by John A. Keel
Mystery “Cargo Planes”
There are several other types of mystery airplanes operating in North America. Giant craft resembling standard AF “Flying Boxcars” are frequently reported in UFO flap areas, often performing hazardous hedge-hopping maneuvers. One group of witnesses on the outskirts of Gallipolis, Ohio, told me that they had been seeing mysterious flying lights in their hills and fields for thirty years. They also remarked, without any prompting on my part, that “big cargo planes” came over the hills a couple of times each month, and “sometimes they’re so low we think they’re going to crash.” These “cargo planes” are multi-engined and a dull gray color. The area does not lie on the direct route between the distant Ohio AF bases and the Charleston, West Virginia, airport. Furthermore, hedge hopping over the treacherous hills and mountains of Ohio-West Virginia would be foolhardy.
In his report to the Armed Services Committee Hearing on Unidentified Flying Objects (April 5, 1966), an engineer named Raymond Fowler outlined his investigation into the sightings around Exeter, New Hampshire, and stated: “On my first two visits to the Carl Dining field [where UFOs had been sighted previously] on the morning of September 11, 1965, I saw a low-flying C-119 Flying Boxcar pass over the area on both occasions.”
During my own extended field investigations people in many scattered areas far removed from AF bases described flying boxcars to me. They were nearly all seen at very low levels, sometimes performing intricate and hazardous maneuvers. For a long time I suspected that the Air Force was sending special instrument-laden planes into flap areas to take photographs and perform various tests. But eventually the circumstantial evidence mounted, and I had to discard this plausible theory for an implausible one, i.e., that aircraft resembling C-119s were being deployed in flap sectors, but they weren’t related to the Air Force.
Smaller planes of the single-engine type are also frequently observed at low altitudes, sometimes flying back and forth in search patterns over places where UFOs have been seen to alight. As usual, these little planes are gray and unmarked. They have been reported in Texas, Florida, and West Virginia by competent witnesses, some of whom have studied them with binoculars. Like their larger counterparts, they fly at night with their cabins fully illuminated, and they have often been seen hedge hopping in rainstorms and blizzards at night when no private pilot in his right mind would even consider taking off. This inclement-weather flying is a historical pattern.
In March 1968, experienced UFO watchers in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, told me of seeing a formation of low-flying UFO-type lights over Highway 62 at night in a raging snowstorm. Directly behind the lights there was a small single-engined plane, keeping close on their heels despite the high winds and billowing snow.
The year before, early in April 1967, I had pursued a peculiar flying light from the TNT area, an abandoned World War II ammunition dump, north of Point Pleasant to the steep hills behind Henderson, West Virginia. I joined a cluster of people on a hilltop just as a twin-engined plane circled and flew directly at us at treetop level. As it drew closer, it cut its engines and glided over our heads—an idiotic maneuver when flying the treacherous updrafts surrounding the steep hills and valleys. The cabin was brilliantly illuminated, and the pilot was visible. Because it was about 9 P.M. and pitch-dark, this seemed doubly stupid. Here we had a pilot who was flying at treetop level over very dangerous terrain, yet he deliberately cut his engines and blinded himself by turning on his cabin lights!
I sprang into a car and dashed across the Ohio River to the little airfield at Gallipolis, Ohio, to see if the mad flier had landed there. The field was deserted, and none of the parked planes had a warm engine. In any case, few sensible private pilots care to indulge in low-level night flying, and few would be willing to risk their licenses by performing stupid and dangerous stunts over populated areas.
The Mystery Planes of 1934
A Swedish researcher, Mr. Ake Franzen, has recently been going through the Stockholm newspapers of the 1930s, piecing together the many fragments of the forgotten Scandinavian flap of 1932-38. He has uncovered more than ninety detailed reports thus far and has tediously translated them into English for us. They form a startling picture.
