås on August 11 at 8.48 p.m. [this mass sighting has probably been identified as a evening bolide, reported as it was from hundreds of places all over the south of Sweden and Norway]

Propeller-driven Swedish fighters cannot be expected to keep pace with this kind of missile.

The observation was made at 10.02 - 10.04. Air routes as per enclosed sketch.

A mix-up with fighter Vampire is out of the question, as no such plane was in the area at the time of observation as per information received from F13 [the only Swedish air force wing with Vampire jets in the summer of 1946]

Västerås August 14, 1946

/signed/ I, lieutenant

Staff sergeant M. had nothing further to add to the above report.

Västerås August 14, 1946

/signed/ M., sergeant

---------------------------------------------------------

REPORT FROM A VISIT TO F16 ON AUG 22, 1946

The purpose of the visit was

a) to compare the report of lieutenant I. dated Aug 14 with the navigational training flight carried out by a division from F16 [Uppsala wing of the Swedish air force] on Aug 14, to find out if the object that I. [the pilot] observed could have been a J 26 fighter [Swedish designation for North American P-51 Mustang].

b) to keep the aircrew of F16, who will be included in the "alert squad", informed. [Note: The Air Force was planning to have a file of planes (two planes) on a constant alert, ready to take off after a ghost rocket].

a) Present at meeting: 7 pilots from F16 (2 people were away on assignment), lieutenant I. and sergeant M., F1.

On Aug 14, nine aeroplanes from F16 carried out navigation training flights on the [triangular] route F16 - point 156 W of Norberg - Floda church (Södermanland) [and back to F16]. Start of first plane at 09.40 a.m. (radio time) with intervals of 5 min [between each plane]. Cruising altitude min 100 m, max 300 m. Cruising speed 420-425 km/h. The estimated flying time of 15 minutes has been kept by all aircraft with the largest divergence being 1 minute. After turning point 156 no plane has essentially been to the west of a line from 156 to the church of Floda. After passing point 156 the course was 165 degrees.

Lieutenant I. made the observation at 10.02 - 10.04 (radio time), 7 kms east north east of the Malingsbo church, the observed object having an estimated course of 138 degrees.

The only plane from F16 which, according to the time schedule, could have been at the point of observation at 10.02 - 10.04, is the one that took off at 09.45 am. This pilot insists that he never flew west of a line between point 156 and the Floda church. Instead he chose to fly east of this line due to better checkpoints [in the terrain].

Course of direction for the I. observation was Floda church 157 degrees. None of the J 26 [Mustangs] pilots had observed any B 18 or any other flying object.

1. F1 air force base at Västerås, take off and landing for the B 18 plane.

Lieutenant I. states that he [first] observed the object about 60 degrees to the left, his own course being 245 degrees, his own speed 380 km/h and at a distance of abt 3 km. If it had been a J 26 with a speed of 425 km/h I. [the B 18 pilot] would have been the first to reach the point of intersection. He lost it out of sight and it was rediscovered 45 degrees to the right in front of him, at a distance of abt 2 km. The speed of the object must therefore have been at least 800 km/h.

Because of the short distance, and the excellent visibility, lieutenant I. and sergeant M. maintain that the object observed could not have been mixed up with a J 26 or any other conventional aeroplane.

The object observed by lieutenant I. and sergeant M.

could have been a plane J 26 from F16 with regard to

- the time of observation

- the cruising altitude

- changes in altitude relative to the ground

- the estimated length of fuselage

could not have been a J26, considering

- the statement that the line of flight the J 26 was abt 15 km to the east of the point of observation

- the course

- the cruising speed

- the general appearance of the object, and

- the fact that no J 26 pilot saw a B 18.

With reference to the above I do not consider it as probable that the object observed was a J 26 or any other Swedish aeroplane.

b) CF 16 [the chief of wing F16] and the aircrews were given general information on observations received so far, characteristics of objects, and specific details that are most important to look for.

