Unidentified Flying Objects: Project "Grudge" (Technical Report No. 102-AC 49/15-100)

## 1. Foreign Imports

During the summer of 1946, there were reported to have been seen in Sweden a number of mysterious aerial objects. There were as many different descriptions for the "ghost rockets", as the newspapers tagged them, as there were observers. It soon became quite common for newspapers in Sweden and in the U.S. to refer authoritatively to these objects as guided missiles with the inference that they were test flights from Russia or Russian-dominated areas. The "ghost rockets" were usually seen in hours of darkness, almost always traveling at extremely high speed; shaped like a tall or projectile; bright or Japanese blue, white, red, green, or yellow; sometimes had an associated noise; and were always seen at too great a distance to observe details. By the end of the summer, 1946, an occasional report came out of Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, France, Greece, Portugal, and Turkey. Throughout 1947 and 1948, "ghost rocket" reports totalled less than a dozen. Some have been received within the past 6 months. These reports reached the public through the press and the radio, they reached the government of the U.S. through military attaché reports. Attachés had obtained virtually all of their information from European press and radio items.

The Swedish Defense Staff conducted a comprehensive study of the early incidents. Several thousand reports were thoroughly investigated and plotted, with resultant conclusions that all evidence obtained of sightings were explicable in terms of astronomical phenomena. Since that time, although the Swedes themselves show little concern, they attempt to play up their incidents to the United States, obviously to emphasize their request for radar (see Appendix "A").

## 11. Early American Sports

The first American report of unidentified objects to receive wide publicity and to cause some national concern was that of Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho. Arnold described the objects as "maucer-like disos" and this is evidently the origination of the muob-ured term "flying saucers" and "flying disos". This incident is Bunber 17 in the project files. The date of sighting is given as 21 June 1947. Arnold's story appeared in many newspapers throughout the country. He even wrote a series of articles about this sighting for "Pete" magazine. This periodical styles itself a "comic reporter" and delves into the supernatural and fantastic.

Within the month following Arnold's report, the number of incidents reached a peak that remained unsurpassed for any like period covered by this report. (This peak was, however, surpassed in May 1949, following an Air Force press release and a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post concerning flying objects. A few individuals later reported having seen objects prior to the Arnold-inident.