What happened
From Christmas Eve 1933, when an aircraft with a brilliant searchlight was reported coming in from the Gulf of Bothnia over Kalix in northern Sweden, the far north of Scandinavia was gripped by reports of 'ghost fliers'. Over the next three months, people in Sweden, Norway and Finland described unmarked grey aircraft, sometimes on skis, flying in blizzards and fog when no pilot of the day would dare, sweeping the ground with searchlights, circling low or seeming to hover, sometimes in total silence. Some witnesses said they glimpsed lighted cockpits. Local papers received dozens of reports a day. The Swedish Air Force flew searches from January 1934, Sweden's parliament debated the matter and ordered an inquiry, and Finland's general staff sent army aircraft on reconnaissance over the north. Odd ski-like tracks were found in snow. Nothing was ever caught or identified, and the wave faded by March, though similar reports returned in 1936-37.
The official explanation
At the time the favoured explanations were smugglers' aircraft or Soviet, German or Japanese reconnaissance flights; The New York Times reported a common belief that they were Soviet test flights to Arctic icebreakers. Finnish Air Force night-flying tests in January 1934 matched some reports to a planet or bright star such as Sirius, and one supposed landing track proved to be from a horse-drawn sledge. Later research cited by Finnish historians indicates real unauthorised Soviet and German flights over Finland and Sweden in the late 1930s, which could account for some of the later sightings.
The anomalous case
The official tests did not explain everything. According to Atso Haapanen's study of Finnish Defence Forces files, the Air Force reconstructed one night sighting with a real aircraft and found that its engine was clearly audible and its lights would have been briefly hidden as it passed, neither of which matched the silent, continuously visible object witnesses described, and calculations from the reports gave a speed around 1,500 km/h, far beyond any aircraft of 1934. Another case, triangulated from independent observers, placed the light impossibly high. A reported landing site at Alavieska was judged impossible for any conventional aircraft. In 1934 no air force could fly long-range sorties in Arctic blizzards at night, and none ever admitted these flights or lost a plane. Ufologist John Keel later grouped the ghost fliers with UFO waves.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- The New York Times, 29 January 1934, p. 6, 'Sweden to Sift Air Mystery' (scan reproduced) newspaper, ufologie.patrickgross.org
- The New York Times, 4 February 1934, p. 9 (Helsingfors dispatch; scan reproduced) newspaper, ufologie.patrickgross.org
Sources
- Kummituslentokoneet (Ghost fliers) Finnish Wikipedia
- 'Sweden to Sift Air Mystery', The New York Times, 29 January 1934 Patrick Gross, UFOs in the press before 1940
- The New York Times, 4 February 1934 (ghost planes over Finland) Patrick Gross, UFOs in the press before 1940
Witness reports elsewhere
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