Beginning in 1932, large unmarked airplanes began to appear over northern Sweden, Norway, and Finland. They were always described as gray. They frequently appeared during raging blizzards and circled towns, railroads, forts, and ships at sea. Very often these planes would cut their engines while they circled. Many of the descriptions were of huge, multi-engine machines. One group of five witnesses declared they had seen a giant plane with eight propellers. In several accounts, groups of three planes were sighted at one time.
There were almost no private planes operating in Scandinavia at that time. The giant China Clipper was still under development in the United States, and the clumsy Ford trimotor had cornered the market and was being used by the few commercial airlines then operating. In 1926, Admiral Byrd and Floyd Bennett had flown a Fokker trimotor from Spitsbergen, Norway, to the North Pole. Their flight had received considerable publicity in Scandinavia at the time, and photos of their plane had been widely published. Six years later, when the mystery planes began to appear, many of the witnesses compared the craft to Byrd’s Fokker.
The Swedish government took these reports most seriously. In 1934, no less than twenty-four Swedish Air Force biplanes were sent to the isolated, thinly populated sections where the “ghost fliers” were being reported. A thorough search by land, sea, and air was held. Conditions were so hazardous that two of the Swedish planes crashed during the search.
I will try to summarize some of the main events of this flap. Our sources are the following newspapers: Dagens Nyheter, StockholmsTidningen, Vasterbottenskuriren, Norrbottens A Ilehanda, Hudiksvalls Tidningen, and the New York Times.
A dispatch published on January 22, 1934, described some early sightings:
Piteã. The permanent curate in Lângtrask has reported that he has been seeing mysterious airplanes in the area for the past two years. Last summer the ghost flier passed over the community twelve times, following the same route each time, southwest to northeast. On four different occasions the plane appeared at very low altitude, but no marks or insignia were visible.
Once the plane’s altitude was only a few meters above the parsonage. For a few seconds two persons were visible in the cabin. The machine was grayish in color and single-winged.
The curate had not reported this earlier because he thought the flier had been reported by the coastal population.
Published reports are scanty until December 1933, but, as with the 1909 New England reports, we are led to believe that there had been many sightings before that. Our first item briefly describes a sighting on Christmas Eve: “December 24, 1933. Kalix—A mysterious airplane appeared from the direction of the Bottensea about 6 P.M. Christmas Eve, passed over Kalix, and continued westward. Beams of light came from the machine, searching the area.”
On December 27, 1933, the New York Times devoted almost a full column to the audible appearance of a “mystery airplane” directly over New York City during a fierce snowstorm. At 9:30 A.M. on December 26, people throughout Manhattan heard the sound of an airplane apparently circling overhead in the blinding storm. An NBC newscast mentioned it, and reports were soon telephoned in from all points of the island. The Times stated:
A check of the various calls indicated the flier had gone as far as 72nd street, circled above Central Park, and then proceeded north to the vicinity of 231st Street and Sedwick [sic] Avenue, the Bronx. For a time no further reports came in, but about 2:25 P. M. the sound of the motor was reported over Riverside Drive and 155th Street …All fields in the Metropolitan district reported there had been no flying during the day, and no stray plane had dropped down from the snowy skies.
The planes of 1933 were simply not capable of operating under such severe weather conditions, nor is it likely that any known plane could have remained aloft
for five or six hours in a blizzard. But this one seems to have done so. It was never identified.
There was a similar incident over London, England, in February 1934 (New York Times, February 4, 1934).
In Scandinavia, the ghost flier stepped up his activities immediately after Christmas (just as the 1909 flap had occurred during Christmas week). It was seen flying back and forth over the Norwegian border, with reports coming in from Tarnaby, Sweden, and Langmo Vefsn, Norway. On December 28, 1933, the Swedish Flying Corps No. 4 was ordered to Tarnaby to begin an investigation.
A minor mystery developed when Lieutenant Georg Engelhard Wanberg of the artillery regiment in Gotland, Norway, set out on skis from Tannas for a trek to Storlien, which would take him through the heart of ghost-flier country. He was never heard from again. Search parties, including planes from the Norwegian Air Force, looked for him in vain. On January 4, 1934, a group of three men started out to find him. They failed to return on schedule, and new rescue parties were organized to look for them. The trio had vanished.
