Claim: A UFO crashed in 1933 Italy and the US Recovered it

NorCal Dave

Senior Member.
While the Italian UFO crash story has been circulating around UFOlogical circles since the early '00s, it came to the forefront recently when Government UFO Whistleblower David Grusch mentioned it in several interviews.

In some discussions I've had with a few people, I attempted to point out there is a problem with Grusch relating this story as true, given we can trace the public origins and the permutations in his version. I would argue that Grusch is retelling a publicly available story. The common rebuttal is that Grusch, and to some extent Lue Elizondo, have access to classified files the rest of us don't and therefore they saw the reports of the Italian crashed UFO case and are relating those classified reports.

Fair enough, but that raises some concerns. If there remain classified files about this case, Grusch is disseminating classified information and that's a topic for another thread.

What I'll look into here, is if Grusch's version of the Italian UFO case is from classified files, then it closely matches what's in the public domain. One could argue, the supposed classified files corroborate the public version of the story. If that's the case, it would mean the public sources for the story are accurate.

But as I'll show, the public version(s) of the story are cobbled together from a variety of sources over the years. If those sources are accurate in this case, then are they accurate in other cases? If so, then this crashed UFO from Italy is a minor occurrence.

I'll note the discussion of the Italian UFO began in the first thread about Grusch and I'm definitely standing on shoulders here as Mick as well as @JMartJr, @deirdre, @Mendel, @John J. and @Pepijn van Erp among others, provided some of the information about the origins of this claim. I then tracked down some of the secondary claims that were added to create the modern version of it after being pointed in the right direction by @Brian Dunning 's Skeptoid Podcast.

To begin, let's look at a common version of the story now in circulation, then Grusch's take on it. Here is a version from UFO website Liberation Times. It's rather prosaic and story like, so I've edited for brevity which might make the narrative flow a bit odd, but it gets the main points across. To be fair, this website doesn't completely endorse everything here.:

External Quote:
If accounts are to be believed, it is a story that began in 1930's Italy, under the Fascist rule of Benito Mussolini.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Ohio, 1959

Two bodies allegedly lay on a table. They look like twins.

They're dead and preserved with formaldehyde.

But their features trouble a French biologist invited to study the bodies.

Two males, very tall (around 7ft), long blonde hair, very high and spacious foreheads, clear blue eyes that look somewhat Asiatic, small noses, small mouths, small chins, thin lips, very clear pale skin, but no signs of facial hair.

There are two accounts of these alleged recovered bodies within Wright-Patterson, which inform this story.

The first was from William Brophy, whose father claimed to have seen the bodies when serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force (USAF). Brophy claimed that his father told him the story, among those of other UAP encounters whilst serving in the USAF.

The second account is from UAP researcher Leonard Stringfield, who told the story of the French biologist in his 1982 book, named 'UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence: Status Report III'.

The bodies allegedly came from a UAP crash (according to Brophy's account), which occurred long before Roswell.

They were apparently recovered in 1933, in Lombardy, Italy, where a mysterious craft had crashed.

Italy's leader, Benito Mussolini took all measures to silence the witnesses and classified the craft as top secret. Documents released from Mussolini's office support claims of a cover-up. The media was not to report on what had happened and information would not be shared with any scientific institution.

Mussolini's next priority was to study the craft. Italy's top scientists and engineers were assembled to form a top-secret group, supposedly headed by the celebrated engineer Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the radio.

However, the Pope later became uneasy about the craft being in Italian possession, as Mussolini's Italy grew closer and eventually allied with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

The Pope acted on his misgivings, leading to information about the craft apparently being leaked to the USA from the Vatican.

Due to the Vatican's intervention, the alleged facility (which supposedly held the craft) was spared the wrath of allied air bombings during the war, despite all other nearby facilities being heavily targeted throughout northern Italy.

After the war, the craft was allegedly brought to the USA, where it supposedly remains today.
All UFO Disclosure Roads Lead To Rome — Liberation Times | Reimagining Old News

Here is Grusch's recounting of the story to a French magazine:

External Quote:
Int.: Can we know more about where these "ships" were recovered?

D.G.: One was recovered in Italy in 1933, which is the earliest case I've been briefed on. I can't talk about the others.

Int.: What allegedly happened there?

D.G.: In 1933, a bell-like craft, around ten meters in size was recovered in Magenta, northern Italy. It was kept by Mussolini's government until 1944 when it was recovered by agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, a former US intelligence agency). Ironically, it predates anything the public has heard about for decades, such as Roswell, etc. I was authorized to talk about it by the Department of Defense's Office of Prepublication and Security Review.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/143ev70/comment/jn9ctpo/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3


And as told to Ross Coulthart

External Quote:
1933 was the first recovery in Europe, in Magenta, Italy. They recovered a partially intact vehicle. The Italian government moved it to a secure air base in Italy for the rest of kind of the fascist regime until 1944-1945. And, you know, the Pope Pius XII backchanneled that… {So the Vatican was involved?} …Yeah, and told the Americans what the Italians had, and we ended up scooping it.
Grusch tells a more sanitized version leaving out the Nordic aliens, and adds the bell-shape, which does appear in other versions, nevertheless the main components are consistent:

A bell-shaped UFO crashed in Italy in 1933. It was recovered by the Italians and taken to an airbase. The Pope told the Americans about the UFO at some point. The Americans recovered it and took it back to the States.

More recently, Grusch has been telling a slightly different version, but we'll get into that below.

The version from Liberation Times already has problems. It talks about the Nordics at Wright -Patterson in 1959 as if they are connected to the Italian UFO. They're not, but by saying the story starts in 1933 and then moving forward in time to 1959 appears to create a pedigree for the story that doesn't exist. There is no mention of the Italian UFO prior to 1996 and it was William Brophy that added the Nordics to it in the mid '00s.

The common origin of the story is the so called "Fascist UFO Files". This was a set of files, including memos and handwritten notes that was sent anonymously to several Italian media outlets in ~1996, where they were mostly ignored and some of the first ones appeared to have been tossed in the trash. Eventually 2 Italina UFO investigators, Dr. Roberto Pinotti and Alfredo Lissoni investigated and published articles about the files.

For our purposes, I'm using Lissoni's article that was translated into English and appeared in the UK UFO magazine Flying Saucer Review in 2004. He describes the files and where they came from like this:

External Quote:
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 in fact reports from the Royal Italian Air Force, with the recommendation "SAY NOTHING TO IL DUCE"!

One of the newspaper's editors, thinking it was all a joke, assigned a reporter to conduct an enquiry in quarters that were involved with secret prototypes (domestic) but the results were nil, and so the material was never published, and ended up in the waste-paper basket.

Then a second series of missives, in three different packages, posted in March-April 1996, were sent by "MR. X" to the top Italian ufologist Dr. Roberto Pinotti, Director of the Italian
UFO research journal NOTIZIARIO UFO (and long-term FSR Consultant !).
Lissoni also notes that it was difficult to corroborate the files 50 years on, though they found a few 2nd hand stories:

External Quote:
A long time passed. In particular the search for the eyewitnesses of the episode was fruitless. The document had indicated *three names*, all of which were now untraceable. Then finally a C.U.N. member managed to secure the testimony of a relative, FAUSTINO V - (unfortunately deceased shortly afterwards), but who had confirmed that he had been present and had seen the incredible
thing flying over Venice
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1885.htm

Pinotti told a similar version of events in his book:

External Quote:
Indeed, other caches of documents sent by the anonymous "Mr. X" (as we decided to call him) were received by CUN, before the daily newspaper, IL RESTO DEL CARLINO of Bologna, – whose skeptical journalists did not publish them – and by the contactee-oriented magazine, UFO: LA VISITA EXTRATERRESTRE– mentioned in Cabinet RS/33. This magazine was charged with both investigating and covering up what the documents call "Velivoli Non Convenzionali" or VNC as an acronym for (Unconventional Flying Vehicles).

Unfortunately, an original thirty-page dossier about VNC (i.e. the one that had been sent to the newspaper IL RESTO DEL CARLINO of Bologna) was lost, while the first batch of photocopied material sent to UFO: LA VISITA EXTRATERRESTRE did not have the result "Mr. X" had desired. This magazine entrusted their enquiry to the Naples ufologist Umberto Telarico who was skeptic about the case. The material got published, but they considered it a fake.
https://www.theblackvault.com/casef...ssolini-fascist-ufo-files-by-roberto-pinotti/

So, besides the newspaper tossing the original files, even a UFO contactee magazine considered the files fake.