Stockholm August 23, 1946

/signed/ Eric Malmberg

Fli [acronym for air engineer]

In April and May 1986 Clas Svahn had several telephone interviews with Lieutenant Colonel I. I. prefers to remain anonymous, although his name is given in the Military Archives documents. He confirmed the details given in his written report and to Air Force investigator Eric Malmberg in 1946. I. was even called to come to Stockholm to make an oral statement before the eyes of Air Director Bertil Westergård.

I. stated that the object lacked the usual silhouette of an aeroplane, such as a tail fin. "What I saw could have been a disc seen from the side, or a cigar. It was close enough for me to be able to judge whether it was a conventional aircraft or not. The object was torpedo-shaped. It was pointed both at the front and at the stern. Like a big and fat cigar. There were no contours or nuances of colour. It was dark greyish."

No exhaust or smoke was seen. The sighting duration was about 2-3 minutes. "I can say that it was not a Mustang, if so I would not have made such a fuss about this whole thing."

Malingsbo has the co-ordinates Latitude 59° 55’ 60N, Longitude 15° 25’ 60E.

Lieutenant I was, at the time of the sighting, the head of a B 18 division at the F1 wing. In December 1946 he took part in flying a group of new Vampire jets from England to the F13 wing in Norrkoping. He later became the head of the Air Force’s experimental station, working on flight tests of new Swedish aircraft and missiles. In 1961 he was promoted Lieutenant Colonel and finally left active duty in 1979.

To the Defence Staff, Stockholm

Wednesday, August 14, [1946] about 10.15 a.m. an object was observed having a small, spool-shaped body and small wings plus a stay at the back, about as shown in the enclosed sketch. The object passed in a north-easterly direction at an altitude of about 200 meters and emitted a sound reminding me of an aeroplane but more hissing. Place of observation: the western outskirts of Södertälje.

Signe Lundström

Villagatan 41

Södertälje

[The witness sent her short, unsigned, letter and sketch to the Staff. The Staff must have talked to the witness, since there are some additional notes in the Staff’s daily summary tables of sightings: "[Speed:] "Not very big. [Trajectory:] "Horizontal". [Description:] "…no propeller, no smoke nor fire" [Comments:] "sighted by two ladies from a garden. Disappeared behind another house."

In 1986, Clas Svahn attempted to reach the witness, but discovered that she, as well as her husband, both had died in 1982. Svahn managed to trace one of their two daughters, living in Uddevalla.

"My mother was a true realist and never fantasised. If she has reported such a thing she must have seen such an object. She never made anything up. I have never heard that she should have seen such an object, however. She never told me, and I haven’t seen anything about it in her papers."

Södertälje is situated at Lat. 59° 12' 0N Long. 17° 37' 0E. Distance from Malingsbo down to Södertälje, as the crow would fly, is roughly 150 kilometres. This means an object would have to speed at abt 900 km/h to reach there in 10 minutes. Södertälje is right at the extension of the course of the object noted by the two Air Force men.]

A web site, in Swedish, detailing the Defence Staff investigations in 1946:

www.afu.info

AFU’s very own web site recently opened after hovering in a ‘limbo’ status for about six months. The computer virus we experienced in March (see AFU #43) had put a temporary end to our hopes of coming ‘on the air’.

http://www.afu.info/will, of course, be updated regularly, with new information about our archives, our collections and our activities. One of the main features of the first edition is a Photo Tour through the archives and our localities, which will give you a general idea about the daily work we do at the archives.

AFU’s antiquarian sales, AFU Antikvaria, now on line, will help draw money to pay for webhouse costs. Sorry, but we will only sell to Swedish customers since the logistics and costs of sending books abroad is really not ‘our table’. We are willing, however, to discuss exchange deals with foreign colleagues.

You will also find information about Sponsor-ship of the AFU foundation and you can read recent issues of the AFU Newsletter. Eventually, we plan to put detailed inventories and databases on the site, to make our material more accessible.

Please check into our site regularly. A link from your own site would be appreciated!

Last year, UFO-Sweden received 164 reports at its Report Centre in Sundsvall. 93 of these sightings were made during the year 2001, while the balance were sightings from previous years. The lower number of reports is probably an effect of changing the personnel responsible for the report centre.

