The 1933 Magenta Incident and Mussolini's Gabinetto RS/33

Briefing

This file concerns a set of papers, not a confirmed event. From 1996 onwards an anonymous sender known only as “Mr X” posted handwritten notes and telegram reproductions to the aerospace journalist Roberto Pinotti, founder of the Centro Ufologico Nazionale [1]. The material claims that a metallic craft came down near Magenta, roughly twenty-five kilometres west of Milan, on the thirteenth of June 1933, and that Benito Mussolini responded by creating a secret scientific body, Gabinetto RS/33, under Guglielmo Marconi [1][2].

No copy of any RS/33 record has been located in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato or any other official archive [2]. As of August 2026 the case rests entirely on the unprovenanced papers: Italian archival researchers assess them as probable modern forgeries [2][3], the Vatican Apostolic Archive has denied holding related material [6], and the US Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office found no evidence for any recovered non-human craft programme [7].

Sequence of events

The claimed incident — 1933 to 1936

• [UNVERIFIED] The documents state that on the thirteenth of June 1933 a disc- or cylinder-shaped metallic object came down near Magenta, Lombardy [1][2].
• [UNVERIFIED] The same set describes the object as cylindrical or cigar-shaped, metallic, approximately fifteen metres across, with a hemispherical upper structure [2].
• [UNVERIFIED] A priority telegram reproduced in the file, addressed to Milan, reads: “By personal order of the Duce … absolute silence is required about an alleged landing on national soil of unknown aircraft STOP Released version dispatched today by Stefani Agency confirmed STOP The same version also applies to personnel and journalists STOP Anticipated max punishment for transgressors up to referral to the Tribunal for State Security STOP” [1].
• [UNVERIFIED] A second instrument, “Disposition 15”, allegedly forbade any disclosure concerning “unconventional aircraft” [2].
• [UNVERIFIED] The papers claim Gabinetto RS/33 — “RS” for Ricerche Speciali — was established on the twenty-fourth of August 1933, based at La Sapienza University in Rome, tasked with reverse-engineering the craft, and that the wreck was stored in the SIAI-Marchetti hangars at Vergiate [2].
• [UNVERIFIED] A further telegram in the set relates to an August 1936 sighting over Mestre and Venice: “ABSOLUTE SECRECY IS REQUIRED ABOUT UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN 23/47 CONFIDENTIAL REPORT — A LETTER WILL FOLLOW — ANTONELLI.” [1]

The documents surface — 1996 onwards

• [REPORTED] The first batch of handwritten notes reached Pinotti in 1996. Further mailings followed, including a letter naming claimed RS/33 members dated the tenth of September 1999. Copies also went to the Bologna newspaper Il Resto del Carlino and to a UFO magazine [1][3].
• [REPORTED] The thirty-page dossier sent to Il Resto del Carlino was lost; the magazine that received a copy initially judged the material fake [1][4].
• [REPORTED] Pinotti and the journalist and archivist Alfredo Lissoni presented the material publicly from 2000 onwards [3].

The modern revival — 2023 to 2024

• [DOCUMENTED] On the twenty-sixth of July 2023, David Grusch testified before the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs that he was “informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program”, based on interviews with roughly forty witnesses rather than direct access. The transcript contains no mention of Italy, 1933, Magenta, Mussolini, the Vatican or the Pope [5].
• [REPORTED] Grusch’s specific Italy claim — that the Magenta craft was recovered, and that Pope Pius XII “backchanneled” information about it to the United States — was made outside the hearing and reported in 2024 [6].
• [DOCUMENTED] On the eighteenth of June 2024, Marco Grilli, secretary to the prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, stated: “The prefect wants to affirm that there is no document in the archives that regards extraterrestrial life,” comparing such requests to asking for the personal letters of Pontius Pilate [6].
• [DOCUMENTED] AARO’s Historical Record Report Volume 1, of March 2024, concluded that alleged hidden UAP reverse-engineering programmes “do not exist; are misidentified authentic, highly sensitive national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation; or resolve to an unwarranted and disestablished program”, attributing the contrary belief largely to “circular reporting from a group of individuals” [7].

Documentary record

No primary document in this case exists in a public archive with a verifiable accession record. What exists is the following.

Reproductions published by Pinotti. Handwritten notes on Senate stationery, notes on Regia Aeronautica letterhead, Agenzia Stefani telegrams, sketches, and a claimed “Stenographic 2419” recovery order — available only as images in Pinotti’s own publications, with no originals lodged anywhere inspectable [1][2].

Archivio di Stato di Milano, Fondo Gabinetto Prefettura, buste 400–401. Real, catalogued telegrams covering 1933 to 1938. [REPORTED] Their subject headings are Segnalazioni aeroplani sospetti and Atterraggio di velivoli stranieri — reports of suspicious and foreign aircraft incursions, a routine airspace-control matter, not unidentified or recovered craft [3]. Lissoni cited roughly five hundred such telegrams as corroboration [1].

Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome. [REPORTED] Holds millions of Fascist-era files; no letter of appointment, expenditure record or progress report for RS/33 has been found in it or any other legitimate repository [2].

Genuine government records. The AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1 (March 2024) [7] and the House Oversight hearing transcript, Serial No. 118-53, of the twenty-sixth of July 2023 [5]. Neither supports the Magenta claim.