Regardless, the files mention a number of UFO incidents and the Italian government's response to them, including the 1933 crash as well as a sighting near Venice. Importantly, here is how Pinotti and Lissoni summed up the 1933 crash at an Italian UFO conference in 2000:

External Quote:
In 2000, during the annual World UFO Symposium in San Marino, my colleague Alfredo Lissoni and I gave a lecture on the sensational discovery of some new original material, which has been sent to us anonymously on a number of occasions regarding the existence of the so-called "Fascist UFO Files". This material dealt with a purported flying saucer that had either crashed or landed near Magenta in Lombardy in Italy on April 11th, 1933, some fourteen years before the famous Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash. This event involved a subsequent investigation by an obscure war time intelligence unit called "Gabinetto RS/33" (or RS/33 Cabinet ), 'RS' is the acronym for Ricerche Speciali or Special Researches, and 33 means 1933, this group had been authorized by Benito Mussolini to study the problem.
https://www.theblackvault.com/casef...ssolini-fascist-ufo-files-by-roberto-pinotti/

In the aforementioned 2004 article from Flying Sauer Review, Lissoni gives even less detail about the 1933 crash. Despite a rather lengthy article, the crash story is more about what the files said about who was involved and speculation that it might have been reverse engineered. It's mentioned like this (bold by me):

External Quote:
which gave instructions, *on the order of Il Duce Mussolini*, to recuperate [sic] a flying saucer which had landed (it is not known where) on June 13, 1933. There was also a Senatorial letter describing in detail the strategy to be followed after the craft had been recovered; i.e., censorship of the newspapers; arrest of the eyewitnesses by the O.U.R.A. (The Italian Government's Political Police); elaboration of a series of conventional explanations for the UFO (i.e. *sonde* balloons, meteors, perihelia) to be fed to the public via the BRERA ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY at
Milan; and notification of the Prefect (Civil Governor).

The "Moretti" trail led me to the Varese region. My hypothesis is in fact that the saucer recovered in 1933 had been hidden in one of the nearest and most discrete hangars in that region -
namely the hangars of the aeronautical establishments of the Siai Marchetti
at Vergiate or of the Sesto Calende in the Varese region of Ticino which at that date were under the control of
General Italo Balbo

Regarding this last-named body, as a result of further material sent to Bongiovanni's "Contactee" Review, it was discovered that the RS/33 CABINET had been a top-secret study commission,
created in the bosom of LA SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY in Rome following upon the recuperation [sic] of the UFO. Headed by the physicist GUGLIELMO MARCONI (known for his belief in Martians, although he
never played an active part in the CABINET, always sending in his place the astronomer GINO CECCHINI from Turin). Among its members the CABINET had many of the most highly respected of
Italian academics, members of the Royal Italian Academy of Sciences. These people had been studying the UFOs, *but only occasionally did they consider the extraterrestrial hypothesis,
being more inclined, as they were, to believe in the existence of secret new Western weaponry*

Had the Fascists and the Nazis managed to achieve any "back- engineering" from the UFO of 1933? The historical reconstruction given above would seem to suggest so.
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1885.htm

That's it. A UFO landed or crashed in Magenta, it was taken to an airbase near Milan and a special group called RS/33 was commissioned to study it. No Pope and no Bell-shaped UFO. In fact, when Pinotti and Lissani included UFO descriptions from the files, it's usually the more saucer or cigar shape (bold by me):

External Quote:
"It was observed in the morning" he writes "it was a metallic disc, polished and reflecting light, with a length of ten or twelve meters. Two fighter aircraft from a nearby air force base took off, but were not able to reach it even traveling at 130 Km/h. It didn't emit any sound, which would lead one to consider an aerostat (balloon). But nobody knows of balloons that can fly faster than the wind. I know for sure that it was seen by other pilots… the report arrived in the hands of Ciano [Mussolini's son-in-law and Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs]. "Then, after approximately an hour and after flying over Mestre, it was seen as a sort of metallic tube, grey or slate in colour". A drawing by a confidential informant was redrawn by Andrea, who, as far as the two 'A' and 'B' drawings are concerned, explained that " 'A' was described as being like a kind of aerial torpedo, with very clear windows… and with alternating white and red lights. 'B' were two 'hats', two hats like those used by priests. They were wide, round with a dome in the center, metallic and followed the torpedo without changing their relative positions".
1702608938459.png

THE UFO FILES OF MUSSOLINI: Fascist UFO Files by Roberto Pinotti - The Black Vault Case Files

In his book, Pinotti even includes a picture of a supposed Nazi prototype that he speculates may have been inspired by the crashed UFO:

1702608964425.png


No bell-shaped UFOs. The bell shape is often more associated with a supposed Nazi Wonder Weapon, The Bell or Die Glocke:

External Quote:
Die Glocke
External Quote:
(German: [diː ˈɡlɔkə], "The Bell") was a purported top-secret scientific technological device, secret weapon, or Wunderwaffe developed in the 1940s in Nazi Germany. First described by Polish journalist and author Igor Witkowski in Prawda o Wunderwaffe (2000), it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook, who associated it with Nazi occultism, antigravity, and free energy suppression research. Mainstream reviewers have criticized claims about Die Glocke as being pseudoscientific, recycled rumors, and a hoax. Die Glocke and other alleged Nazi "miracle weapons" have been dramatized in video games, television shows, and novels.
Die Glocke (conspiracy theory) - Wikipedia
1702608996602.png


Cook's book came out in 2001 and an English translation of Witkowski's book was released in 2003, the first mention of the crashed Italian UFO in English was the Lissoni article in 2004.

Why does Grusch mention the UFO as "bell-shaped"? Proponents say it is because he has access to classified files that Pinotti and Lissoni don't. I would argue, it's because William "Billy" Brophy Jr., mentioned in the modern version of the story above, added the idea of the Italian UFO being Die Glocke, the idea that the Pope got involved and the idea that the US military took the UFO at the end of the war.

Brophy's source are stories his dad told him in the '70s after seeing the TV show In Search Of.

After Lissoni's 2004 English translation article appeared in Flying Saucer Review, Brophy began writing letters to the magazine detailing his father's involvement in several UFO cases and mentioning the 1933 Italian one, all be it cryptically in the postscript. I'll share his first letter here to get the flavor of his writing:

1702609091560.png

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/cra...sies-of-billy-brophy-about-his-airman-father/

I'll post the rest of Brophy's letters to FSR in a spoiler below for those interested.

Brophy's claims about his dad figures a lot in Jaques Vallee's latest UFO case book, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret 2nd Edition about a supposed crashed and retrieved UFO near Trintiy NM in 1945. As such, the Trintiy case and the 1933 Italian case get hopelessly interwoven. The good thing is Douglass Johnston has done a lot of research on the Trintiy case, including reprints of Brophy's letters and an interview. In an early interview with Vallee's coauthor Paola Harris of MUFON, Brophy mentions more details about the Italian crash. This interview appeared in Born on The Edge of Ground Zero: Living in the Shadow of Area 51 by Bacca & Padilla. It's an earlier book about the Trintiy New Mexico case (not Area 51, but I guess that makes for a good UFO title) and is out of print, so Johnston provides photos of the book.

One can see either a fertile mind or some very detailed recollections about what his dad told him nearly 30 years earlier. The more likely possibility is Brophy pulling things he's heard or read and combining them with his strange sense of connectedness.

His dad told him about the '33 Italian crash because he had witnessed the atomic bomb test at Trinety and was based at Alamogordo which is near the White Sands testing grounds and the Italian UFO crashed on San Antonio day and San Antonio NM is close to the White Sands testing grounds and Enrico Fermi learned things in Italy before coming to White Sands and then Alamogordo where Brophy's dad was. Or something like that.

Johnston has several pages from the book with the Brophy interview, but I'll just use the 2 that reference the Italian UFO. Note here at the beginning he and Harris mention the Italian UFO conference he attended:
1702609345293.png


1702609364114.png

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-the-suppressed-tale-of-the-captured-alien/

Brophy seems to have read Lissoni's article in 2004, got in contact with Penotti and ultimately ended up at a 2010 UFO conference where he presented what his dad had told him about the '33 Italian UFO crash.

I can't track down anything in English about this conference other than this screen shot supposedly from Brophy recapping what he presented. This is from a prolific UFO blogger, Major George Filer USAF (Ret) and the Northeast reginal head of MUFON . He has numerous posts, many of which seem to cut and paste from others and his own blogs. The text of this recap from Brophy appeared in at least 3 separate blog posts from Major Filer over the years, often run together with other stories and claims found here: https://nationalufocenter.com/2021/11/filers-files-45-2021-the-1933-europes-ufo-crash/ The actual post from June 2010 is locked and unviewable on Filer's current website as it seems to be from some earlier iteration of it.

The claims here, the semi-rambling style and the strange sense of connectedness seems to sound like Brophy's other writings:

1702655192152.png


Imgur: The magic of the Internet

So, here we have the rest of the story. It's Brophy who adds the Pope talking to the Americans and the Die Glocke or bell-shaped UFO and the Americans recovering the UFO. He also added things Grusch doesn't mention like the Nordics and their meeting with Eisenhower. There are multiple threads and claims in the 2nd paragraph alone that I could seriously get sidetracked on.

