The Magenta Incident: Mussolini's Fascist UFO Files

Italy, 1933. Mussolini had ruled for over a decade. The skies over Lombardy belonged to the Regia Aeronautica, and the press answered to the regime. If something strange had fallen from the sky, the world would not have heard of it. That, at least, is the premise of the case Italian ufologists call the fascist UFO files.

In the most cited version, it happened on the morning of 13 June 1933. Other accounts give 11 April or 11 June. The object is said to have ploughed through the skies of Lombardy and come down near Magenta, west of Milan, inside what is now the Parco Lombardo del Ticino. Some versions move the site to Vergiate, in the province of Varese.

The craft, as described, was a grey metallic object about 15 m in diameter, cigar-shaped, with a bell-shaped hemispherical structure about 10 m high. The Centro Ufologico Nazionale described a cylindrical craft, narrowing just above the bottom, with portholes on the side giving out white and red lights. The wreck was reportedly taken to the SIAI-Marchetti hangars at Vergiate. It stayed there for 12 years.

The case rests on papers mailed by an anonymous sender known as "Mister X", from 1996 and again in 1999. The sender claimed they came from a relative, "Faustino", who served on a secret commission. Roberto Pinotti, president of the Centro Ufologico Nazionale, presented them at San Marino in 2000. Alfredo Lissoni followed with a series in UFO Notiziario.

Among them was a Stefani telegram from Milan. "By personal order of the Duce… absolute silence is required about an alleged landing…" It threatened referral to the "Tribunal for State Security". Another threatened journalists with arrest and "maximum penalties". The papers describe the Gabinetto RS/33, headed by Guglielmo Marconi, founded with Italo Balbo and Galeazzo Ciano and run under the OVRA, Mussolini's secret police.

In 2017 Pinotti spoke of two dead pilots. "We know they were 1.80 m tall, with light hair and light eyes." Their bodies were reportedly kept in formalin and studied for a long time. Some accounts say Mussolini read their appearance as a hint of German origins. Then a darker note. "Strangely, the three people who knew about shipping those crates to the USA are dead." Two died at sea. One by suicide.

In 2023 David Grusch brought Magenta back. "In 1933, a bell-like craft, around ten meters in size, was recovered in Magenta, northern Italy." On Joe Rogan's show the account shifted. A lenticular disc whose rim broke off, leaving a bell or acorn shape. No bodies on board. In the Grusch version, OSS agents took it in 1944.

Sceptics found no protocol numbers, stamps or archive identifiers on the documents, and the originals are not available for independent examination. A forensic report by Garavaglia called the tested sample "original and, therefore, authentic", but that sample was a 1936 document, not the 1933 telegrams. No trace of the commission has turned up in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato. In June 2024 the Vatican Apostolic Archive stated that no document there concerns extraterrestrial life.

CISU called the story "completely false". Giuseppe Stilo spoke of "embarrassing stories". Real Milan Prefecture files concern suspicious foreign aeroplanes and may have been misread. Others point to a 1937 report of a "brilliant flash" between Magenta and Novara, a possible ball lightning. Douglas Dean Johnson and Metabunk traced how details accumulated over time. The bell shape echoes Die Glocke. The Nordic pilots arrived through Billy Brophy.

Magenta is now pitched as Italy's own Roswell, with RS/33 as "the fascist MJ-12". Books, a Mediaset television segment and podcasts have kept it alive. No photograph. No film. No trace. Only paper.