Ghost Rockets
The puzzling foo fighter sightings of the war had scarcely ended when a new wave of aerial sightings took place. In the spring of 1946 the Scandinavian countries began witnessing an impressive spectacle of luminous objects zipping through their skies, night after night, and at times during the day. Sweden remained the center of action throughout, with additional heavy activity in Finland, Norway, and Denmark. By late summer, the phenomenon had spread throughout Europe and beyond, to places such as Portugal, France, Tangier, Italy, Greece, and even India. Witnesses eventually numbered in the tens of thousands. This was a serious development, and indications are that the American military watched it closely.
Many sightings were of elongated, cigar-shaped, objects. On May 24, 1946 at 2 a.m., for example, several Swedish witnesses saw a wingless cigar shaped object, a scant 300 feet above the ground, spurting "bunches of sparks" from its tail. The object moved at the speed of an ordinary airplane. On the 31st, just before noon, a wingless huge metallic cigar was seen moving rapidly at about 1,000 feet altitude. From these kinds of descriptions, the objects acquired the name of "ghost rockets." It soon became clear, however, that these could not be conventional rockets. In the first place, they left no exhaust trail. Secondly, they were almost always silent. Thirdly, many of them moved too slowly to be rockets. Fourthly, they were often seen in formation, breaking formation, maneuvering, or hovering. Finally, the longest trajectory recorded by observers was 1,000 kilometers: this was three times the range of the German V rockets. Strange rockets, for sure.
Still, the Swedes, Americans, British, and other interested parties (which included just about everybody) looked into the possibility that these were Soviet missiles of some sort, constructed with the help of their cache of German scientists from Peenemunde, the home of the V rockets. Many investigators realized even at the time that this was so unlikely as to be nearly impossible. Still, few could rule it out completely. To this day, however, there is no evidence whatsoever that the objects were of Soviet origin. . . .