Much of the above writings by Brophy are themselves mishmashes of other stories strung together. We have Whitkoski and Cook's claim of Die Glocke which he adds to the Italian UFO story, along with Nordic-Asian aliens.

What I find interesting is the way different threads are combined to create a new whole. The version of the story I used above from Liberation Times mentions a French biologist seeing the dead Nordics at Wright-Patterson in ~'59 and just assumes they are from the '33 Italian UFO crash. Liberation Times cites Brophy as another source, but I think that is incorrect. Brophy is taking the French biologist seeing the Nordics claim and inserting it into the Italian UFO.

The French-Nordic connection goes something like this (bold in the original):

External Quote:
In his book Preuves Scientifiques OVNI (Monaco 1981), Jean-Charles Fumoux relates how Leon B. Visse, an alleged expert on histons (elements connected with cellular genetic material), was invited in 1959 to a military compound at Wright-Patterson AFB, where he was asked to perform an experiment on the histonic weight of particular cells.

To his astonishment, Visse was taken into a special room where the corpses of two humanoids lay

The bodies were very tall, a little over seven feet, and from their terrible injuries appeared to have been in an accident, although the heads were intact, Fumoux relates, and continues:

"The forehead high and broad. Very long blond hair. The eyes were stretched toward the temples which gave them an Asiatic look. The nose and mouth were small. The lips were thin, perfectly delineated. The chin was small and slightly pointed. The two faces were beardless. Despite slight differences in their facial appearances, the two humanoids looked like twins".

Dr. Gilles summarized his feelings about Visse in a letter to Leonard Stringfield in 1982:

"I have no definite opinion if he was the right man or not; for me it's 50% yes, 50% no. Visse had indeed knowledge about covert operations. It seemed to me, but it could have been my imagination, that he was accustomed to military ways of thinking and behavior. Visse was absolutely unmoved by the Fumoux story when I told him, he didn't show any surprise, he was not shocked at all by the odd subject. In short, I believe Fumoux knew something about alien/retrieval affairs. But what he knew was certainly distorted."

1959: Alien Bodies at Wright Paterson AFB | The Hidden Truth

The above appears on the website The Hidden Truth and is taken from Timothy Good's book Beyond Top Secret. That is in turn taken from the book mentioned in the quote, Preuves Scientifiques and possibly from books by UFOlogist Leonard Stringfield, whom Brophy mentions.

The Eisenhower meeting starts as a letter written by Los Angeles clairvoyant, Harold Light to a friend of his, Meade Layne. He claims that he went to Muroc, now Edwards AFB in the Mojave Desert as part of a delegation with the president to meet the aliens. UFOlogist claim Eisenhower's supposed vacation to nearby Palm Springs and his supposed dental problems that kept him out of sight for a night were just too convenient so, he must have been meeting with aliens. Light wrote to Layne (edited for brevity):

External Quote:
Gerald Light
10545 Scenario Lane
Los Angeles, California

Mr. Meade Layne
San Diego, California

My dear Friend: I have just returned from Muroc. The report is true — devastatingly true!

I made the journey in company with Franklin Allen of the Hearst papers and Edwin Nourse of Brookings Institute (Truman's erstwhile financial advisor) and Bishop MacIntyre of L.A. (confidential names for the present, please).

During my two days' visit I saw five separate and distinct types of aircraft being studied and handled by our Air Force officials -- with the assistance and permission of the Etherians! I have no words to express my reactions.

It has finally happened. It is now a matter of history.

President Eisenhower, as you may already know, was spirited over to Muroc one night during his visit to Palm Springs recently.

From what I could gather, an official statement to the country is being prepared for delivery about the middle of May.

I shall never forget those forty-eight hours at Muroc!
https://borderlandsciences.org/project/etheria/corr/1954-04-16_-_Gerald_Light_to_Meade_Layne.html

Note the pending disclosure in May of '54. There's no Nordics in Light's account, just Etherians. It was another former Naval Intelligence guy with Top Secret clearance that added the Nordics to the Eisenhower story.

William "Bill" Cooper started out, much like Elizondo and Grusch, as a former military whistleblower (though he did not file a formal complaint) when he began confirming the UFO conspiracies of ex-CIA pilot John Lear. He would later claim that Lear was a government shill and became a radical conspiracist and militia supporter himself before dying in a shootout with law enforcement.

Summed up by Michael Sallis PhD, an expert in Exopolitics(?) and believer in the Eisenhower alien meeting:

External Quote:
Cooper's and Lear's idea of more than one extraterrestrial race interacting with the Eisenhower administration is supported by other whistleblowers such as former Master Sergeant Robert Dean who like Cooper, had access to top secret documents while working in the intelligence division for the Supreme Commander of a major US military command.
Eisenhower's 1954 Meeting With Extraterrestrials: The Fiftieth Anniversary of First Contact? - UFO Evidence

Without going full rabbit hole, we can see Brophy is pulling from all kinds of sources and amalgamating them together in his own unique way. Some of what he learned he added to the Italian UFO story and some of that, like the bell shape, the Pope and the American retrieval, made it to Grusch's version of the story.

This leaves us with a number of possibilities.

If, as proponents say, Grusch and others have access to classified files, it would appear the publicly available version of the story is very similar to the classified one. That would indicate the public version is essentially correct. That in turn would mean the Fascist UFO files are mostly authentic, something Elizondo claims below and Brophy's claims about what his father told him are true.

If that's the case, what else about Brophy's claims are true? A crashed UFO from the Battle of Los Angeles or Eisenhower meeting the Nordics? It would seem so. Some will use the "broken clock" excuse. Brophy may have heard a few things from his father that turned out to be accurate about the Italian UFO, as confirmed by Grusch, even though he made a lot of other strange and likely untrue claims.

The other possibility is that Grusch is in essence repeating the publicly available version of the story. The problem with that is this thread. I was able to track down where the various elements of the story came from, and I'm not the only one. @Brian Dunning got me started with episode #900 of his Skeptoid podcast. I even came across a reddit thread that is basically saying what I'm saying here, though with less sourcing:
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ufo/comments/14dez6j/whistleblower_david_grusch_and_the_italian_ufo/
Surprisingly for what I understand about the reddit UFO crowd, he got very little push back, possibly because there is very little to argue with and Brophy makes a number of strange and often changing and contradictory claims. I only covered some here.

Maybe some of that has come to light, as Grusch tells a slightly different version lately. He is now claiming that the bell or acorn shaped craft, had a disk like part that broke off when it crashed and only the center bell/acorn part was recovered. Here's a transcript from a YouTube video linked below (I've removed some of the time stamps to make it easier to read):

External Quote:
5:22

that's why I picked that because I

thought that was a interesting case and

then of course the you know Pope pus (Pious) the

12th and the Vatican were involved back

channeling it through the OSS which

became the CIA later to FDR and that's

5:35

how the US knew something weird happened

in Italy during well right before World

War II but so this is 33 was the first

6:05

story behind it so um basically it it it

looked like it crashed right it the

original shape most likely was like a

lenticular disc like craft you know with

like a two dinner plates what does

lenticular mean so like two dinner

plates you know smooshed together right

6:24

the hump and there's like a you know

like a bubble on topic classic like like

that like that but it looks like when it

hits the edges broke off so it became

this like Bell or

Acorn shaped thing um and there was

nothing in it it was like just an

artifact you know there was no

biologicals.
Source link below.

That description that adds the "dinner plates" now sound more like the picture Penotti provided:

1702656140341.png


Here is one of Elizondo's takes on the case. A bit vaguer, he seems to rely entirely on the Fascist UFO Files, which he thinks are real. He makes it sound like he is only getting the story from the files, which would preclude him from seeing secret US files possibly. (transcript from YouTube podcast):

External Quote:


i don't want to get too much into the you know conspiracy

1:15:46

side of the house um there is some documentation that has been validated uh that was uh that was from mussolini

1:15:54

himself uh and uh it uh it's you know it's it's

1:15:59

authentic it's been proven to be authentic the the documentation um so certainly interesting and this was
Source link below.

As for the claim that the documents have been "proven to be authentic", that seems to be a bit of a stretch. Despite most newspapers that received the original batch of documents concluding they were fake, Pinotti and Lissoni argue that an expert has said the paper and ink is from the time period:

External Quote:
(Antonio) Garavaglia conducted a series of chemical tests of the paper and ink – remember, he had originals and not copies – and he concluded they are really authentic, hand written documents from the Fascist era. The color of the paper and ink aging process led him to believe they were absolutely genuine and not modern forgeries
And another expert said the language was consistent with the time, though a forgery was still possible:

External Quote:
Alfredo Lissoni also consulted with Andrea Bedetti, a historian and expert on Italy's Fascist period. "I cannot exclude the existence of a "RS/33 Cabinet" said Bedetti. He also examined in the documents for the wording and the bureaucratic style of the period", as well as the stationery ("Kingdom's Senate" and Stefani Agency telegrams) and aeronautical terminology used. Bedetti found that all of it was consistent with genuine Fascist-era documents. According to debunkers this didn't rule out a skilled forger, but they have to admit he would have to be someone deeply knowledgeable about Fascist history, style, vocabulary and terminology.
THE UFO FILES OF MUSSOLINI: Fascist UFO Files by Roberto Pinotti - The Black Vault Case Files

There has never been any corroborating evidence for the Files that I'm aware of. Even if true, it's only half the story with the other half coming from other sources.

