Unidentified German Flying Machines over Sweden, 1944/1945

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ohrdruf
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Unidentified German Flying Machines over Sweden, 1944/1945

#1

Post by ohrdruf » 20 Oct 2004, 15:45

This is a subject which appears unexplained at present and therefore deserves serious investigation. The evidence seems to exist only in newspaper clippings, of which I produce a few below:


14.10.1944 The Times (UK) and Sydsvenska Dagbladet (Swe)
ROBOT AIRCRAFT OVER SWEDEN
A foreign robot aircraft - probably a flying bomb - crossed over Sweden this afternoon. The aircraft passed at great velocity from West to East coast continuing its flight over the sea heading East to North East. The aircraft moved at a very high altitude and could not be observed with the naked eye. But the smoke or gases ejected formed a white trail over 200 metres long and could be clearly seen. The engine made a noise similar to that of a four-engined bomber. "Speed was considerable and even exceeded velocity of the newest fighter aircraft" the report said.


28.11.1944 The Daily Telegraph (UK)
V-BOMBS OVER SWEDEN
The Swedish Military Staff announced tonight that a small number of robot or rocket bombs were seen flying high over southern Sweden this afternoon.


9.12.1944 The Daily Mail (UK)
NAZIS WILL RUN V-WEAPONS WAR FROM NORWAY
by Ralph Hewins
The Germans are preparing a great winter offensive from Norway's mountains and the Danish islands, according to Allied observers. The main bases are on top of Norway's highest mountains, e.g. 5,700-feet high Gaustad 50 miles west of Oslo and at various high places elsewhere. Only Organisation Todt German labour was used for the construction work although at least 10,000 forced labourers are available. Scores of square miles around the mountain have been cordoned off and are protected by strong security forces.
Most Norwegian agents believe that the bases are for a long-distance model of the V-1. 24 hours a day the Germans are hauling iron and concrete up these 5,000 feet high peaks. Much is manhandled, but light mountain railways have also been built and cable railways slung across valleys and chasms.
Each firing position consists of a huge concrete hall embedded deep in rock with a semi-circular roof of reinforced concrete. From each entrance a long runway is built out from the launching platforms inside.
What puzzles experts here is why the Germans are building these V-bases on the highest, most inaccessible peaks. Neither the V-1 nor V-2 require height for a successful launch.


29.12.1944 New York Times (US) at p.12
DANES REPORT V-WEAPON DEVICE
(Stockholm, 26 December)
The Germans have erected a 190-foot tower equipped with some indeterminable apparatus on the island of Bornholm which is the centre of intense activity with V-Weapons.


15.1.1945 Daily Telegraph (UK)
V-BOMBS FROM NORWAY
Flying bombs over southern Sweden were confirmed officially. They came from the North West and are believed to have been launched from the Hardanger Plateau.


20.1.1945 Daily Mail (UK) p.1
V-3 IS RADIO-STEERED FLYING BOMB
By Ralph Hewins
Swedish military authorities are preparing a report on cases of V-1s, V-2s and V-3s flying over Sweden in order to provide material for a diplomatic protest to Berlin. A Swedish expert writing in the Stockholm paper "Expressen" stated that the V-3 is believed to be a combination of the V-1 and V-2. It can proceed at very high level, is very fast and can be steered easier than V-2. It is a flying bomb of the rocket type and can be steered from the ground to a certain extent. German experts have for long been interested in radio steering instruments and have been carrying out research in this field.


"The V-2 rocket was just a toy compared to what the Germans had up their sleeve. At the war's end they had 138 types of guided missile in production or development using every known kind of remote control....Of these 138 types, there is no information on eighty of these."
CIOS Report XXXII-125 (UK)


"The Germans were preparing rocket surprises for the whole world in general and England in particular which would have, it is believed, changed the course of the war if the invasion had been postponed for so short a time as half a year...."
Col D L Putt
Deputy Cmmdg Gen AAF Intelligence, Air Technical Service Command, USAF, from "Harper's Magazine" October 1946 at page 329.

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PPoS
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#2

Post by PPoS » 20 Oct 2004, 18:40

Very interesting indeed, there are quiet a few reports of crashed V-1 and V-2 rockets in southern Sweden. Some of them as early as in 1942 ..

