WORK: FILM 46
AUTHOR: CLAS

TELEPHONE INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR GÖSTA SKOG ON AUG 11 AND AUG 16, 1986. MR SKOG WAS BORN IN 1906 AND HIS ADDRESS IS OLOF NILSSONS VÄG 16, 9 TR, 433 30 PARTILLE, TELEPHONE NO 031-93 54 93 OR 11 07 17.
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Gösta Skog, together with three colleagues, was on his way from Gothenburg to Stockholm to visit the St Erik fair. They were travelling by car. As they reached Getå at the Bråviken they stopped for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Gösta recalls:

I was filming the trip to Stockholm with my Paillard-Bolex 16mm colour camera. The camera had four lenses and when we stopped at Getå I put on the medium optics to film some views over the Bråviken. It was a beautiful sight and I wound up the camera which was operated with a spring and started to film towards the horizon. It was around 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I had just put in a new film in the camera. Then one of my colleagues called out:

"What the hell is that in the air?" and he pointed to the sky.

When I looked above my head I saw a smouldering "cigar" coming straight from the south over the Bråviken. I turned up the camera, which was placed on a tripod, towards the rocket, I changed to the telephoto lens and I continued filming while I followed the object in the view finder.

It came out of a cloud, out into the blue, then it got into the next cloud, came out again and finally it disappeared in the distance heading north. I could not see any details on it, the surface was dark and from the rear end blazes of fire flared up, in the same way as you can see when the American rockets are launched. But we could not hear any sound.

Afterwards I was so excited that I was shaking. We were all really shook up. There we were, four completely sensible and sober people in the car, trying to understand what we had witnessed. I put back my camera into the box and we continued our trip to Stockholm. We talked about the event all the way up.

When we arrived in Stockholm I phoned the Air staff and told them that I had managed to take a film of a mysterious rocket. At first I hesitated to call them as I thought they would laugh at us but they took us really seriously and they asked us to come up immediately and bring the film. 

When we came up to the Air staff we were taken into separate interrogation rooms together with two officers each. Then we were cross examined for at least 30 minutes and everything we said was written down.

Before the interrogation we had no time to prepare ourselves. They started asking questions as soon as we came into the room.

After the interrogation we were permitted to leave but we were asked to come back two hours later by which time the officers would have  the film exposed. 

We went out and had a cup of coffee and when we came back we were taken to a cinema room, equipped with a white screen and the light was switched off. There were many officers in the room waiting to see the film.

Unfortunately the film was blank. I had changed to the telephoto lens, the definition was adjusted to infinity but I had forgot to change the diaphragm. It was positioned to completely open, 2,5, and the whole film sequence was overexposed.

In spite of this the Air staff decided to keep the film. The film also contained some private pictures which I never got back and I really did not care. I was so disappointed to have missed out on the Scoop of my Life!

When we left the Air staff we were told to keep quiet so that the press would not find out about what had happened. And so we did. I have only talked about it with people who are very close to me.

I have been grieving about this whole thing for 40 years now. To think I missed out on a scoop like that, a world sensation! I could have sold the film to any company. But there is not much time when something like this happens - the whole thing was over in less than 30 seconds.

I am thinking about this every time I see a rocket launch on TV. It will never get out of my mind. I can still see it very clearly in front of me.

The rocket probably came from Peenemünde. The height was about 3000-4000 metres. I estimated the height by comparing with a plane I saw at an air show a couple of years earlier.   
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Skog handled the advertising for Polyphoto in those days and he worked a lot together with Olle Bengtsson in Gothenburg. Olle's brother Tore helped me to find Skog.

The three other witnesses were a litographer, an offset photographer and a salesman. All four of them were on their way to the very first St Erik fair in Stockholm. As all hotels very fully booked Skog was to stay at Abersten's place.

Skog says that he was convinced that the phantom rockets were only science fiction until he saw one himself.

Two of his colleagues are dead and the third is still alive. Skog talked to him in August after our first conversation and the colleague would absolutely not come out and talk about the event. He was very determined as far as this point was concerned. Moreover, he made Skog so jittery that Skog now considers not to say any more. He is also reluctant to make the sketch I asked him to do in my letter, though he had promised to do it earlier. "You should not poke into old rubbish", he now says. After some persuasion, however, he promised to think about it once more.
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Rolf Abersten, Merchant, address Norrmälarstarand 64, Stockholm. He is called Director in the report. Telephone 1946: 538707 (home), 509413 (office). Moved to Uppsala on Aug 21, 1950. New address Norbyvägen 27.
Family:
Rolf (090721-95)
Stina (Maria), wife
Rolf Lennart Karl lives in Italy.
Jan (Gunnar), Photographer at Expert in Uppsala.
Bertil, Photograper in Uppsala.
Information received from Kungsholmens parish registration office,
tel 08/540760 (Eriksson)

Uppsala cathedral parish office 018/152020
The county administrative board, computer register 018/175401
Rolf Abersten expired in 1951. He served the army in 1942-1943.
His brother Gunnar is a lawyer in Sundsvall 060/155248 (home),
060/27093 (summer house) and 060/150750 (office).
Stina Abersten, born in 1903, is still alive and her address is Björklundavägen 14, 75246 Uppsala, 018/301001.
I spoke to Stina on the phone on June 23, 1986.   
Also see letters 12/8, 25/8, 24/6 1986

----------------------------------------------------------------------INTERVIEW WITH GÖSTA SKOG ON THE PHONE ON MAY 11, 1990

Gösta has now turned 84 since I talked to him in 1986. He sounded tired and ill and sometimes it was difficult to hear what he said.
Nowadays he spends most of his time in bed. At the beginning of our conversation Gösta showed a negative attitude and he repeated his question "why should we poke into old rubbish?" but finally he started talking. Everything he said was in accordance with the previous interviews, except that he now estimated the height as "low, 1000 metres".

He also told me that after our last conversation he called the Defence staff (or possibly the Air staff) to inquire whether they had any documents left regarding this incident. Once again he was asked to keep quiet. Hence the negative attitude at the beginning.

Further particulars however appeared during our conversation:

"We had left Gothenburg in the morning and had lunch in Linköping.
At Getå we stopped for a coffee. I took out my camera and started filming my colleagues as suddenly one of them called out:

"It was burning in the back and it had no wings. Light an ordinary cigar and make a sketch of it, that's what it looked like!"

I remember everything in detail. I could follow the cigar through the telephoto lens so I got a good picture of it.

Back in the car heading for Stockholm we talked a lot about what we should do. We could either call the press, the defence staff or we could shut up. We were not sure about what to do since we were convinced that we should be ridiculed. The newspapers wrote a lot about flying saucers but this was obviously a flying cigar. Who would believe that?

When we arrived at our hotel in Stockholm I plucked up my courage and called the Defence staff (or maybe it was the Air staff) and we were asked to come up at once.

We got a very kind reception there. We were treated like princes. Officers with lots of gold hanging down their shoulders and lots of other gentlemen received us. The whole staff clustered around us.

We were immediately separated from each other and we were interrogated separately. Then we were asked to shut up about all this. Our information was compiled and we were asked to point out the place on a map where we had seen the rocket. They took our film in order to arrange for a quick exposure and asked us to come back a couple of hours later.

They showed us into a projection room with a lot of people there. But when they started the film it was completely white. It had been over-
exposed. That was a terrible disappointment and not only to us. I never got the film back, not even the private pictures.

It is bugging me so damn much that I was careless that time with the adjustment of the camera. I lost a fortune there. The film could have been shown all over the world. It could have been a world sensation
if I had not got so excited and forgot to change the position of the diaphragm.