Italy's Secret UFO Files: The Crash That Predated Roswell by 14 YearsOn June 13, 1933, according to a set of documents that surfaced in the late 1990s, a disc-shaped object crashed near Magenta, a small town about 25 kilometres west of Milan. Eyewitnesses described a strange, non-terrestrial craft adorned with bizarre symbols. Upon hearing the news, Mussolini, intrigued and potentially seeing the strategic advantage, is said to have ordered the Italian military to retrieve the object. If the story is true, it predates the 1947 Roswell incident by fourteen years, and would make Fascist Italy the first government in history to have officially investigated a crashed unidentified flying object.Il Duce, Marconi, and the Cabinet Nobody Was Supposed to Know AboutMussolini thought the unconventional flying vehicle was a French, British, or German secret weapon. Guglielmo Marconi, however, believed it was extraterrestrial in nature. Marconi, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the radio and a man known for his belief in the possibility of life on other planets, was allegedly appointed to lead the investigation. In response to the crash, Mussolini supposedly established a secretive group known as Cabinet RS/33, charged with the investigation of this extraordinary artifact. According to the accounts, this group comprised selected scientists and military experts who examined the recovered artifact and tried to unravel its mysteries. The name RS/33 stood for Ricerche Speciali, or Special Research, with 33 referring to the year of the incident. The cabinet had links with the Fascist secret police OVRA and with Agenzia Stefani, the regime's news agency.  A spaceship was allegedly stored in the hangars of the SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate near Milan, a building destroyed by a fire in 1940. Whether that fire was accidental has never been established. The DocumentsThe story remained entirely unknown until 1996, when an anonymous person began sending, to various central and local organisations, documents, both originals and photocopies, relating to a series of UFO sightings which had occurred over Italy during the 1930s and 1940s. One of the first packages was addressed to the Bologna daily newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, and contained a bulky dossier of 34 photocopied pages covering various UFO sightings in the regions of Italy between 1933 and 1940, some of them reports from the Royal Italian Air Force, with the recommendation "SAY NOTHING TO IL DUCE."  The documents include two telegrams sent in 1933. One demands "absolute silence" over the "alleged landing on national soil of unknown aircraft." The other threatens arrest and penalties for journalists reporting on news about the aircraft's origin and nature. Both telegrams were allegedly sent on the personal orders of Mussolini himself.  Forensic testing conducted at the time allegedly confirmed the documents' ink and paper dated to the 1930s. However, the full lab reports have never been publicly released, and no independent verification of the results has been provided.  More Sightings, More SecretsThe 1933 crash was not the only incident on record. Between 1933 and 1940, there were many different Italian UFO sightings. In one instance, an Italian fighter plane intercepted a UFO between Ravenna and Rome, and in August 1936 there was a multiple UFO sighting, a "flying cigar" and two Saturn-shaped UFOs, over Mestre and Venice.  In the archives of the Prefettura of Milan, researchers found two bundles of telegrams sent to the Prefettura during the years from 1933 to 1938, referring to mysterious overflights of aircraft in the skies of Italy. Of about 500 documents, 68 are particularly strange, and at least 9 are strictly about UFOs, with constant references to the existence of a network for the gathering of reports.  The American ConnectionThe story took on new dimensions in 2023, when former US intelligence official David Grusch, testifying before the United States Congress on unidentified aerial phenomena, referenced the Magenta incident directly. Grusch stated that his information came from "classified briefings" as well as from firsthand sources involved in a "broad US crash-retrieval program," referring to the 1933 crash near Magenta as the earliest known case of a non-human vehicle having been recovered by government officials.  Some sources also claim that Winston Churchill and Mussolini carried on secret correspondence about the 1933 crash, and that in April 1945, the 1st Armored Division captured the Marchetti Aviation Facility where the 1933 Magenta UFO was kept, and that it was subsequently brought to the United States. These claims remain entirely unverified. Myth, Forgery, or History?The mainstream scientific and historical community remains deeply sceptical. No independent archive has corroborated the existence of Cabinet RS/33, and all the primary documents trace back to a single anonymous source. The credibility of the case is hindered by a lack of official corroboration and limited public access to original documentation.  What is harder to dismiss is the broader context. Italy in the 1930s was one of the world's leading nations in aviation and aeronautics, operating under a regime with both the appetite for secrecy and the institutional machinery to enforce it. Whether the documents are genuine, elaborate fabrications, or something in between, the story of Mussolini's UFO has outlasted almost every other claim in the history of Italian ufology, and shows no signs of going away.