And during 1946 (from May to December) several thousand reports came to the Swedish military, it happend that during a single day about 250 reports came about "Ghost Rockets" (!)
These crashed (especially in lakes) and no parts of them was ever found.. Close to where I live (about 15 miles) a ghost rocket crashed into a forest, the area was searched and the only thing found was 3 holes in the ground.. They, and the surrounding area was digged up, but nothing was found.

And in every case similiar sounds of an rocket engine was heard.. Trust me, this is no lie, I've seen the reports from the Swedish military myself, they were pretty newly declassified.


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#3

Post by ohrdruf » 21 Oct 2004, 17:33

All enquiries to Norway for information regarding the alleged flights from Norwegian bases over Sweden were returned with the answer that there were NO V-weapons launch bases in Norway, and that Gaustad was a radio/radar aircraft prediction centre only.

One of the Telemark heroes, Claus Helberg, has stated: "At Gaustad the Germans had an observation base for air activities. I am certain there were no plans for German guided missile launch sites. Nor is there any evidence that the Germans had such plans in any other areas of Norway."

The curator of the Norwegian Industrial Workers' Museum at Vemork, Frode Saeland, wrote: "The Germans began construction work on the Gaustad peak in the autumn of 1944. The local Commandant referred to the place as a "V-Stelle". On the basis of information passed to London from agents it was concluded that the Germans were constructing a station for forecasting aerial activity over southern Norway. A similar station was built on the Skavlen mountain near Sauda."

In a 1946 book, the Gaustad site is referred to as "the biggest and most expensive radio installation the Germans left behind." Skavlen is identified as a radar post and Gaustad as an aircraft forecasting system.


That being so we are left with a dilemma. From where did all the "robot machines" originate which between October 1944 and March 1945 infringed Swedish air space to the extent that Stockholm was compiling a dossier of the evidence in order to lodge a complaint with Berlin?

And what might be the connection with the "glowing robot machines" which plagued Swedish air space in the summer of 1946, and which the USAF confirmed in a declassified document that year "were undoubtedly man-made and of German origin"?

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#4

Post by varjag » 23 Oct 2004, 13:41

Ohrdruf - the Swedish Sydsvenska Dagbladet - as relayed by The Times may have reported ghosts - a not unusual occurrence in the stresses of wartime - even for nervous neutrals! History records that the V-weapons were fired experimentally from north Germany and operationally from France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. In the case of Sweden - across the Baltic from Peenemünde - it was only natural - that some strays would be sighted. But certainly not flying west to east - as the range of the German weapons precluded any 'detours', before 'landing in Sweden'.
For your future guidance there were seven (6) impacts of V-1's and one (1) of V-2 in Sweden;

V-1 15.11.43 at Utlängan all these locations
V-1 30.11.43 at Nybro
V-1 11.05.44 at Brösarp are in the extreme
V-1 27.07.44 at Ramdala
V-1 07.09.44 at Trunnerup south of Sweden
V-1 01.11.44 at Baskemölla

V-2 13.06.44 at Bäckebo north of the town of Kalmar on the SE
coast of Sweden

the V-2 appears to have been a radio-controlled version deployed in relation to experiments with the Wasserfall SAM-missile.

History in Sweden reports nothing to support any notion of secretive goings on - not recorded by history. You will have to look elsewhere for that.

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#5

Post by ohrdruf » 23 Oct 2004, 16:05

Varjag

I find your explanation a nice try as always from yourself, but on this occasion unconvincing. Here are my reasons:

(1) Your argument rests upon the simple fact that the Swedish AF erred in stating that the objects sighted crossed into Swedish air space from Norway, which shared a border with Sweden to the west. You do not produce a reason or any evidence why you think the Swedish AF was incompetent and incapable of determining the point of entry of unauthorised flying machines entering its air space.

(2) The range of a V-1 flying bomb or a V-2 rocket was not sufficient for either to have left Swedish air space towards the Gulf of Bothnia above the latitude of Stockholm once in Swedish air space from anywhere west or south west. All V-1 and V-2 projectiles which crashed in Sweden bar one did so before October 1944 when the mystery flights began.

(3) The Swedish air force knew what the V-1 and V-2 were capable of and how they performed in flight. The V-1 could not outpace a Spitfire and had a typical engine sound. The V-2 did not fly straight and level. Neither had the range to cross Sweden eastwards from the Norwegian border.

