UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 05 · AUGUST 7, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOW-UAP-D099Intelligence Review of “Ghost Rocket” Incidents, 1947
This file is a four-page feature, “Ghost Rockets” over Scandinavia, from an issue of the War Department General Staff’s classified Intelligence Review, printed alongside unrelated articles on topics such as Soviet foreign policy and the magnetic amplifier. It reviews the wave of reported missiles over Sweden and its neighbors in 1946, just before Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting made “flying saucers” a household phrase.
What the review found
Press reports began over southern Sweden in late May 1946 and spread to Finland, Denmark and Norway. Most witnesses were untrained, and the two commonest descriptions were “a ball of fire with a tail” and a “shiny cigar-shaped object,” with claimed heights from treetop level to 160,000 feet. No fragments were found except bits of “nonmetallic slag.” The review singles out a Swedish Air Force pilot who, on August 14, reported a wingless cigar-shaped object about 50 feet long at roughly 400 mph, then doubts his account because it describes the object following the terrain.
By the end of July almost 1,000 reports had reached Swedish officials. The review is critical of their handling: key staff stayed on summer leave, and the 6 August communiqué ruled out meteorites in most cases while the 10 October one called most sightings celestial. It reads this as Stockholm playing the affair down to protect relations with Moscow.
The bottom line
The review concludes that there had been only 2 or 3, perhaps 5 or 10, real incidents of low-flying V-1-type missiles, probably Soviet, and that the high-altitude reports were meteors or fireworks. It also suggests the Swedish Defense Staff let the story grow while the public was demanding defense cuts. Distribution included the White House, the State Department and the FBI.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released August 7, 2026, quoted in full
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.