It's an interesting case, where we can see how the various and often unrelated elements come together over time to create a story that didn't exist before. We know where the public version of the Italian UFO story comes from, we'll have to wait to see what the classified version of it is. Assuming it exists.

Here is the other 2 letters Brophy wrote to Flying Saucer Review for those interested:


David Grusch YouTube link:
David Grusch Details The 1933 Magenta UFO Crash With Joe Rogan - YouTube

Lue Elizondo interview YouTube link:
Luis 'Lue' Elizondo MOST RECENT NEWS #UAP #UFO SHAPES EXPLAINED - Max Moszkowicz Podcast #Elizondo - YouTube
 
A long read, but an interesting one. Concerning your "spoiler", as to to the change in description of the crash site, I'll point out that Trinity site is on part of White Sands Missile range, as is the MacDonald ranch property, and the Trinity site was probably on the ranch. The McDonald ranch house itself was where the atomic bomb was actually assembled. White Sands covers a huge area, about the size of the state of Delaware, and most of it is ranchland. When I lived there, whenever they wanted to use the northern part of the range for test firings the few residents were given temporary duty pay and took themselves off to somewhere safer. I don't know if that practice continues.

Brophy's tales seem very "conspiracy theory" to me, and his emphasis on coincidence seem ridiculously far-fetched: "twin" aliens and "twin cities", town of San Antonio and San Antonio day, etc. His ever-changing tales that conflate different events (that may or may not ever have happened) mean that publicly available stories can pick and choose, and if Grusch got his info from these stories, he also could choose to believe any portions he liked.
 
Here is a link to photocopies of the original Mr X documents:
https://archive.org/details/mussolinis-ufo-files-mister-xs-papers/page/n13/mode/1up

The first batch, mailed to Roberto Pinotti in 1996, and then subsequently to Giorgio Bongiovanni and investigated by Umberto Telarico, consists of six pages. One is a two page letter, one is another letter and the remaining three are all telegrams.

IMG_0030.jpegIMG_0029.jpegIMG_0035.jpegIMG_0036.jpegIMG_0037.jpegIMG_0038.jpeg

I am still trying to work out what the subsequent batches sent through to Pinotti consist of.
 
The first batch, mailed to Roberto Pinotti in 1996, and then subsequently to Giorgio Bongiovanni and investigated by Umberto Telarico, consists of six pages. One is a two page letter, one is another letter and the remaining three are all telegrams.

Thanks for your efforts. It'd be interesting to see the original "files" Mr. X sent to the various newspapers that got tossed in the garbage. My suspicion is that they were low quality fakes that were easily seen as such. After the rejection, I wonder if Mr. X stepped his game up and used period correct ink and paper such that Poretti's expert could confirm things like that.
 
I'd really like to see these documents given a more thorough modern testing-do we even have the info on who allegedly tested them for age?
 
I'd really like to see these documents given a more thorough modern testing-do we even have the info on who allegedly tested them for age?

These 2 guys supposedly look at whatever Lissoni and Pinotti had:

External Quote:
(Antonio) Garavaglia conducted a series of chemical tests of the paper and ink – remember, he had originals and not copies – and he concluded they are really authentic, hand written documents from the Fascist era. The color of the paper and ink aging process led him to believe they were absolutely genuine and not modern forgeries.
External Quote:
Alfredo Lissoni also consulted with Andrea Bedetti, a historian and expert on Italy's Fascist period. "I cannot exclude the existence of a "RS/33 Cabinet" said Bedetti. He also examined in the documents for the wording and the bureaucratic style of the period", as well as the stationery ("Kingdom's Senate" and Stefani Agency telegrams) and aeronautical terminology used. Bedetti found that all of it was consistent with genuine Fascist-era documents. According to debunkers this didn't rule out a skilled forger, but they have to admit he would have to be someone deeply knowledgeable about Fascist history, style, vocabulary and terminology.
THE UFO FILES OF MUSSOLINI: Fascist UFO Files by Roberto Pinotti - The Black Vault Case Files
 
Those tests were done seemingly around 1999, I'm seeing that Antonio Garavaglia is listed as a chemist, do we have any way to contact him and verify his credentials or get more detail on what he actually tested for? Forgery testing has come a very long way since the late 90s, I think a new round of testing is called for.
The detail about the wording and style being accurate seems less noteworthy to me, a highly motivated fabulist would have no trouble gaining access to italian fascist period documents to use as reference materials.
 
The detail about the wording and style being accurate seems less noteworthy to me, a highly motivated fabulist would have no trouble gaining access to italian fascist period documents to use as reference materials.

Agreed. As I said, it would have been fun to see the first batch of documents that were sent and then trashed. Maybe they were amateurish and after not getting the reaction he wanted, Mr. X went back and studied up on what the documents should look like. Same with the paper, he scrounged around and found some old paper which just seems logical if one is presenting documents supposedly from the '30s.

What I got from Lissoni and Pinotti's articles was that there is very little information about the supposed UFO crash. Something crashed or landed in Magenta in 1933. It was (maybe) taken to the Siai Marchetti hangers in Varese and maybe studied by a group called RS/32. That's it.

One could even make the argument that if this story is true, it may not be related to a UFO as in alien, but a secret project of some sort. For example, it's known the Italians were working on some sort of jet engine in the '30s. If one crashed or had an emergency landing in Magenta, the government may have tried to cover it up, taken the wreckage to Siai Marchetti and convened a group called RS/33 to look into why the jet program wasn't working.

The rest of the story is just Billy Brophy rambling about other UFO stories he's heard and connecting them to this minor, though likely forged, incident.
 
I'm making notes still and want to post up a really thorough timeline for this case so will hopefully have something good to share next week. What's frustrating is the at nearly everything needs translating from Italian before it's useful.
I've managed to track down the correspondence and full report for the forensic exam. Unfortunately the tester is now deceased. The tests were carried out between Jan and March 2000.

https://centroufologiconazionale.net/fasfile/p2.pdf
 
What's frustrating is the at nearly everything needs translating from Italian before it's useful.

I think there at least a few Italian speakers on the forum. If I'm tagging someone that DOES NOT read Italian, my apologies I'm just going off a combination of memory and what I thought I understood. @Mauro and maybe @Scaramanga? Again, just guessing.
 
I think there at least a few Italian speakers on the forum. If I'm tagging someone that DOES NOT read Italian, my apologies I'm just going off a combination of memory and what I thought I understood. @Mauro and maybe @Scaramanga? Again, just guessing.
I do read Italian. I got the document automatically translated and made a number of improvements to the translation in every page, but overall the OCR and automatic translation were pretty good from the start:

External Quote:
Page 1 (Cover).
Page 2:
From: Dr. Roberto Pinotti President of the CUN (National UFO Center)
Via Senese 138
50124 Firenze
Tel./Fax: 055-2320190

To: Dr. Antonio Garavaglia
Expert and Scientific Technical Consultant
Via A. Volta 6 22070 MONTANO LUCINO (Como)
Tel.: 031-471469
Fax: 031-471585

January 25, 2000

Dear Dr. Garavaglia,

as per telephone agreement, I am sending you part of the documentation received, with the aim of verifying the authenticity of its actual origin in the year 1936 (XIV of the Fascist Era). In the consequent destructive investigation, which will carry out attempts as far as possible to "limit the damage" to the document, naturally, nevertheless operating as it deems most appropriate for the purpose in question. I expect to have your response, as agreed, within a fortnight. Good work! I will be grateful if you would like to provide me with your appraisal by telephone.

Sincerely, Yours

Dr. Pinotti
External Quote:
Page 3:
ANTONIO GARAVAGLIA
TECHNICAL STUDIES CONSULTANCY
Technical-scientific consultancy on foods, drugs, cosmetics, raw materials, water, wastewater, pesticides and classification of special and toxic waste. Chemical consultancy in general. Textile consultancy in general. Product formulations. Electromagnetic Pollution. Phonometric investigations. Environmental pollution in general. Sworn appraisals. HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) consultancy and law 626. Analysis and quality controls. Research in general.

