Scandinavia Wayward Missile

A Soviet cruise takes a cruise

"I heard a loud bang, then a deafening roar, and for a few seconds I could see a reddish-yellow flame streaking across the sky," recalled Bear Hunter Herman Sotkajarvi, a resident of the northernmost reaches of Norway, well above the Arctic Circle. "The house quivered, windows rattled, and my three dogs started barking." What Sotkajarvi apparently saw in the early afternoon of Dec. 28 was a runaway cruise missile fired from either a submarine or a ship during Soviet naval maneuvers in the Barents Sea, northeast of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Norwegian radar tracked the supersonic object as it crossed the Pasvik...

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