By early 2002 the Centre considered one single case a genuine "UFO", while 36 sightings were still under investigation (but yet unexplained). 24 cases received a definite explanation. No less than 13 cases were reports of "UFO balloons" -popular, imported toy balloons.

January had the highest score of all months with 23 reports. The densely populated areas around the three big cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö scored most reports: 33, 27 and 13, respectively, while the fairly desolated counties of Dalarna (Dalecarlia) and Värmland, close to the Norwegian border, still have high very scores with 14 and 10 cases.

Reports received at the UFO-Sweden Report Centre are, in the end, archived with AFU. We recently received a batch of reports from year 2000.

34 members of UFO-Sweden spent the Sept. 7-8 weekend at the Björsjö training centre in Dale-carlia, taught to become good field investigators for the organisation. This was the 25^th year, in succession, that UFO-Sweden organised a training course for F.I.’s.

Half of the participants were returning for a continuation course. On the agendas of each course is witness psychology, basic astronomy and identification of hoaxes. Each year, a new "UFO" case, real or invented by the organisers is presented for the participants to solve.

AFU now sells / exchanges a CD with nine different Microsoft Access 97 databases developed at the AFU centre.

The CD sells in Sweden for 150 SEK, while non-Swedish customers are asked to send us, as an exchange, ‘something UFO-related’, to the value of 200 SEK, to add to the archives’ collection. It might be some recent work (book, magazine volume, CD, video) of your own, or similar indexes that would be useful to this archive.

If you are a previous donor you are of course entitled to a copy, just contact us. Please contact by email afu@ufo.se or by regular mail: AFU, P O Box 11027, S-600 11 Norrkoping, Sweden.

The CD includes the ScanCat reports database (12.112 records, mostly Swedish and Scandinavian reports), and also the coding manual (in Swedish) for the database.

Further, the AFU book database of 2.500 titles in the reference library collection and a complete inventory of AFU’s holdings of magazines and serial publications (20.000 items). Also, a complete database of Swedish maps in the AFU collection; an almost-up-to-date index database of the two Swedish magazines UFO-Aktuellt and UFO-Information; plus a database of MUFON UFO Journal and International UFO Reporter articles.

Please note: To use the databases you must have Microsoft Access 97 software (or later version) installed on your PC.

CD:s of serials and other works is one of the latest distribution forms to replace costly regular mail of bulky material. AFU recently received volume 1, issue 4, the electronic version of the Extraterrestrial Physics Review, stated to be a refereed Japanese-international magazine that specialises in the physical aspects of the UFO phenomenon. Distributed as Adobe Acrobat pdf-files on a CD, the material is also offered as PostScript files. The journal is published by editor Hiroshi Yamakawa and available for Internet download from http://www1.odn.ne.jp/epr  [Note for Internet edition: Link functioned as review was written but does not seem to work anymore]

Issue # 4 includes Jennifer Jarvis’ investigation of Anomalous lights over Lake Ontario (Canada), articles on the Ummo case, the UFO-physics aspects of the Denaerde contact case and a review of Extraterrestrial Contact Reports and Physics, by the EPR editor. He analyses 47 contactee cases from the viewpoint of physics. Well," extracting scientific information from extraterrestrial contact reports" can be no easy task!

In the hallway of the new library, the "B" archive, we have established a new video library. Last week, as of this writing, the video library was be enhanced with another 80+ videos from the collection of deceased ufologist Bernd Schumann, collected in Helsingborg by AFU’s Clas Svahn.

Schumann was, for decades, the Swedish correspondent and translator for the German contactee magazine UFO-Nachrichten. Unfortunately, his book collection was sold before we learned of his passing away, but what is left includes German commercial videos and programs taped from German television. An example of this is an early generation copy of the science fiction ‘documentary’ Die Delegation.

Video recorders came into household use in the 1980’s. Videotapes are now included with almost every major donation. So, videos are something AFU should collect and preserve for the future. Preservation, in their present form, must be regarded as only temporary since the magnetic layers of tapes are extremely sensitive to ageing.

