Project Sign personnel were just getting settled down to work after
the New Year's holiday when the "ghost rockets" came back to the
Scandinavian countries of Europe. Air attaches in Sweden, Denmark,
and Norway fired wires to ATIC telling about the reports. Wires went
back asking for more information.

The "ghost rockets," so tagged by the newspapers, had first been
seen in the summer of 1946, a year before the first UFO sighting in
the U.S. There were many different descriptions for the reported
objects. They were usually seen in the hours of darkness and almost
always traveling at extremely high speeds. They were shaped like a
ball or projectile, were a bright green, white, red, or yellow and
sometimes made sounds. Like their American cousins, they were always
so far away that no details could be seen. For no good reason, other
than speculation and circulation, the newspapers had soon begun to
refer authoritatively to these "ghost rockets" as guided missiles,
and implied that they were from Russia. Peenemunde, the great German
missile development center and birthplace of the V-l and V-2 guided
missiles, came in for its share of suspicion since it was held by the
Russians. By the end of the summer of 1946 the reports were
widespread, coming from Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French
Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey. In 1947, after no definite conclusions
as to identity of the "rockets" had been established, the reports
died out. Now in early January 1948 they broke out again. But Project
Sign personnel were too busy to worry about European UFO reports,
they were busy at home. A National Guard pilot had just been killed
chasing a UFO.

On January 7 all of the late papers in the U.S. carried headlines
similar to those in the Louisville _Courier_: "F-51 and Capt. Mantell