Even the New York Times was licking its chops over the growing mystery. On January 10, 1934, the Times’ Stockholm correspondent reported:
The Swedish Air Force has already lost two airplanes, without loss of life, in efforts to locate the base of the strange plane. Concern is now felt for Lieutenant Wanberg who disappeared on foot on Christmas, and for a party of three skiers forming a rescue party. Military headquarters reported today that the search for the four along the Norwegian border had been fruitless.
The three missing men turned up suddenly at the New Styl Station on January 12. The newspapers did not explain their overlong period of absence. No published interviews with them have been located.
Lieutenant Wanberg’s tent was found on January 17, and his frozen body was discovered two or three miles from the campsite. Although fierce blizzards had been raging in the area, he had left his skis and all of his equipment in his tent and had gone into the mountains on foot to meet his death. There were no further published reports or explanations of this sequence of events.
What impelled an experienced skier and outdoorsman to abandon his equipment and head into the mountains on foot? We’ll never know.
While Lieutenant Wanberg was wandering around the mountains of northern Norway, the ghost flier was busying himself over three countries. Approximately one-third of all the published reports of January-February 1934 were of sightings made on Sundays. The Swedish officials openly referred to the ghost flier as “the Sunday flier.” Several landings were reported in scattered areas. These all took place on Wednesdays. Traces were found in the snow at some of these landing sites, suggesting that the mystery planes were equipped with skis.
There were many mass sightings involving the populations of whole villages and cities. The planes frequently flew over during snowstorms, sometimes circling low over villages and projecting powerful searchlights at the ground.
Let’s run down some of the many correlative factors in these incidents (compiled from the previously named newspapers):
1. Sunday, December 31, 1933. Mr. Olof Hedlund, “a reliable man with a good reputation,” saw “a large gray airplane, bigger than any Army plane” circle the Sorsele railway station three times at 3:45 A. M. “It was single-winged and enclosed, like a passenger plane, and was equipped with pontoons or some sort of skis… No marks or insignia were visible.” (It was a night of the full moon. Clear skies.) “The engine stopped during the turns over the village.”
2. Wednesday, January 10, 1934. At 6 P.M. people in Tarna saw a brilliant object at an altitude of 1,000 feet. Turned and headed toward Arjeplog. Fifteen minutes later people in Arjeplog heard airplane engines and left their homes to watch it pass. Then, at Rortrask, northeast Norsjo, the plane appeared, and witnesses “observed the engine stop three times as it passed directly over them… The machine was flying so low that the whole forest was bathed in its light.”
3. Wednesday, January 10, 1934. Trondheim, Norway. “Two landings of the ghost fliers were reported from northern Norway Wednesday evening. One machine landed near the island of Gjeslingen, outside Rorvik, and the other at a place called Kvaloj in the area Namndal. The report from Gjeslingen says that the people there saw a great beam of light and heard the sound of a strong engine. The machine landed and remained on the water quietly for an hour and a half. Its light went out after it landed.”
A Norwegian cruiser, the Eagle, was sent to the area, but the plane was gone when it arrived.
4. Sunday, January 21, 1934. “At 6 P.M. Sunday evening a crowd of people in Bengtsforsen, Jämtland, saw a very bright light in the sky. It was the size of a half-moon and traveled very fast. The roar of an engine was heard during the sighting. In Indal, west of Bengtsforsen, a light appeared after 6 P.M. A large crowd heard it and watched as the light circled the area for ten minutes before vanishing in the west.”
To the dismay of the Swedish military authorities, these planes chose to circle railways and forts (particularly the fort at Boden) and other strategic areas. Many of the sightings were of lights only, often described as blinding, and the old familiar “searchlight” was described in one account after another.