In any future preservation project (transformation to digital format) our audiotapes (rolls, cassettes), dating far back to the 1950’s, must, however, take precedence over videos. We have about 1.500 – 2.000 audiotapes to start with!

What we could do with the video collection, in the immediate future, is simple cataloguing, often trying to find the best possible ‘master’ copy of certain programs among several recordings. Since we have received tapes from dozens of donators, we know that there are quite many duplicates recorded. Plans for a searchable database are on the way.

AFU’s present video collection, counting the new Schumann collection, includes about 400 tapes, everything from witness interviews in the field to slick commercial productions.

Since a few years AFU sponsor Jörgen Granlie (treasurer for UFO-Sweden) generates, a master file of television programs broadcasts (including satellite channels such as Discovery and National Geographic), tapes that are then finally deposited with AFU.

A recent fine addition was the Bruno Ericsson tape collection, including a large number of commercial productions, many of them American NTSC-standard tapes. These are not playable on a European PAL machine, but AFU, through Clas Svahn, also received a NTSC video machine along with the tapes. What we lack at the archives, right now, is a functioning television set.

Some parts of the video collection are specialised, like the 50+ tape collection from Gunnar Lindberg of contactee and channelled material, and Håkan Blomqvist’s collection of UFO-related SF films.

A recent addition is eight videos from the Oral History Project, run by Tom Tullien and Jan Aldrich, featuring biographical interviews with important figures in American UFO history. Loren Gross kindly donated copies of the world’s first UFO documentary, MGM’s Unidentified flying objects from 1956.

Yet another recent addition was 33 tapes donated by Tony Walter, a Stockholm ufologist. Clas Svahn and UFO-Sweden continuously donates tapes of television programs, witness interviews and public talks, such as presentations recorded at the annual UFO-Sweden conference.

► AFU supporter Dan Eklund has donated copies of the following new titles: A.G.W. Cameron: Interstellar communication, a collection of reprints and original contributions (1963); Sherry Sontag & Christopher Drew: Blind man’s bluff. The untold story of American submarine espionage (1999) (added to AFU’s submarine theme collection); Richard F. Haines: CE-5. Close encounters of the fifth kind. 242 case files exposing alien contact (1999) and Clifford E. Stone: UFO’s are real. Extraterrestrial encounters documented by the U.S. Government (1997). Wonderful additions to our library!

► Bertil Schalén, a student of occultism and UFO cults, kindly donated postage when we bought, at very friendly prices, two titles from his second-hand book list: Lewis, James R. (ed.): The Gods have landed. New religions from other worlds (1995) and Robert Jackson: UFOs (1996). Find BAGS at: http://w1.461.telia.com/~u46117970/sales/dungeon.html

► Ole Jonny Braenne, chairman of UFO-Norway, sent us yet another five boxes crammed with books and magazines, this time mostly from the collection of Mentz Kaarbø, editor of the Nordic UFO Newsletter. If you ever sent exchange material to that publication it is likely that material has now landed in the AFU shelves. The new material has been sorted and added to AFU’s database of serial publications.

Ole Jonny also donated a number of new books to the AFU library, e.g. Gregory Kanon: The Great UFO hoax (1997); Odd-Gunnar Röed: Norske naerkontakter av 3.grad (1994); Gary Hyland: Blue Fires. The lost secrets of Nazi technology. (2001); David Hatcher Childress. Technology of the Gods (2000); Nancy Red Star: Star ancestors. Indian wisdomkeepers share the teachings of the extraterrestrials (2000): Edgar Allen: De waarheid over UFO’s (Dutch book magazine, 1979?); "Flying saucers over America" (Newsclipping archives from Steamshovel Press, undated) and Daniel Browning: UFO propulsion report 1995. Some fine additions! Thanks!

► Tony Walter, Stockholm, has kindly donated some of his UFO material including Steuart Campbell "Close encounter at Livingston" (BUFORA publication, 1982) and a collection of 33 video recordings.