This knowledge convinced the Swedes that the projectiles overflying their air space could not be V-1 or V-2 projectiles. That was why they assumed that it was a new breed of projectile which they christened "V-3".
All "V-3" projectiles passing across Swedish air space left it and none crashed. Besides the noise, the "V-3" projectiles left a condensation trail and were therefore physical objects in being.

(4) It would appear that no KNOWN experimental flying machines capable of outdistancing the Me 262, flying at immense altitude and having a sound like a heavy bomber were ever flown by the Germans from anywhere, including Norway.

(5) The only parallel cases are those quoted in NARA/RG 38, Intelligence Division, Top Secret Reports of US Naval Attaches, 1944-1947, Box II, Reports 35-5-46i "Report on Guided Missiles....over Scandinavian Territories".

In the report of 13 August 1946, an official report was sent to the French President, the Chiefs of the Army General Staffs and various other high level commissions in the following terms;

"In May 1946, first apparitions 23 May 1946, the Finnish and Swedish Press mentioned luminous phenomena observed mainly at sundown in the skies of these countries and the highly controversial question was to know whether they were meteors or jet propelled projectiles.

"Swedish opinion was fairly reserved on the question whereas in Finland, at the end of June, the opinion prevailed that they were meteors whose presence in the Finnish skies was nothing extraordinary at this time of year (this was the opinion in particular of professors of the astonomical laboratories.)

"Since that time, faced with the numerous observations made, and in particular those of 9 and 10 July, it is impossible to doubt that they are projectiles. The Swedish and Finnish staffs are now absolutely convinced; the certain proof which would constitute an almost intact projectile has nevertheless not yet been found. Indeed, there are relatively few falls in Scandinavian territory and the machines are evidently self-destroying.

"The majority of the projectiles, particularly those of 9 and 10 July, followed a complex itinerary implicating changes of direction sometimes observed from the ground......passing north of Stockholm and the Aaland islands and crossing the south-west part of Finland.


The US, Finnish and Swedish Air Staffs all concurred that the sightings during the summer of 1946 were jet-propelled projectiles which flew eastwards across Sweden leaving its air space over the Aaland sea. There were "few falls in Scandinavian territory" and no physical proof was ever found; all the 1944 flights left Swedish air space on the same route successfully. The origin of the 1946 projectiles was not known: the origin of the 1944/45 projectiles is also not known.


The sightings were one of two things:
(i) Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) operated by a non-worldly source or (ii) the same operated by the Germans during and after the Second World War using an unknown technology. Other evidence indictes the latter.

Perhaps it is best to cling to the notion that all this resides in the imagination of war-weary air staffs unable to tell west from south and Stockholm from Malmo. If the alternative is (ii) above, we are enjoying a brief respite before the Cataclysm after which, by popular request, They Will Be Back.

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#6

Post by varjag » 24 Oct 2004, 13:14

Ohrdruf - I apologize! I hadn't accounted for the presence of LGM in Berlin - a subject entirely worthy of it's own thread in the forum. But I am rather more familiar with the capacities and deficiences of the Swedish airforce and the Air Observation organisation (Luftbevakningen) at that time. You will have to furnish more 'meat on the bones' of your claim that the Utrikesdepartementet in Stockholm was compiling a dossier for a demarché in Berlin about German infringements of Swedish airspace 'from west towards east' during that period. That - is rather easily checked so what's your sources? At the time you claim (1944) - the Swedish Air Force knew very little about the capabilities of the V-1 and next to nothing about the V-2 including their flight paths - as Swedish radar was almost non-existant. So this non-existant 'knowledge' could not have convinced the Swedes that they were under an umbrella of "V-3's"! And where - in heavens name Ohrdruf - did all these Norway-based, eastward flying V-3 missiles land? I suspect in Cuckoo-land. Where their properties where carefully analyzed by LGM who promptly sent reports back to their kindred in Berlin.......take care Ohrdruf,...Varjag

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#7

Post by Uninen » 24 Oct 2004, 21:19


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#8

Post by Juha Tompuri » 25 Oct 2004, 09:27

varjag wrote: there were seven (6) impacts of V-1's and one (1) of V-2 in Sweden
http://www.df.lth.se/~triad/rockets/indexen.html

Regards, Juha

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#9

Post by ohrdruf » 25 Oct 2004, 16:33

From Juha Tompuri's posting it is evident that Varjag, a person claiming to be "familiar with the capacities and deficiencies of the Swedish Air Force etc etc" was incorrect in stating that the Swedish AF knew little or nothing about the flying bomb V-1 in 1944.

