CRASH AT CORONA - Stanton Friedman-pages

Page 18 of 242

Page 18 of 242
CRASH AT CORONA - Stanton Friedman-pages

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So many reports of foo-fighter sightings were filed with Army Air Forces Intelligence that higher headquarters had little choice but to take them seriously. The Eighth Air Force, based in England and commanded by famed test and racing pilot Jimmy Doolittle, had a study made of the foo fighters. While no copy has yet come to light, it allegedly concluded that some of them might be experimental German or Japanese weapons that had not reached operational status, while others must be misin- terpretations of ordinary sights. (After the war, it was reported that captured enemy documents showed that the Germans and Japanese had been aware of the foo fighters but had concluded the mysterious things were probably Allied weapons!) Based on what little is known about the episode, about all that can be said with any confidence is that the foo fighters were a wartime idiosyncrasy. Once reports of their sighting ceased to be made, it was easy for everyone to forget about them. The war was over and there were more important mat- ters occupying people's minds. Then, in the summer of 1946, odd sky sights resumed, this time over the Scandinavian countries. They were soon nicknamed "Swedish ghost rockets" since many of them were said to be long and thin, like rockets. Scores of reports were published in newspapers throughout the region, and soon the Swedish Defense Staff established a secret commission to gather and study the reports. Most people in and out of govern- ment suspected they were Soviet devices built with the help of captured Nazi scientists and launched from Peenemunde, the legendary German test base located less than a hundred miles across the Baltic from Sweden. Detailed information was hard to find, and when the Swed- ish government clamped down on all publicity (one day after former USAAF general Jimmy Doolittle and former Eisenhower aide Gen. David Sarnoff had met with high Swed- ish officials), it became almost impossible to find out what was happening. Only in the late 1980s, when secrecy was finally relaxed, did it become apparent that the ghost rockets could not possibly have been Soviet missiles and therefore have to be considered proto-UFOs. A HISTORY OF MODERN SIGHTINGS