Reg. C.C.I.A.A. Role of Specialists and Experts.
reg. Register of Technical Consultants of the Magistrate of the Court of Como
Fiscal Code. GRV NTN 58002 F205 I VAT number 02283600134
Studio Via A. Volta, 6 22070 Montano Lucino (CO)
Tel. +39-031/471469 - +39/031473878 (21 r.a) Fax +39/031471585

PARTY TECHNICAL CONSULTANCY

The undersigned A. Garavaglia, registered in the Register of Technical Consultants of the Magistrate Court and at no. 524 of the Role of Specialists and Experts of the C.C.I.A.A. of Como, as well as a member of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (A.O.A.C. International Member) was contacted by Dr. Roberto PINOTTI - via Senese, 138 50124 Firenze as President of the National Ufological Centre.

The undersigned received a formal assignment from the aforementioned Dr. Roberto PINOTTI, in his capacity above, to perform technical consultancy with the following query "say the party consultant, having read the attached handwritten document, whether the ink with which this document was written can be considered authentic or whether the date indicated on the document can be considered reliable."

The undersigned began the survey operations.

It should be noted that there are no analytical data or precise methodologies that can give certain and proven indications on dating.

In essence, it should be noted that the methods and investigations are numerous and sometimes cannot be reproduced in matrices, which by their nature can interfere in some way.

Having made these necessary premises and clarifications anticipated verbally, it was deemed appropriate to proceed with two empirical investigation tools.
External Quote:
Page 4
The first was by comparison with other documents written in the period in which the document in question appears to be dated.

The second by writing on a new document and subjecting this document to accelerated aging and simulated stress tests.

The first investigation was carried out on handwritten and typewritten documents of the time, and it was highlighted that in the dated period, the ink has the same characteristics as that of the document provided by the National UFO Centre. In particular, examination with a magnifying glass confirms this correspondence.

The second investigation was carried out by writing with black India ink and a nib fountain pen.

The document thus prepared was subjected to the following accelerated aging and simulated stress tests:
  • a part of the sample was stored in the dark and at room temperature for 27 days (reference sample "A");
  • a part of the sample was irradiated, at a distance of 20 cm from the surface, with UV light at 254 nm for 27 days (sample B);
  • a part of the sample was placed in an air current at +40°C for 27 days (sample C);
  • a part of the sample was placed at -20°C for 9 days, then at room temperature for 9 days, and finally, at +40°C for 9 days (sample D).
External Quote:
Page 5
At the same time, a part of the manuscript document, which was the object of the appraisal, was subjected, for comparison, to the same accelerated aging and simulated stress tests:
  • a part of the sample was stored in the dark and at room temperature for 27 days (reference sample 1);
  • a part of the sample was irradiated, at a distance of 20 cm from the surface, with UV light at 254 nm for 27 days (sample 2);
  • a part of the sample was placed in an air current at +40°C for 27 days (sample 3);
  • a part of the sample was placed at -20°C for 9 days, then at room temperature for 9 days, and finally, at +40°C for 9 days (sample 4).
At the end of the tests, the samples were carefully observed both with a loupe and with an optical microscope.

The observations highlighted the following:
  • REFERENCE SAMPLES (marked with "A" and "1"): no visual alterations are evident;
  • SAMPLES MARKED with "B" and "2": while for the sample marked with "2", no significant alterations were highlighted of color and quality compared to the reference sample and the original document, the sample marked with "B" highlights significant variations in color and quality compared to the reference sample.
External Quote:
Page 6
For the convenience of the esteemed Dr. Roberto PINOTTI, the question posed to the undersigned consultant in charge is reported: "say the party consultant, having read the attached handwritten document, whether the ink with which this document was written can be considered authentic, or if the date indicated on the document can be considered reliable."

The comparative tests gave a broad affirmative answer: manuscript documents from the period in which the document is dated, highlighted the same quality characteristics ("old" color of the paper and the ink).

The accelerated aging and simulated stress tests highlighted that, limited to the sample examined, the samples only alter under UV light in the test conditions.

In particular, the part of the sample delivered and subjected to appraisal did not show any change in degradation while, by comparison with the other sample and limited to the test conditions, it showed significant degradation.

This is an indication that any counterfeiting of the document would have led to a significant degradation.

In other words, if the document had been written with India ink, like the one used in the sample I prepared, it would have degraded as it did.
Even the difference highlighted in the empirical solubility tests confirms the typological diversity of the inks.
External Quote:
Page 7
SAMPLES MARKED with "C" and "3" at the end of the tests in the two samples: there were no significant alterations in color or quality compared to the reference sample.

SAMPLES MARKED WITH "D" and "4": at the end of tests in the two samples did not reveal any significant alterations in color or quality compared to the reference sample.

On the reference samples and on the samples subjected to tests, were carried out empirical solubility tests in the following solvents:
  • 95% ethanol 2 ml for 3 minutes;
  • Chloroform 2 ml for 3 minutes;
  • Sodium Hydroxide 25% w/v for 3 minutes.
The tests provided the following results:

SAMPLES MARKED with "A", "B", "C", "D":
  • Incomplete solubility of the ink in ethanol and chloroform (the samples all retain a slight trace of the writing on the sheet);
  • Incomplete corrosion of the sheet with alteration of the ink in Sodium Hydroxide.
SAMPLES MARKED with "1","2","3","4":
  • Complete solubility of the ink in ethanol and chloroform;
  • Incomplete corrosion of the sheet with complete alteration of the ink in Sodium Hydroxide.
CONCLUSIONS AND ANSWERS TO THE QUERY
External Quote:
Page 8
COURT OF COMO

REPORT UNDER OATH

On May 10, 2000, in this Court, before the undersigned clerk, appeared Mr. Antonio Garavaglia born in Milan on April 2, 1958 resident in 22070 Montano Lucino (CO) via A. Volta civico 6, registered in the Register of Consultants Technicians of the Magistrate of this Court, identified with I.D. No. AE 1092503 issued by the Municipality of Montano Lucino on 12/05/1999, which asks to certify the above extensive technical report carried out on 15 March 2000.

Warned in accordance with the law, the person appearing takes the oath by repeating the ritual formula:

"I SWEAR TO HAVE PROCEEDED WELL AND FAITHFULLY WITH THE OPERATIONS ENTRUSTED TO ME WITH THE SOLE PURPOSE OF LETTING THE JUDGES KNOW THE TRUTH".

Hereof the present minutes

Read, Confirmed and signed
External Quote:
Page 9
From the comparative examination of the tests carried out and limited to them and the sample examined, it can be stated with reasonable certainty that the only sample examined and the subject of the appraisal can be considered original and, therefore, authentic.

It follows that the date indicated 22 August XIV is reliable.

In other words, considering that from 28 October 1922 to 27 October 1923 is considered the 1st year of the fascist era, 22 August XIV corresponds to 22 August 1936.

Montano Lucino, 15 March 2000.

Read, confirmed and undersigned, in faith I sign.
 
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I have translated the first three of these documents as they appear in the March 2000 UFO Notizario magazine (which I have and also intend on translating in full).

L'Aeronautica á distribuito un questionario a tutti I piloti operanti nella zona.
Negare ogni versione. Il fatto è da attribuirsi esclusivamente a un fenomeno ottico.
Il Duce segue personalmente l'accaduto.
L'allarme è esteso a tutta la zona aerea del Nord Est.

Luce giallo aranciata a tratti bianco intense
Lampi regolari – fumo e scintille –
Sono armati? Sono amici?
Sono gia stati visti in alter occasioni?
573
Carati
-------------------
The Air Force has distributed a questionnaire to all pilots operating in the area.
Deny every version. The fact can be attributed exclusively to an optical phenomenon.
The Duce personally follows what happened.
The alarm is extended to the entire North Eastern air area.

Yellow-orange light with intense white streaks
Regular flashes – smoke and sparks –
Are they armed? They are friends?
Have they already been seen on other occasions?
573
Carati

Telegramma di Boni
I nomi dei testimoni della aeronave di Venezia sono secondo Guglielmi:
Genai – Tolmini – Venanzi – MVSN
Incaricare Zoppani della ricognizione.
Udienza riservata col Duce ore 15.30 del 30 agosto.
----------
Telegram from Boni
The names of the witnesses from the Venice airship are according to Guglielmi:
Genai – Tolmini – Venanzi – MVSN
Assign Zappani to the reconnaissance.
Private audience with the Duce at 3.30 pm on 30 August.
 
I do read Italian. I got the document automatically translated and made a number of improvements to the translation in every page, but overall the OCR and automatic translation were pretty good from the start:

You're good with video analysis AND you read Italian. Thanks for looking into it. As @Seffinder says above, he has a bunch of the documents that showed up in the '90s. More interesting I think, he's tracking down the connections that formed between Brophy and Lissoni from around 2004 that led to Brophy going to a 2010 Italian UFO conference and sharing his dad's "recollections" about the crashed UFO.
 
I have a trove of other documents I'd be really excited to see translations of. I'll attach some here.
The link you provided has much higher quality images than the images you attached. I have downloaded the link in PDF format, please see attached.

The cover page reads:

1714846095562.png


External Quote:
Caro Lissoni,

Le invio le copie con le decifrazioni
che sono riuscito a fare.

