The first Swedish ghost rocket sightings
On 24 May 1946 reports began in Sweden of a cigar-shaped object trailing sparks. Sightings continued through the year.
Project 1947 records that on 24 May 1946 the attache covering Sweden and Denmark quoted an observer who saw V-bombs heading southwest above Landskrona at 1000 feet. The same day Dagens Nyheter reported two night watchmen at Landskrona who sighted a cigar-shaped object without wings, about as big as a small airplane. Every so often it threw out clusters of sparks behind it. They put its altitude at 100 meters and its speed at ordinary airplane speed, heading southwest.
The Swedish National Archives says the whole affair began on the night between 23 and 24 May, when people across the country saw one or several fireballs with tails crossing the sky.
Wikipedia records roughly 2,000 sightings from May to December 1946, peaking on 9 and 11 August. It says radar returns backed two hundred of them and that authorities recovered fragments they attributed to ghost rockets.
"The first reports of ghost rockets were made on February 26, 1946, by Finnish observers.[1] About 2,000 sightings were logged between May and December 1946, with peaks on 9 and 11 August 1946. Two hundred sightings were verified with radar returns, and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to ghost rockets."
- Scandinavian ghost rocket reports in British and US attache files, 1946, Project 1947 (Jan Aldrich / Joel Carpenter)
- A Ghost Rocket Chronology, Part One, Project 1947 (Joel Carpenter)
- The Ghost Rockets of 1946, Saturday Night Uforia
- Spökraketer (Arkivpodden, avsnitt 33), Riksarkivet, Swedish National Archives