► Loren Gross, Fremont, California: Seven recent new supplements to the "UFOs: a history" series: 1952 July 21^st – July 31^st; 1952 August; 1952 September-October; 1952 November-December; 1953 January – February; 1953 March-July and 1953 August-December. Wonderful pioneering work!

► Stefan Roslund, Stockholm: a collection of seven UFO-related books in the Russian language, complete with western transcitptions of the authors and titles! Will be catalogued for our 2002 book acquisition list.

► Clas Svahn, numerous materials including the following books Mikael Ranerås: Bröllopet mellan polerna and Robert Lesniakewicz: Projekt Tatry (Polish ufology).

► Barbro Magnusson of the UFO Sweden report centre has kindly borrowed us her audiotapes of witness interviews from Hessdalen for duplication.

► Edoardo Russo, CISU, Italy, kindly sent AFU copy of the Argentinean doctoral thesis in social psychology "Psicoaxiosociologia del fenomeno OVNI" by Roberto E. Banchs. Also the 1990 dissertation "Flying saucers and the new angelology: Mythic projection of the cold war and the convergence of opposites" by Robert Pearson Flaherty at University of California. Russo also sent a batch of copies of Chilean UFO magazines. We owe him a lot!

In July Clas Svahn fetched a UFO collection from the home of Mr. Gunnar Schelin, a very active Swedish ufologist who lived on the island of Öland, in the Baltic, and who died in 2000. Although, mainly a disappointment (the collection was largely destroyed or disturbed by several floods in the cellar of the Schelin house), there about ten pages of rusty (from metals of a binder) correspondence between Schelin and UFO witness Gideon Johansson, which are grossly interesting. The correspondence took place in the mid-1970's.

The story of "Gideon's saucer" has been told many times in the international UFO literature. My own report, Mariannelund UFO and occupants, was published by Charles Bowen in the Flying Saucer Review, Nov/Dec. 1970. I have since collected quite an extensive file on the case and researched it by talking to dozens of members of the Mariannelund community and by searching archives collections. The sum total of my research (up to the mid-1990's) is published on the UFO-Sweden web -  http://www.ufo.se/fakta/artiklar/mariannelund.shtml

You can make your own printout of the 32 pages long article. Unfortunately there has been no resources for a detailed English translation, but I made a brief review in English for the Project 1947 List, which is available at - http://www.temporaldoorway.com/ufo/catalog/hoaxanderror/gideon.htm

There were previously a number of unsubstantiated statements in the case. The new batch of letters support - even more - the theory that the witness was essentially "a mystic". Some new details surface about the telepathic contacts with the space people, immediately after the close encounter.

Gideon claimed he was sent mental images of the visitors home planet, a world 'on the other side of our Sun' where the people never saw sunlight because of a thick layer of fog that enveloped their planet. The idea was similar to Truman Bethurum’s Clarion planet. A recent info exchange on the Project-1947 mailing list with Barry Greenwood and Jerome Clark makes it evident that an American science fiction cartoon, Twin Earths, first released in May 1952, may have influenced both Gideon's and Truman's stories. In it earthmen are contacted by a race of women from Terra, a sister planet to Earth never seen because it is permanently positioned on the other side of the Sun.

A completely novel detail surfaces, in the new correspondence between Gideon Johansson and Gunnar Schelin. In a letter of June 28, 1976 Gideon states: "There are some things that I have kept secret, it is archived in[side] [of] a 40 mm pipe made of aluminium [kept] in a government basement somewhere. It will surface sometime in the 21st century. No one has anything to do with it until then."

How I would like to believe that I could find the ultimate answer to Gideon's mystery by way of locating some metallic object that was given to the authorities! And now the time has come, when we have passed into the new century!

That 'something' has to be much better evidence than the [Swedish] Väddö stone hailed to the skies as 'pure magnesium' by German and American researchers, although it was nothing but an ordinary metallic slag product of little significance, as attested by a Swedish laboratory in the 1980s.

Gideon, however, makes no reference to which basement to go looking for his object(s) in, so, our hopes must be small. Archives seldom keep metallic objects - AFU may be the exception. We have a few pieces of meteorites, for starters.

                                                                                             Anders Liljegren