Cordiali saluti

Giuseppe Cosco

P.S.

Le mando anche una dispensa.
---------------------------
Dear (Alfredo) Lissoni,

I'm sending you the copies with the decipherments
I managed to do.

Best regards,

Giuseppe Cosco (Graphologist)

P.S.

I'm also sending you a periodical. (unclear what he's referring to, the documents related to the letter are telegrams).
After the cover letter, there's red ink on every page. The red ink is from the graphologist Giuseppe Cosco trying to read the scribblings. He barely read anything.
 

Attachments

Last edited:
The link you provided has much higher quality images than the images you attached. I have downloaded the link in PDF format, please see attached.

The cover page reads:

View attachment 68192

External Quote:
Caro Lissoni,

Le invio le copie con le decifrati ?ni
che sono riuscito a fare.

Cordiali saluti

Giuseppe Cosco

P.S.

Le mando anche una dispensa.
---------------------------
Dear (Alfredo) Lissoni,

I'm sending you the copies with the decipherments
I managed to do.

Best regards,

Giuseppe Cosco (Graphologist)

P.S.

I'm also sending you a dispensation (no context given, possibly not charging for the service).
After the cover letter, there's red ink on every page. The red ink is from the graphologist Giuseppe Cosco trying to read the scribblings. He barely read anything.

'decifrati ?ni' is 'decifrazioni' (then correctly translated as 'decipherments')

'dispensa' means many things in Italian, including 'dispensation', but I think in this case it just means 'document' [A 'dispensa' proper is a part of serial publication, ie. when a book is published in different installments ('dispense', in the plural)].

If you or @Sheffinder need help with translations from Italian just ask me (but the documents posted by @Sheffinder are really hard to read.. ie. I think the first line of IMG_0137 reads "Caro Viliberghi, ti confermo quanto hai saputo da Vali???..." or "dear Viliberghi, I confirm you what Vali??? (some name) told you...", but I have no time at the moment to go through all that scribbling).
 
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'decifrati ?ni' is 'decifrazioni' (then correctly translated as 'decipherments')

'dispensa' means many things in Italian, including 'dispensation', but I think in this case it just means 'document' [A 'dispensa' proper is a part of serial publication, ie. when a book is published in different installments ('dispense', in the plural)].

If you or @Sheffinder need help with translations from Italian just ask me (but please send me a pre-transcribed text, I'm not going to do that part of the job, sorry :rolleyes: )
"decifrati?ni" was a leftover, I later read it as decifrazioni and ended up translating correctly, as you pointed out. Just updated the original text to reflect this. I thought Giuseppe's handwriting was not good in some places, then I came across with the other guy's handwriting he was trying to read from. If you could help with that, there are plenty of question marks to fill in in my next posts.

I initially understood "dispensa" as a reference to a periodical, but the pdf has only telegrams in it, so I figured he might be referring to instalments, as in a payment for his reading services.

They are in cursive and I can't even transcribe the words I'm afraid.
It's possible not even the author could read his own handwriting. The graphologist seemed to have given up, or was simply not interested.

I gave page 2 a go:

1714869402033.png

External Quote:
Camera dei Deputati
Tribuna della Stampa

No Copia

Gabinetto RS/33

1) Relazioni introduttiva
2) Lettura del messaggio di S.E. (Sua Eccellenza)
3) O.d.g. (ordine del giorno)
4) Relazione D.f. (del foglio?) 4/6
5) Relazione (?)
6) Lettura messaggio di S.E. (Sua Eccellenza)
7) Relazione al Duce
IV fatta in triplice copia
VII) (?) atti
IX) Roma
XIII) Milano

B(?) 20.746.10
----------------------
Chamber of the Deputies
Press Tribune

Do Not copy

Cabinet RS/33

1) Introductory report
2) Reading the message from his excellency
3) Agenda
4) Report (sheet?) 4/6
5) Relations (?)
6) Reading the message from his excellency
7) Report to the Duce (Mussolini)
IV Done in three copies
VII) (?) acts
IX) Rome
XIII) Milan

B(?) 20.746.10 (signature)

Edited: added @Mauro's contributions in italic.
 
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"decifrati?ni" was a leftover, I later read it as decifrazioni and ended up translating correctly, as you pointed out. Just updated the original text to reflect this. I thought Giuseppe's handwriting was not good in some places, then I came across with the other guy's handwriting he was trying to read from. If you could help with that, there are plenty of question marks to fill in in my next posts.

I initially understood "dispensa" as a reference to a periodical, but the pdf has only telegrams in it, so I figured he might be referring to instalments, as in a payment for his reading services.


It's possible not even the author could read his own handwriting. The graphologist seemed to have given up, or was simply not interested.

I gave page 2 a go:

View attachment 68207
External Quote:
Camera dei Deputati
Tribuna della Stampa

No Copia

Gabinetto RS/33

1) Rotazioni/Relazioni (?)
2) Lettura del messaggio di S.E.
3) O.d.g. (ordine del giorno?)
4) Relazione D.f. (del foglio?) 4/6
5) Relazione (?)
6) Lettura messaggio di S.E.
7) Relazione al pace
IV fatto il triplice (?)
VII) (?) uno atti
IX) Roma
XIII) Milano

B(?) 20.746.10
----------------------
Chamber of the Deputies
Press Tribune

Do Not copy

Cabinet RS/33

1) Rotations/Relations (?)
2) Reading the message from S.E.
3) Agenda?
4) Report (sheet?) 4/6
5) Relations (?)
6) Reading the message from S.E.
7) Relations to peace
IV Done threefold (?)
VII) (?) an act
IX) Rome
XIII) Milan

B(?) 20.746.10 (signature)

How I read it (some words I could not understand, the writing is really horrible):

Gabinetto RS/33 (Cabinet RS/33)

1) Relazione introduttiva (Introductory report)
2) Lettura del messaggio di S.E. (Reading His Excellence's message. His Excellence is a title which was commonly used ie. for ministers)
3) O.d.g. (order of the day, agenda)
4) Relazione D ./. 4/6? h/6? (Report ???, possibly a reference code or number)
5) Relazione T?? (Report ???, possibly a name beginning with T)
6) Lettura messaggio di S.E. (Reading His Excellence's message)
7) Relazione al Duce (Report to the Duce. The Duce was Mussolini)
IV) Fatta in triplice copia (Done in three copies)
VII) ??? atti? (??? acts?)
IX) Roma (Rome)
XIII) Milano (Milan)
 
How I read it (some words I could not understand, the writing is really horrible):

Gabinetto RS/33 (Cabinet RS/33)

1) Relazione introduttiva (Introductory report)
2) Lettura del messaggio di S.E. (Reading His Excellence's message. His Excellence is a title which was commonly used ie. for ministers)
3) O.d.g. (order of the day, agenda)
4) Relazione D ./. 4/6? h/6? (Report ???, possibly a reference code or number)
5) Relazione T?? (Report ???, possibly a name beginning with T)
6) Lettura messaggio di S.E. (Reading His Excellence's message)
7) Relazione al Duce (Report to the Duce. The Duce was Mussolini)
IV) Fatta in triplice copia (Done in three copies)
VII) ??? atti? (??? acts?)
IX) Roma (Rome)
XIII) Milano (Milan)

It's like an agenda or notes from a meeting. We went over some reports, we read some messages, we heard some reports, we prepared a summery report for the Boss and did it in triplicate. Something like that? Are the last three where the reports were to be sent maybe? Milan, Rome and whatever VII) is supposed to be?
 
My take on page 5:

1714900667176.png

  • On the top left, D was written 3 times and then erased (a reference to Duce? i.e. Mussolini) .
1714938254367.png

  • Varrella? (a surname)
1714939913604.png

  • Cris (?)
1714940050481.png

  • The numbers:
37L (Lira? Litre?)
12.40 (12.30?)
87L (Lira? Litre?)
4/3
724303
  • Segreteria personale (Administrative Office)
  • Senato del Regno (Senate of the Kingdom (of Italy))
I rotated the inscription on the upper right for better readability:
1714939012126.png

Forte? - Sempre? (Strong ? - Always?)
 
"decifrati?ni" was a leftover, I later read it as decifrazioni and ended up translating correctly, as you pointed out. Just updated the original text to reflect this. I thought Giuseppe's handwriting was not good in some places, then I came across with the other guy's handwriting he was trying to read from. If you could help with that, there are plenty of question marks to fill in in my next posts.

I initially understood "dispensa" as a reference to a periodical, but the pdf has only telegrams in it, so I figured he might be referring to instalments, as in a payment for his reading services.


It's possible not even the author could read his own handwriting. The graphologist seemed to have given up, or was simply not interested.

