Norway, Sweden, Finland Fear Phantom Maneuvers Off Strategic Points
OSLO, April 19?(AP)?Reports of "phantom fliers" in the far north of Norway, Sweden and Finland and secret naval manoeuvers off their strategic coasts brought a wave of "war scare" rumors to Scandinavia today.
The stories of mysterious airplanes flying over little inhabitated regions of the north and of giant foreign warships offshore pointed the opinion of military experts that the area was in direct danger of becoming a theater of war in the event of a conflict between Russia and Germany.
Military authorities at Bergen, Norway, announced yesterday their investigations have established their investigations have established that a fleet of four warships, one aircraft carrier, one submarine and one airplane of unidentified nationality maneuvered close to the Norwegian coast April 5th.
Advocate Better Defense
In Oslo the newspaper Afterpost openly stated Germany bad sent warships to look for possible bases for air and naval operations in the Arctic Ocean, while such a conservative journal as the Stockholm Svenska Dagbladet emphasized the possibility of Sweden's becoming a battleground in advocating better defense measures.
The Swedish general staff declared that in the past year it had established that forty-six flights of unknown airplanes had been made over northern Scandinavia, presumably for military scouting purposes.
Military experts consider the interests of Russia and Germany in the arctic fairly obvious. In the event of war, these experts declare Germany would strike first to bottle up the Russian fleet in the Battle by taking control of the narrow waterways around Denmark. At the same time the German sea and air fleets would try to establish arctic bases.
Germany, it was pointed out, also has an important interest in protecting her yearly imports of high temper steel used in German armaments.
Russia, in turn, would be paramountly interested in keeping her communications open from Murmansk and Alexandrovsk, almost within the arctic circle and in blocking the Swedish mines from Germany.