In my opening two postings I have stated all I know on the subject, and all that is know comes from the newspaper and literary sources I have supplied. That is the manner of proposing an uncertain history. Somebody knowledgable - really knowledgable - may shoot it down. That is grist to the mill.

Now Varjag asks where these unidentified aircraft landed or crashed. The question must also have occurred to the Swedish AF at some point in their deliberations, as it did two years later, in the summer of 1946. But the basis of their original interest was the overflying of their airspace, a breach of their neutrality, and not German aeronautical developments.

The point of entry of the machines into their airspace, the course followed, and the point of departure from their airspace, did not need high technology, but simple plotting. Varjag obviously identifies this when he asserts that the Swedes had poor, or no, radar. Without radar, no complaint would have been forthcoming if the machines, or their condensation trails, had not been visible for the duration of the transit, since there would have been no apparent breach of their air space for Stockholm to complain about.

If we think about it carefully for a moment, we see that each transit was, to all intents and purposes, under visiual observation from point "A" on the Norwegian border to point "B" on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. If the transit took thirty minutes and the distance from "A" to "B" is 400 kms, then the machine was flying subsonic at 800 km/hr, which is faster than an Me 262. This is exactly what the Swedes were saying. This is also a machine which, since it was faster than an Me 262 with vastly greater range, did not exist in 1944 to the best of our knowledge and belief.


UNINEN
"V-3" is considered to have been the High Pressure Pump gun. However, in 1944 the Swedes had no knowledge of German categories of wonder-weapons. Realizing that the machines overflying their airspace bore some similarities to the V-1 and V-2, but appeared to be a higher class of development, they christened the unidentified machines as "V-3" for convenience.

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#10

Post by varjag » 26 Oct 2004, 04:24

As 'contrails' do not carry national markings - is seems extremely fanciful that the Swedish or any other government - would prepare protests. How to know where to protest?

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#11

Post by ohrdruf » 26 Oct 2004, 15:22

Varjag

Unless you have information to the contrary, in 1944 Germany led the world in aeronautics. Germany also occupied the country immediately to Sweden's west. The obvious suspicion as to the country of origin of an unidentified flying object travelling across Sweden from the west at 800 km/hr and leaving a condensation trail was that it was German.

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#12

Post by varjag » 27 Oct 2004, 04:32

Ohrdruf - I think we both know that diplomatic notes of protest - have to be based on something much more substantial than 'obvious suspicion' lest the protesting power be held to ridicule.

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#13

Post by ohrdruf » 27 Oct 2004, 14:53

Varjag

I doubt if the Swedes would have released EVERYTHING they had to the newspapers which reported these incidents. As I pointed out to you with regard to the apparent candidness of the Doenitz memoir, there are always things that States and Heads of States are not at liberty to divulge for long periods after the event, if at all.

Likewise it is possible to imagine steps which the Swedish AF might have taken to investigate the overflying incidents but preferred not to inform the world at large having regard to Sweden's neutrality. ("The Germans have developed a new remote-controlled flying bomb which can travel at 800 kms/hr, has unheard of range and this is a picture of it taken at 40,000 feet....") I think by now that YOU should be getting the picture too.

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#14

Post by PPoS » 27 Oct 2004, 15:13

varjag
Many documents about this has been declassified lately, most of them come from 1946.. I can send them to you if you want, they are being showed to the public at the Swedish Defense Archive. Trust me I know, I live in Sweden.

And we know for sure that german rockets crashed in Sweden as early as in 1942, I can show you pictures about these crashsites if you want too.
Let me ask you something; If the rockets weren't german, where did they come from? Outher space?

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#15

Post by varjag » 28 Oct 2004, 03:29

PPoS wrote:varjag
Many documents about this has been declassified lately, most of them come from 1946.. I can send them to you if you want, they are being showed to the public at the Swedish Defense Archive. Trust me I know, I live in Sweden.

And we know for sure that german rockets crashed in Sweden as early as in 1942, I can show you pictures about these crashsites if you want too.
Let me ask you something; If the rockets weren't german, where did they come from? Outher space?
PPoS - if u have a link, I'd love to read the material, tks, Varjag

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