I gave page 2 a go:

View attachment 68207
External Quote:
Camera dei Deputati
Tribuna della Stampa

No Copia

Gabinetto RS/33

1) Relazioni introduttiva
2) Lettura del messaggio di S.E. (Sua Eccellenza)
3) O.d.g. (ordine del giorno)
4) Relazione D.f. (del foglio?) 4/6
5) Relazione (?)
6) Lettura messaggio di S.E. (Sua Eccellenza)
7) Relazione al Duce
IV fatta in triplice copia
VII) (?) atti
IX) Roma
XIII) Milano

B(?) 20.746.10
----------------------
Chamber of the Deputies
Press Tribune

Do Not copy

Cabinet RS/33

1) Introductory report
2) Reading the message from his excellency
3) Agenda
4) Report (sheet?) 4/6
5) Relations (?)
6) Reading the message from his excellency
7) Report to the Duce (Mussolini)
IV Done in three copies
VII) (?) acts
IX) Rome
XIII) Milan

B(?) 20.746.10 (signature)

Edited: added @Mauro's contributions in italic.
how you can read those words, I'll never know…
 
I have the article from UFO Notiziario where Lissoni investigates the X-Files and Pinotti first talks about the documents he received. They actually came in 3 separate packages in 1996 before bongiovanni in 1999 (and follow ups to telarico/lissoni).

I'll translate the article and try to post decent photos of all the pages for all to see and I plan on trying to piece things together a little more concisely.
 
This is a bit of an epic but here it is, the translation of the article Pinotti wrote in the March 2000 edition of UFO Notizario on the origins of the documents mailed to him in 1996.

A brief summary here though:
3rd Feb 1996 (all original documents, not photocopies):
- An envelope marked "by the hands of S.E. Galeazzo Ciano"
- A 4 page handwritten note from 22nd August 1936 (I've never seen the 3rd and 4th pages of this document but we have a transcript included with the article)
- A postcard with writing on both sides
- A handwritten letter dated 30th August 1936

19th Feb 1996 (photocopy):
- Handwritten telegram before it was transmitted

29th March 1996 (original documents):
- A handwritten note with a drawing of the cigar shaped UFO and two disc like objects
- A handwritten note with a drawing of Saturn

My biggest takeaways - RS/33 is never mentioned in these documents and nothing is typewritten like the latter documents sent to Bongiovanni.

"Denying every version is the watchword"

The fact can be attributed exclusively to an optical phenomenon."

Thus the regime covered up the sighting of the mysterious airship in 1936. UFO "ante litteram" during fascism (1st part)

Having been the recipient (anonymously and in photocopy) shortly before, in September 1999 the magazine directed by a stigmatized Italian contactee published some documents from the fascist era, apparently connected to UFO demonstrations of that period. This newspaper gave it ample prominence, entrusting the investigations to a scholar of the Campania phenomenon (the same one who made the "Ustica Case" his strong point and from the conclusions of which the CUN famously distanced itself) who essentially advanced his reservations about the material in question. In principle, this attitude may be understandable, when faced with documents that are difficult to authenticate, received from an anonymous source and which intended to remain anonymous even in the case of subsequent sendings.

However, the National UFO Center has always moved in a different way. Only when the elements at our disposal were such as to be considered coherent and based on documentation of a certain depth did we express information and evaluations. And this - if it were ever needed - explains the reason why we have remained silent until now. We, who had been aware of the matter for some time and were carrying out the most appropriate checks away from the spotlight of easy advertising, waiting to provide more credible data. But let's start from the beginning.

With normal postal delivery, and postage of 1850 lire, on 3 February 1996 (addressed to the then personal address of the undersigned in Via Odorico Da Pordenone 36 in Florence) the CUN magazine receives a medium format envelope containing a series of original documents. Original, we repeat. Not photocopies.

First of all, an open envelope, apparently sealed at the origin, with the heading "Senate of the Kingdom" on the back, where the two glued flaps both have a sinusoidal fountain pen line to guarantee the closure, and the sender's initials: the same one that appears twice, at the bottom right and at the left, on the header of the letter, written in capital letters always with a fountain pen. Textually "Most confidential - by the hands of S.E. Galeazzo Ciano". In other words, it would be material sent confidentially to the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini, Duce of Fascism and Head of Government at the time. Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Foreign Minister, was practically the "number two" of the Regime.

Then, an autograph letter written in fountain pen on four sides, on headed paper of the same type as the previous envelope: "Senate of the Kingdom", with the triple writing "Fert" under the Savoy coat of arms with the fasces on the sides. The letter is signed "Andrea", is addressed to an unidentifiable "Valiberghi" (?) and is dated 22 August 14th of the Fascist Era: 1936.

Then, a postal card in use at the Senate of the Kingdom for correspondence duty paid, with various notes always written with a fountain pen on both sides.

Finally, a note also headed "Senate of the Kingdom" like the others mentioned above, dated 30.VIII.XIV E.F. (i.e. 8 days later), always written in cursive handwriting with a fountain pen and signed "Andrea" like the letter.

Although not specifically addressed to anyone, the author seems reasonably to be addressing the same person as the recipient of the letter of 22 August, referring to the same topic dealt with by the latter. Unfortunately, the postmark on the envelope which reached us on 3 February 1996 and containing what was described above is not legible.

But, better than our mere list, the reader will be worth seeing these documents, reproduced from the originals (we repeat: originals) and reading the transcription which, for greater clarity, we report here.

"Dear Valiberg

I can confirm what you learned from Valminuti.
Even though the Prefecture of Venice is actively carrying out investigations, there is nothing clear about the history of the mysterious airship!!
It was spotted in the morning (and not in the evening) of Monday. It was a metallic disk, clean, shiny, about ten or twelve meters wide.
Two hunters set off from the nearby base, but even at 130 km/h they were unable to approach him.
It made no sound, which led one to assume it was a balloon. But no one knows balloons that fly faster than the wind. I know for a fact that it was seen by other air force pilots, even by that Marinelli who then made the report that reached Ciano's hands.
Then, after about at least an hour, after it had perhaps passed over Mestre, a sort of long metal tube, gray or slate, was seen (and you still don't know this). In the report of the confidant S.X it is stated as follows:

[IMAGE]

The one I indicated in A was described as a kind of aerial torpedo, with clearly highlighted windows. From these rectangular openings came alternating lights, sometimes white, sometimes red. In B there are two "hats", two hats like those of a priest: large, round, with a dome in the centre, metallic and they followed the torpedo without changing their relative positions.
These devices made smoke, white and long-lasting.
The Prefecture has opened an investigation, but you can imagine that it will make little headway and will have the same outcome as the one in '31.
The Duce expressed his concerns, because he says that if they were real English or French aircraft he would have to review his entire foreign policy. I know for a fact that he said to Starace and others "If they have such devices, we can expect war in days and, what's worse, war in their own way!!"
I can inform you that the rumors that the airship exploded are completely unfounded. I'll let you know for sure as soon as I have it.

Andrea"

The mysterious sender didn't stop there.

In fact, on 19 February 1996, just over three weeks after the first mailing, an envelope stamped with an Italian 750 lire stamp was sent from Borgo Maggiore di San Marino, which was however canceled with a postmark of the Republic of San Marino. It contained a "lightning" (i.e. very urgent) telegram forwarded by the "Stefani Agency" of Milan (ANSA at the time) signed by "Antonelli".

The text reads:

"YOU HAVE ABSOLUTE SECRECY ABOUT

NON-QUALIFIED AIRCRAFT REFERRED TO IN CONFIDENTIAL REPORT 23/47 STOP FOLLOWS LETTER STOP".

The entities in the address are not specified, but the text reads "Copy", meaning that it is an archive document in memory of whoever dealt with the matter. Also in this second case the telegram form, from the Milan Telegraph Office, is an original manuscript with cursive handwriting written with a fountain pen.

Finally, on March 29, 1996, that is, about forty days later, a third letter was sent to us by post, this time from France. The Paris stamp can be glimpsed on the French stamp. As in the case of the other two previous mailings, the recipient's address is typewritten and typed by the same typewriter.

This last letter contained an original sheet with various writings, notes and drawings, headed "Chamber of Deputies - Press Tribune". The topic is unequivocally the same: the mysterious airship of 1936. This can be seen from notes and sketches, all written as always with a hand fountain pen.

The forwarding of such anonymous source material could not fail to lead us, despite the utmost caution, to carry out a series of checks.

First, a content analysis of the texts was submitted to pilots and aeronautical experts. The opinion arose that the form and certain expressions were consistent with the language in use in the 1930s, such as the expression "cacciatori", forerunner of the abbreviated "hunting" which then spread in the 1940s, the accented a instead of "ha".

But naturally all this was not enough to convince us of the possible authenticity of the material, whose anonymous provenance constituted a very serious handicap. More was needed.

Subsequent and fortunate investigations led us to note that the Bolognese newspaper Il Resto del Carlino had also received similar material which, however, given the anonymous source, had not been taken into consideration.

Hence the need to address the problem from two different points of view. First, verifying whether the facts in question could in some way be reflected in the reality of events of the time that could be documented in some way; then, through specific scientific assessments on the documents themselves which, as they were original, could allow a technical-scientific expertise capable of declaring their possible authenticity in terms of dating.

