The Magenta Crash and Mussolini's Gabinetto RS/33

Lombardy, 1933. According to papers that surfaced six decades later, something came down near Magenta, a town about 25 km west of Milan. Even the date is unsettled. The original files point to 13 June 1933. Other tellings, including an article by researcher Roberto Pinotti, also give 11 April.

An "unconventional flying vehicle" had "either crashed or landed near Magenta." It was recovered and studied in secret by a group later known as Gabinetto RS/33. The papers name Guglielmo Marconi as its chair, with scientists such as Gaetano Arturo Crocco and ministers Italo Balbo and Galeazzo Ciano beside him. The wreck was allegedly stored in the SIAI Marchetti hangars at Vergiate.

Mussolini, Pinotti writes, "thought that this 'unconventional flying vehicle' was a French, British or German secret weapon, but apparently Guglielmo Marconi believed it was Extra-Terrestrial in nature." One telegram set the rule. "By personal order of the Duce, absolute silence is required about an alleged landing on national soil of unknown aircraft STOP." Transgressors faced referral to the Tribunal for State Security.

The documents arrived by post in 1996, sent by an anonymous source known only as "Mr. X." He said he had inherited them from a relative who worked in the secret department. One package of 34 photocopied pages went to Il Resto del Carlino in Bologna. Its sceptical journalists chose not to publish. Pinotti and Alfredo Lissoni carried the story on, in lectures, in the book Luci nel cielo and in Flying Saucer Review in 2004.

Between January and March 2000, chemist Dr. Antonio Garavaglia tested a single sheet. It was a 1936 letter, not a 1933 record, and he judged it "original and, therefore, authentic." The telegrams have not been tested. Historian Andrea Bedetti found the style consistent with the period, but did not rule out a skilled forger.

In 2010, William "Billy" Brophy Jr. told an Italian audience a story he said came from his father. Two bodies, described as "tall blonde Nordic people with blue eyes and Asian features." Brophy also brought in a bell shape, Pope Pius XII, an American recovery and a final stop at Wright Field.

In 2023, David Grusch repeated the tale. "In 1933, a bell-like craft, around ten meters in size was recovered in Magenta, northern Italy," he told a French magazine. It was kept by Mussolini's government until 1944, he said, when agents of the Office of Strategic Services recovered it. To Ross Coulthart of NewsNation, he added that Pope Pius XII "backchanneled" what the Italians had. In 2024, he suggested it began as a lenticular disc whose edges broke off on impact.

No archive, historian or independent researcher has confirmed RS/33, the crash or the recovery. Marco Grilli, secretary to the prefect of the Vatican archives, said he did not know where Grusch got his information. The papers carry no protocol numbers or official stamps. Historian Graeme Rendall calls the evidence inconclusive.

On Metabunk, researchers traced each layer. The 1996 files speak only of a disc or cigar, with no Pope, no bell and no American recovery. The bell echoes the Nazi Die Glocke myth. The Nordic bodies echo 1959 body stories from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid covered the case as "Mussolini's Aliens." The leading sceptical view is forgery or modern invention.

Still, Magenta endures, billed as the crash before Roswell. Buried history or skilled invention, it remains unproven, and the argument goes on.