Draken

By Clas Svahn 31 Jan. 2006

The encounter happened in the summer of 1977 at around 12 o'clock. The experienced Swedish Air Force pilot flew a J35F "Draken" fighter plane on a routine training mission between the islands of Öland and Gotland in the Baltic Sea SE of Sweden when he was diverted from the exercise by the ground control radar. The ground control had picked up a target further East of Sweden, and the pilot was at the time of the call around 100 kilometers from the target. Identifying unknown targets were routine during these days, Swedish military went up several times every week identifying Russian a/c and American spy planes flying in a strip outside Gotland.

This time the target behaved slightly different from ordinary Russian and American a/c. The radar control on ground, situated 100 kilometers from the object, reported it to be stationary, something that was later confirmed by the pilot as he approached the object.

In a taped telephone interview made on June 19th 1999 the pilot told me that he approached the target at a speed of Mach 0,9 and soon got the object on his own radar screen. He was flying at 1.000 meters altitude straight towards it and had the object 500 meters above his horizontal line.

"When I was 10 kilometers from the object it suddenly started to move straight up”, he told me. "I never saw it with my naked eye but could follow it on my radar and decided to light up (the after burner) and started to follow the target. I had a perfect lock on it all the time.

His "Draken”, which was the latest model J35F, climbed at an angle of 70 degrees trying to keep up with the target. According to the pilot he never came closer than 6-8 kilometers. "When I was at 10.000 meters the object flew out of the radar range, straight out in space. It was at an altitude of 40 to 50 kilometers at that time. I aborted the chase but stayed in the area for 2-3 minutes trying to locate the object but was unable to find anything.”

"One strange thing was that while my aircraft was leaving vapour trails behind me the object had left none”, he says. "I really looked for them but there were none.”

The weather was fine with 3/8 cumulus.

His own comments was: "I do not know of any single aircraft that would have been able to - from zero - outfly a "Draken" at that time."

He never reported the incident after landing at the airbase F12 in Kalmar at the time but reported to ground control that the object was gone as he came to the scene.

"The ground control radar did not look at vertical movements after they had led me to the target, so when the object started moving upwards it just seamed to have vanished of the screen for them”, the pilot said.

The incident came to UFO-Sweden's attention when he sent an e-mail to us a couple of years ago. On June 19th 1999 I made a telephone interview with him. Sadly he died in a helicopter accident a year after.

There are of course several problems with this observation. I will just list a few.

Yesterday I had a long telephone conversation with the former commander of the last Air Force base that flew Draken here in Sweden. I discussed the observation with him first without telling him the name of the pilot. He pointed out some problems that we may never get an answer to since the pilot is now dead.

1. Approaching the target at Mach 0,9 seeing (on the scope) the object starting to move upwards at the time when the jet is 10 kilometers from the targets position gives the pilot 30 seconds to react. A fighter flying at that speed can not be stopped and even if he immediately decided to climb after the object he most probably would have passed its position before doing so.
2. All said in #1 probably means that the radar lock would have been lost and he must try and find the target once again before starting the chase.
3. This is very (very) difficult.
4. The on-board radar was an PS-011 with a range (in perfect conditions) at 40 kilometers, maximum. More probably, if you would like to make a safe locking, the range was slightly over 20 kilometers.
5. Climbing at 70 degrees is something that very few pilots would have tried.

All this said I told him the name of the pilot and that made a great difference to the former commander. He knew him well and had only good things to say about him. He also said that "if someone would have made such a climb that would have been him". I got the imression that he reevaluated the incident after hearing who it was doing the chase.

I have not yet had time to listen to my taped interview with the former commander. There may be other relevant facts that effect the case. He also urged me to talk with other former J35F pilots. He has promised to read my transcripts from my interview with the pilot, his emailed report and other material I have and give me his view again.

I will try and go further on with this in to steps:

1. I will try and trace the radar leader on the ground. 2. I will contact a former radar expert with the Swedish military intelligence who I have known for fifteen years. He knows of every single intrusion for decades back. His insights may give me names and new clues.

Since my last mail I have spoken to one of the flight leaders at the radar station (called "Myran", The Ant, and situated in a mountain in the south of Sweden but defunct since August 2000). He could not recall the incident which is not to be surprised of since, as he said, "we scrambled fighters on every single echo we could not identify at that time, and there were many".

He also said that many of the echoes turned out to be anything from birds to radar angels and that summertime was the time of year with most atmospheric anomalies. The altitude was measured from a special radar unit connected to the mountain.

I can not say that I were much more enlighted after this conversation.

I also spoke to one other person that worked at "Myran" beteween 1977 and 2000. He told me that no records (i.e. war diaries) were archived - all were burnt after the shut down of the station. That makes it even harder to find the exact date. The flight leader also told me that they did not make any notes when an aircraft was scrambled if a positive identification was not made.

One small anecdote came from the flight leader: In the 1970's many Soviet "research vessels" were sailing the Swedish borders. All full of listening devices and other stuff trying to intercept radio traffic. At many occasions Swedish fighter planes were sent to identify them and several times had passed the ships fifty meters away or closer breaking the sound barrier and thus destroying most of the Soviet equipment - probably also some ear drums. In spite of this no Soviet complaint were ever made.