September 1946 — four anchor cases as the wave spread internationally: Florence's course-changing rocket, Ancona's sea-splash "fireworks phantom," an Oak Lawn, Illinois disc formation, and a French mountain disc encounter. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
1946: September UFO & Entity Sightings Archive
September 1946 shows the ghost rocket wave spreading well beyond Scandinavia — fishermen off Ancona, Italy watching a “fireworks phantom” plunge into the sea; a British Army unit in Germany tracking missiles overhead; whistling rockets over Morocco, Finland, and eastern France. The month’s most consequential single case is Florence, Italy on September 22: a rocket-like object that visibly changed direction in flight, ruling out a meteor for the witnesses who saw it, in an incident that — according to this archive’s secondary source — prompted the Italian government to open a formal investigation. If accurate, that would place Italy alongside Sweden, Norway, and Britain among the nations formally investigating unidentified aerial phenomena in 1946, a full year before Kenneth Arnold’s sighting made the subject a household name in America.
Date: Fall, 1946
Location: O’Neill, Nebraska
Time: Around 21:00
Summary: A hovering object was observed by multiple independent female witnesses in a yard (McCage). A noise was heard.
Source: CUFOS
Date: September, 1946
Location: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
Time: Unknown
Summary: A round, shiny, disc-shaped object was sighted, with appearance and behavior most likely having a conventional explanation, observed by one experienced male witness. Referred to as the “Curtiss-Wright pilot incident.”
Source: Dominique Weinstein, Aircraft UFO Encounters, Project ACUFOE, Paris, 1999
Date: September, 1946
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Time: Daytime
Summary: An object was observed and photographed. One luminous, cigar-shaped object was observed in the city (Reuterswärd).
Source: J. Bernard Delair, UFO Register, Volume 6 (1975), Data Research, Oxford
Date: September, 1946
Location: Saint-Léger-de-Fougeret, France
Time: 19:10
Summary: An odd whistle was heard as a red-orange, lens-shaped disc descended and spun, absolutely silent. Observed briefly by two military witnesses on a mountain. Referred to as the “POWs incident.”
Source: Lumières dans la Nuit
Date: September 1, 1946
Location: Along the coast of Ancona, Italy
Time: Unknown
Summary: Fishermen reported seeing a “fireworks phantom” — a large, mysterious projectile that fell into the sea, throwing up a considerable cloud of vapor. Period newspapers hypothesized it had been a V-type German rocket, launched from a base in Yugoslav territory.
Source: Carl Feindt, CISU Case 143, citing “Svenska Dagbladet” (Stockholm), September 4, 1946, and “Giornale d’Italia,” September 3, 1946 Source Status: VERIFIED — traceable to two named contemporaneous newspapers, one Swedish and one Italian, independently covering the same event.
Date: September 11, 1946
Location: Engle, New Mexico
Time: 14:00
Summary: One black, cigar-shaped object, about 5 feet across (elsewhere described as 3 feet long) with fins, was observed in a residential area, moving trees as it passed.
Source: Larry Hatch
Date: September 12, 1946
Location: Oak Lawn, Illinois
Time: Unknown
Summary: Six silver discs were observed for over three minutes in a V-formation — five discs with one trailing behind, appearing the size of small peas held at arm’s length, high and fast, heading northeast past Chicago toward Indiana.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center
Date: September 12, 1946
Location: Longwy, Lorraine, France
Time: 23:00
Summary: Two balls of light connected by a bar flew north to south at aircraft speed, silent, at an estimated altitude of 6 kilometers. Referred to as the “newsman incident.”
Source: Lumières dans la Nuit
Date: September 17, 1946
Location: Viana do Castelo, Portugal
Time: 21:00
Summary: Nocturnal lights were reported.
Source: Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos
Date: September 22, 1946
Location: Florence, Italy
Time: 03:15
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: A rocket-like object was seen flying over Florence and was distinctly observed changing direction in the air, visible for approximately 90 seconds. The object made an abrupt turn in the sky and then sped south toward Rome; this maneuver convinced observers it was not a meteor. As a result of this and related sightings, the Italian government reportedly ordered a formal investigation. [Full Report]
Source: Loren E. Gross, UFOs: A History — 1946, p. 69 Source Status: PLAUSIBLE — sourced to a single secondary compilation by a respected UFO historian; this archive was unable to independently locate the underlying Italian press coverage or any surviving record of the referenced government investigation.
Date: September 23, 1946
Location: Fez, Morocco
Time: Unknown
Summary: A fireball/rocket moved rapidly to the west, then turned rapidly to the north, faster than a plane, at low altitude.
Source: Lumières dans la Nuit
Date: September 25, 1946
Location: Jyväskylä, Finland
Time: Unknown
Summary: A slow-moving cigar-shaped object flew southeast, then rapidly to the northwest, before exploding, with fragments scattering in all directions.
Source: Loren E. Gross, Mystery of the Ghost Rockets, self-published, Fremont, 1974
Date: September 26, 1946
Location: Lingen, Niedersachsen, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: Missiles passed overhead moving rapidly to the west, with an appearance and behavior most likely having a conventional explanation, observed by military witnesses. Referred to as the “British Army incident.”
Source: Loren E. Gross, Mystery of the Ghost Rockets, self-published, Fremont, 1974
Date: September 1946
Location: Undocumented
Time: Unknown
Summary: Undocumented
Source: Undocumented
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
September 1946 — The Wave Goes International
By September, unidentified aerial phenomena were no longer a story confined to Sweden and Norway. This month’s archive spans Italy, France, Portugal, Morocco, Finland, Germany, and the United States, with the Ancona, Italy fishing-boat sighting standing out for its unusually strong sourcing: two independent, named, contemporaneous newspapers, one Swedish and one Italian, covering the same event from different national vantage points. The Florence case on September 22 carries the month’s most dramatic claim — that the Italian government formally investigated after a rocket-like object’s course change convinced witnesses it wasn’t a meteor — but that claim currently rests on a single secondary historical compilation, and this revision is explicit that no independent record of any such Italian investigation has been located.
“The thing made an abrupt turn in the sky over Florence and then sped south toward Rome. This maneuver convinced observers the object was not a meteor.”
Loren E. Gross, UFOs: A History — 1946, describing the September 22 Florence sighting.