An Internet Archive item, “Files Fascisti Marconi E Gabinetto RS 33”, uploaded on the eighteenth of March 2024 by an account named for Lissoni; 14.8 KB, no stated licence — a partisan upload, not an archival deposit [8].

Authentication claims and counter-claims

[REPORTED] Antonio Garavaglia, a consultant who tested paper and ink for the CUN between January and March 2000, concluded that the handwritten items were “absolutely genuine” Fascist-era documents [1]. [REPORTED] Critics counter that no analytical method can date such documents conclusively, that the methodology was not disclosed, and that a skilled forger with period knowledge could source authentic 1930s paper [3][4].

[REPORTED] Andrea Bedetti, a historian of the Fascist period, found the wording, stationery and aeronautical terminology consistent with genuine Fascist-era documents, while acknowledging that a capable forger would need deep period knowledge [1]. [REPORTED] A graphologist, Giuseppe Cosco, engaged to decipher the handwriting, left numerous passages unread [4]. Researchers at CICAP and CISU — Italy’s scientific-scepticism and UFO-studies bodies — assess the documents as modern fabrications [2][3].

Open questions

1. Who “Mr X” was — self-described as a relative of an RS/33 member, never identified — and whether any such person existed. No provenance chain has ever been published [1][3].
2. Where the claimed originals are now held, and why they have never been made available for independent forensic re-examination [3].
3. Why documents from a regime obsessive about paperwork carry no protocol numbers, official stamps or registration marks [2].
4. Whether the object described came down at Magenta or at Vergiate — sources citing the same file set give both [2][3].
5. What Pius XII did or did not know: the Vatican’s denial addresses the archive’s holdings, not the underlying historical question [6].

Claims this archive could not locate at all

• The date. Secondary accounts variously give the thirteenth of June 1933 and the eleventh of April 1933 for the same alleged event. We found no primary document establishing either.
• RS/33’s membership roster. The lists naming Balbo, Ciano, Cecchini, Bottazzi, Crocco, Vallauri and others appear only in the anonymous “Mr X” material and its republication. No appointment, payroll, minute or correspondence record exists for any named member in that capacity.
• “Stenographic 2419” and “Disposition 15”. Cited repeatedly by title; no catalogued archival reference, protocol number or holding institution is ever given.
• Marconi’s leadership of RS/33. Universally repeated, sourced to nothing but the disputed documents.
• A claimed 1938 Hitler–Mussolini technology agreement, and a speech of the twenty-third of March 1941 in which Mussolini is said to have referenced “Martian invaders” on “flying fortresses” — asserted in the case literature; we located no text of either.

Later accretions

[THEORY] Pinotti has argued that the RS/33 files passed to Nazi Germany, that recovered technology fed Italian jet development — the Caproni Campini N.1 first flew on the twenty-seventh of August 1940 — and that US forces recovered debris in April 1945 [1].

[UNVERIFIED] An item in Domenica del Corriere of the ninth of July 1937, describing an “enormous and brilliant flash of lightning” injuring five pedestrians between Magenta and Novara, is presented by proponents as a censored allusion to the 1933 event [1]. We did not obtain the 1937 original; the interpretive link is the proponents’, not the newspaper’s.

[REPORTED] The bell-shaped-craft detail, the papal involvement and the US recovery entered the story after 2004, via claims attributed to William Brophy about his father’s recollections — accretion onto the original file set rather than corroboration of it [4].

[REPORTED] One elderly witness, “Faustino”, now deceased, was said to corroborate the 1936 Mestre sighting. No living witness to the 1933 event was ever located [1].

Status

This file is CONFIDENTIAL — admitted to the archive as a documented case of disputed documents, not as a documented landing. The genuine, verifiable record here consists of the congressional transcript [5], the AARO report [7], the Vatican statement [6] and the catalogued Milanese prefecture telegrams, which concern conventional aircraft [3]. Every element specific to the Magenta claim traces to a single anonymous source and fails this archive’s provenance bar.

Readers should note the contrast with cases where contemporaneous official documentation exists independently of any proponent, such as the Rendlesham Forest incident; and with modern sensor-based reports such as the Tic Tac encounters. The Magenta file has neither. Updates pending any deposit of originals in an inspectable repository.

References

1. Pinotti, Roberto — “The UFO Files of Mussolini: Fascist UFO Files”. The Black Vault Case Files. Accessed 17th August 2026. Proponent-sourced material; reproduced here as the primary published account of the “Mr X” documents.
2. “Incidente di Magenta”. Wikipedia (Italian), CC-licensed. Accessed 17th August 2026.
3. Liva, Gianluca (13th August 2020). “1933, quando un ufo cadde in Lombardia (X-Files fascisti)”. OggiScienza. Archival counter-analysis, including the Fondo Gabinetto Prefettura holdings.
4. “Claim: A UFO crashed in 1933 Italy and the US Recovered it”. Metabunk. Accessed 17th August 2026.
5. U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (26th July 2023). “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency”, Serial No. 118-53. U.S. Government Publishing Office. Public domain.
6. Duncan, Robert (18th June 2024). “Angels or aliens? Some researchers say Vatican archives hold UFO secrets”. Catholic News Service / USCCB.
7. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, U.S. Department of Defense (March 2024). Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume 1, p. 9. Transcription hosted at Wikisource. Public domain.
8. “Files Fascisti Marconi E Gabinetto RS 33”. Internet Archive, uploaded 18th March 2024 by an account named for Alfredo Lissoni; 14.8 KB, no stated licence.