When a large gray airplane chose to circle low over the Norwegian freighter Tordenskiold outside of Tromso, Norway, on Tuesday, January 23, 1934, it projected a blinding beam of light onto the ship’s deck “lighting it up like daylight.” Captain Sigvard Olsen said the pilot was visible in the illuminated cabin and that he wore a hood and big eyeglasses or goggles.
The known part of the flap really began in earnest on Saturday, January 6, with many simultaneous sightings throughout Sweden. There were other peaks on Monday, January 8; Wednesday, January 10; Saturday, January 20; Sunday, January 21; Tuesday, January 23; Thursday, January 25; Tuesday, February 6; and Sunday, February 11. Published reports in February declined sharply as the military authorities moved into the flap areas and began in-depth investigations. These investigations were apparently most thorough, for the Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian defense departments took a very dim view of the whole situation. Their air territories were being invaded. From the sighting data it is apparent that many airplanes were involved, not just one or two. Most of these planes were larger than ordinary military planes, and they were able to operate in foul weather over treacherous mountainous territory. Such an operation called for well-equipped bases staffed with mechanics and linked to supply lines to provide the necessary fuel, spare parts, and logistical needs. Despite a thorough search by the armed forces of three countries, no such bases were ever discovered.
Aircraft carriers were still being developed, and the ones then available could handle only a few small biplanes. In 1942, the United States modified the carrier Hornet to transport General Doolittle’s twin-engined B-25s to the coast of Japan, where they launched their raid against Tokyo. But the B-25s could not land again on the carrier and had to fly on to China.
Hitler had just come into power in 1933, and the Luftwaffe did not yet exist. The Soviet Union did not have the planes or, more important, the motivation for such a senseless series of maneuvers over Scandinavia. Besides, the risks of an international incident were tremendous. If one of these planes had crashed and had been found to be the property of any foreign power, the overflights would certainly have been regarded as an act of war.
For some peculiar reason, the New York Times suggested that Japan was the culprit. But none of the Scandinavian newspapers even mentioned Japan in connection with the ghost fliers. Japan was having trouble with China at that time and would have had neither the capability nor the motivation for the operation.
For a time early in the flap, the Swedish newspapers toyed with theories about liquor smugglers flying around the North. But the official investigations completely ruled out the smuggler theory.
As with the waves of 1896-97 and 1909, the 1934 flap featured random low-level flights of recognizable objects and hundreds of flights of high-altitude lights carryi
ng out seemingly intelligent maneuvers. The mystery airplanes were the “hard” objects used to provide a frame of reference for the more numerous “soft” objects being deployed throughout the northern latitudes. Witnesses saw and reported definite airplanes carrying red, green, and white lights. When brilliant red, green, and white lights were seen at higher altitudes, it was assumed that they were attached to ghost fliers hidden by distance.
The ghost fliers were capable of astounding maneuvers. The airplanes could cut their engines at low altitudes, sometimes only 100 feet or so in the air, and circle not once but three or four times without power. Try this in a conventional airplane, and you’ll end up in a box.
On April 30, 1934, Major General Reutersward, commanding general of upper Norrland, Sweden, issued the following statement to the press:
Comparison of these reports shows that there can be no doubt about illegal air traffic over our secret military areas. There are many reports from reliable people which describe close observations of the enigmatic fliers. And in every case the same remark has been noted: No insignias or identifying marks were visible on the machine …It is impossible to explain away the whole thing as imagination. The question is: Who are they? And why have they been invading our air territory?
When all of the well-described ghost-flier sightings of 1934 are laid out on a map, their route becomes clear. They seemed to have followed a great arc week after week, circling southward into northern Norway, sweeping across Sweden, and heading north again over Finland. If they were following such an arc, the upper part of the circle had to lie somewhere in the Arctic Ocean, perhaps in the vicinity of the very thinly populated island of Spitsbergen. An alternate route could have brought them from northern Greenland. There have been many interesting sightings in Greenland. (In Chapter 1 we discussed a major event in which a formation of objects was picked up on radar as they swept westward over Greenland.)