On June 13, 1933, according to a set of documents that surfaced in the late 1990s, a disc-shaped object crashed near Magenta, a small town about 25 kilometres west of Milan. Eyewitnesses described a strange, non-terrestrial craft adorned with bizarre symbols. Upon hearing the news, Mussolini, intrigued and potentially seeing the strategic advantage, is said to have ordered the Italian military to retrieve the object. If the story is true, it predates the 1947 Roswell incident by fourteen years, and would make Fascist Italy the first government in history to have officially investigated a crashed unidentified flying object. Mussolini thought the unconventional flying vehicle was a French, British, or German secret weapon. Guglielmo Marconi, however, believed it was extraterrestrial in nature. Marconi, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the radio and a man known for his belief in the possibility of life on other planets, was allegedly appointed to lead the investigation. In response to the crash, Mussolini supposedly established a secretive group known as Cabinet RS/33, charged with the investigation of this extraordinary artifact. According to the accounts, this group comprised selected scientists and military experts who examined the recovered artifact and tried to unravel its mysteries. The name RS/33 stood for Ricerche Speciali, or Special Research, with 33 referring to the year of the incident. The cabinet had links with the Fascist secret police OVRA and with Agenzia Stefani, the regime's news agency.  A spaceship was allegedly stored in the hangars of the SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate near Milan, a building destroyed by a fire in 1940. Whether that fire was accidental has never been established. The story remained entirely unknown until 1996, when an anonymous person began sending, to various central and local organisations, documents, both originals and photocopies, relating to a series of UFO sightings which had occurred over Italy during the 1930s and 1940s. One of the first packages was addressed to the Bologna daily newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, and contained a bulky dossier of 34 photocopied pages covering various UFO sightings in the regions of Italy between 1933 and 1940, some of them reports from the Royal Italian Air Force, with the recommendation "SAY NOTHING TO IL DUCE."  The documents include two telegrams sent in 1933. One demands "absolute silence" over the "alleged landing on national soil of unknown aircraft." The other threatens arrest and penalties for journalists reporting on news about the aircraft's origin and nature. Both telegrams were allegedly sent on the personal orders of Mussolini himself.  Forensic testing conducted at the time allegedly confirmed the documents' ink and paper dated to the 1930s. However, the full lab reports have never been publicly released, and no independent verification of the results has been provided.  The 1933 crash was not the only incident on record. Between 1933 and 1940, there were many different Italian UFO sightings. In one instance, an Italian fighter plane intercepted a UFO between Ravenna and Rome, and in August 1936 there was a multiple UFO sighting, a "flying cigar" and two Saturn-shaped UFOs, over Mestre and Venice.  In the archives of the Prefettura of Milan, researchers found two bundles of telegrams sent to the Prefettura during the years from 1933 to 1938, referring to mysterious overflights of aircraft in the skies of Italy. Of about 500 documents, 68 are particularly strange, and at least 9 are strictly about UFOs, with constant references to the existence of a network for the gathering of reports.  The story took on new dimensions in 2023, when former US intelligence official David Grusch, testifying before the United States Congress on unidentified aerial phenomena, referenced the Magenta incident directly. Grusch stated that his information came from "classified briefings" as well as from firsthand sources involved in a "broad US crash-retrieval program," referring to the 1933 crash near Magenta as the earliest known case of a non-human vehicle having been recovered by government officials.  Some sources also claim that Winston Churchill and Mussolini carried on secret correspondence about the 1933 crash, and that in April 1945, the 1st Armored Division captured the Marchetti Aviation Facility where the 1933 Magenta UFO was kept, and that it was subsequently brought to the United States. These claims remain entirely unverified. The mainstream scientific and historical community remains deeply sceptical. No independent archive has corroborated the existence of Cabinet RS/33, and all the primary documents trace back to a single anonymous source. The credibility of the case is hindered by a lack of official corroboration and limited public access to original documentation.  What is harder to dismiss is the broader context. Italy in the 1930s was one of the world's leading nations in aviation and aeronautics, operating under a regime with both the appetite for secrecy and the institutional machinery to enforce it. Whether the documents are genuine, elaborate fabrications, or something in between, the story of Mussolini's UFO has outlasted almost every other claim in the history of Italian ufology, and shows no signs of going away.