What Was the Sky Battle Over Stralsund in 1665?

Term: Stralsund: a Baltic port city in northern Germany, under Swedish control in 1665.

Term: Broadsheet: a single printed sheet sold to the public, often with news and pictures.

Term: Daylight disc: a UFO classification for a metallic or whitish disc seen in daylight.

What Was the Sky Battle Over Stralsund in 1665?

On April 8, 1665, six fishermen fishing for herring off Stralsund, Germany, reported flocks of birds that turned into warships and fought in the sky. At dusk, they said, a flat round shape hovered over a church. They fell sick with trembling and pain in the days after. Contemporaries read it as an omen. Modern researchers propose birds, atmospheric optics, and other explanations, and the account rests on printed reports written after the event.

What the reports say

According to early accounts, the fishermen were on the water at about 2 p.m. when they saw great flocks of birds in the sky that seemed to change into warships and engage in battle. The decks seemed to have ghostly figures on them. A leaflet published in Leipzig in 1665 described the event as a wonderful air war and ship dispute.

The flat round object

At dusk, the accounts say, a flat round shape appeared above the church of St. Nicholas. One report compares it to a plate or to a large man’s hat. Its color was that of the darkening moon. It hovered over the church until evening. The fishermen were so worried that they hid their faces and did not look further.

Illness afterward

The fishermen reported that they fell sick in the following days. The accounts describe trembling all over and pain in the head and limbs.

How people read it

Seventeenth-century writers treated such sights as warnings. The author Erasmus Francisci, who wrote about the event in 1680, said he did not believe the story at first and thought the fishermen might have been deceived by their imagination. Sweden and Prussia went to war in the years that followed, and readers linked the sky battle to conflict.

Modern explanations

Researchers Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough studied the account in their 2015 book Return to Magonia. They looked at flocks of starlings, sun dogs, clouds, smoke, tornadoes, and ice crystals. They found the report unusual, in part because of how long the sighting lasted and the physical effects on the witnesses. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin staged an exhibition on the event in 2023.

What is solid and what is not

The printed accounts exist, including a Berlin newspaper report from April 10, 1665, and they describe six fishermen. The event itself is known only through those accounts. The illness was reported by the same sources. In my book Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, I present Stralsund as one of the early reports of a strange object and physical effects on witnesses. It is a useful case because its details fit later reports, and I do not present it as proof. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

Berliner Ordinari und Postzeitungen, April 10, 1665, quoted by Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia (2015). Erasmus Francisci, Der wunder-reiche Ueberzug unserer Nider-Welt (1680). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, A UFO in 1665 (2023). Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia (1969).