And if today we produce the material that has come to us, finally breaking a silence of almost four years, it is because we have finally reached conclusions, both on a historical level and on a technical verification level of the documents.

We'll go into more detail in the next issue.

(Continues)
 

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how you can read those words, I'll never know…
I built a lexicon from his handwriting, which allows me to identify some of the letters in each word by comparison.

1715053175054.png

With the lexicon in hand, any word which cannot be understood right away, may be guessed based on enough deciphered letters and context. For instance, I could read "Telegramma", "di", "I", "nomi", "dei", "della", "aeronave", "ricognizione", and some other words right away, but "secondo, "Guglielmi", "incaricare", "riservata" and others, only came out after placing enough candidate letters. Then I tried completing the letters to make sure the reading was likely right.

1715058931374.png


Transcription and translation of page 6:

1715019422616.png


External Quote:
Telegramma di Boni
I nomi dei testimoni della
aeronave di Venezia sono
secondo Guglielmi:
Genami - Tolmini
Venanzi - MVSN (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale)
Incaricare Zoppani della
ricognizione -
Udienza riservata col
Duce ore 15:30 del 30 agosto.
Cartolina Postale
--------------------
Telegram from Boni
The names of the witnesses of
the aircraft from Venice are,
according to Guglielmi:
Genami - Tolmini
Venanzi - MVSN (Volunteer Militia for National Security)
Appoint Zoppani to the
reconnaissance.
Secret audience with
the Duce at 15:30 of August 30th.
Postcard
 
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Absolutely not!

I'm waiting on receiving another magazine (which has Umberto Telarico's article in) which is the first published work on these files, which pre-dates Lissoni/Pinotti's articles by about 6 months.

Once I have that I'm going to search through La Rete to see if I can find anything pre-September 1999 which mentions Bongiovanni getting the typed telegrams.

Then I'm hoping to put together a concise timeline of the files. Who received what, when and what was published at each point.

It seems Umberto Telarico's article was the catalyst for Lissoni and Pinotti to get the documents they received in 1996 aged/dated as they'd sat in a drawer for 3 years prior to this.
 
I built a lexicon from his handwriting, which allows me to identify some of the letters in each word by comparison.

View attachment 68259
With the lexicon in hand, any word which cannot be understood right away, may be guessed based on enough deciphered letters and context. For instance, I could read "Telegramma", "di", "I", "nomi", "dei", "della", "aeronave", "ricognizione", and some other words right away, but "secondo, "Guglielmi", "incaricare", "riservata" and others, only came out after placing enough candidate letters. Then I tried completing the letters to make sure the reading was likely right.

View attachment 68272

Transcription and translation of page 6:

View attachment 68250

External Quote:
Telegramma di Boni
I nomi dei testimoni della
aeronave di Venezia sono
secondo Guglielmi:
Genami - Tolmini
Venanzi - MVSN (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale)
Incaricare Zoppani della
ricognizione -
Udienza riservata col
Duce ore 15:30 del 30 agosto.
Cartolina Postale
--------------------
Telegram from Boni
The names of the witnesses of
the aircraft from Venice are,
according to Guglielmi:
Genami - Tolmini
Venanzi - MVSN (Volunteer Militia for National Security)
Appoint Zoppani to the
reconnaissance.
Secret audience with
the Duce at 15:30 of August 30th.
Postcard
someone set john to decoding Linear A and we'll have it translated in a week! All kidding aside, phenomenal work.
 
I have received the new magazine and so I've attached the first (as far as I can tell) article written about these documents - August/September 1999 - by Umberto Telarico.
 

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The translation is going to take a little extra time, the way it's been printed messes with my camera so I need to validate everything it picks up manually first.
 
Just a follow up tidbit here. I recently stumbled upon the writings of Leonard Stringfield, a noted UFO writer and "researcher" whose real passion seemed to be crash retrieval/recovery operations. Bill Brophy who was noted in the OP as adding many parts of the Italian UFO crash not found in the supposed secret documents, mentions Stringfield in various places.

As I suggested in the OP, Brophy is combining and confabulating various UFO stories that were floating around and plugs his dad into them. The part about the Pope and the Vatican may have also come from Stringfield. Like Brophy, Leonard Stringfield seems to have collected and published all kinds of UFO stories, first in a number of books and then in a series of "Status Reports" from the late '70s to the early '90s.

There mostly collections of anonymous and/or 2nd and 3rd hand accounts. Several typical pages would include something like this:

External Quote:

Q. What happened next?

A. The convoy left the base and proceeded North up the highway and then turned West into the range, Paul told me. It took about an hour to get to where we were supposed to go, Crossed a lot of open sand until we reached some hilly area. After they stopped, they fanned out in a long line and started to move toward the hilly area.

Just to clarify, Stringfield is sharing an interview by a UFO researcher named Tim Cooper, in which Cooper is asking questions of an anonymous 1st Sargent (Ret) called "Bob" who is retelling what his anonymous Army buddy "Paul" told him about a crashed UFO 30 years ago. Stringfield will then pass off these 3rd hand anonymous accounts as evidence of a UFO crash. Might do a information thread on some of his "Status Reports", just because they collect and then pass on much of the mythology of a secret government UFO recovery that people like Chris Melon and Hal Puthoff are talking about today.

For this thread, it's another anonymous interview by Cooper that Stringfield is passing along as evidence. It starts like this:

External Quote:

The following information is from a retired Air Force colonel, who was in a key position to know some of the critical UFO issues facing the military establishment during the Roswell era. His disclosures were obtained February 10, 1991 and cleared for use in this report by Tim Cooper, as follows:

Q. What kind of UFO sighting reports at Pentagon in 1945-51?

A. Classified Double Top Secret (Classification category unknown. LHS)

Foo Fighters in 1945-46.

Thought they were German.

Utilized nuclear power in some way not understood.

Composed of metals and plastics not known on Earth.

Detected many bogies in and around Los Alamos and Roswell doing over 4,000 m.p.h. at 2040,000 ft.
Not really sure how this Colonel knew the Foo Fighters were nuclear powered or what they were composed of. Side note: If plastic is a human made material and the Colonel claims there was "plastics not of this earth", then that is not a human made plastic. So how the hell does anyone know it's plastic?

This Colonel later claims the Vatican has photos of UFOs going back to the early 20th century and maybe even a UFO:

External Quote:

I heard of another Air Force project that looked into all the historical records concerning UFO sightings from all over the world. Some of the records were from libraries, newspapers, folklore, mythologies, government records of unusual reports from farmers, lighthouse workers, and so forth.

There was talk that the Vatican holds numerous files of sightings going back to the fifteenth century. They also have photos that clearly depict craft of ususual shapes and sizes that are of 1915 period. No one can gain access to this collection. It was rumored that the Vatican even has a UFO locked up in one of the vault rooms inside the Vatican Basilica and would not let the Air Force see it or photograph it. This study was called the "Whitebook".
https://archive.org/details/stringf...ingfield_Retrievals_Report_6_inner_sanctum_LQ

The idea of Vatican involvement in UFOs and the idea that UFO recovery has been going on as far back as the end of the 19th century is one of David Grusch's claims as well.

Not saying for sure this is where these ideas come from, but it's another layer in the story. This claim is from Stringfield's Status Report #6 which he published in 1991. The Fascist UFO files showed up in ~1996 and the story about them, including a small mention of a crash in Magenta, first gets into English in a British UFO magazine in 2000. Brophy's first letter to that UFO magazine specifically mentions Stringfield. It seems possible that Brophy got the Vatican part from Stringfield, who got it from Tim Cooper who got it from an anonymous Colonel. Where the Colonel got it from remains to be seen.
 
This Colonel later claims the Vatican has photos of UFOs going back to the early 20th century and maybe even a UFO:
...It was rumored that the Vatican even has a UFO locked up in one of the vault rooms inside the Vatican Basilica
https://archive.org/details/stringf...ingfield_Retrievals_Report_6_inner_sanctum_LQ

It would have to be quite a small UFO.

Rome's a busy city of a fair size, and a low-loader carrying a huge disco volante driving towards the Vatican might get noticed.

Location_map_Italy_Rome_Vatican_City.png


I guess the Pope could say that the dome of St Peter's Basilica was being replaced.

Saint-Peter’s-Basilica-in-Rome-Italy-How-To-Avoid-The-Lines-St-Peters-Basilica-Tickets-4.jpg


I wouldn't be too surprised if the Vatican contains a few secrets, but I'd guess they're mainly secrets about people- knowledge or opinions about some religious / political leaders, maybe reports on senior members of the faithful who might have tarnished their copybook. Records of doctrinal arguments behind closed doors, that sort of thing.

But an alien spacecraft protected by the Swiss Guard probably isn't one of them. It's a bit sub-Dan Brown.
 
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