Dr. Roberto Pinotti on the 1933 Magenta UFO Crash
Leading ufologist details an epic story for the Sol Foundation Symposium in Italy; reminding us that, for some mysterious reasons, crashes are a major part of the UFO story.
Telling a good story is at the heart of Ufology. And most of what we can say with certainty about flying saucers and all UAP comes from the consistencies and patterns revealed in eyewitness narratives. In short, most of the data are in the stories of eyewitnesses — people who have experienced the phenomenon.
Dr. Roberto Pinotti, PhD, is an accredited sociologist, a former officer in the Italian Air Force, and one of the world’s great UFO investigators. In his address to the Sol Foundation Symposium in October, Dr. Pinotti shared one of the most astonishing stories in UAP history. And it took place not too far from where we were gathered.
Dr. Pinotti related how on the morning of Tuesday, June 13, 1933, a metallic flying machine, about 30 feet across and ten feet tall, shaped something like a damaged bell, of unknown origin and unfamiliar design, coursed over the mountains and foothills of the Alps and crashed in a field near Magenta, a historic city about 15 miles west of Milan in northern Italy.
By 7:30 a.m., local time, the object and its wreckage were discovered, reported to local authorities, and soon became the subject of concern at the highest level of Italian government. The crash scene was secured and cordoned off by the local police and Carabinieri. The authorities issued a cover story to mollify, if not satisfy, some, if not most, of the curious, the same day.
Gabinetti RS/33
To oversee the investigation and security of the recovered object of unknown origin, il Duce Benito Mussolini created a body consisting of the brightest scientific minds and closest military officials. Termed “Gabinetti RS/33,” for Gabinetti di Ricerca Speciale 33, or Special Research Cabinet 33, the panel is reported to have included Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Prize winning scientist and inventor of the radio.
Initially, the investigators thought the object was an aircraft of German origin, about 30-feet in diameter and about 10-feet in height. German authorities are reported to have examined the wreckage and immediately determined it was neither their design or property. There was no immediate word about occupants, crew or survivors.
Dr. Pinotti reported the disk-shaped object was heavy and required specialized equipment for recovery and heavy trucks for transportation. The crashed object was eventually was lifted from the field in Magenta and crated off to a secure location, reportedly a secluded hangar on a remote military base under the auspices of the Italian Air Force and control of RS/33.
Today, some allege the senior Marconi, a devout Roman Catholic, also played an instrumental role prior to his death in 1937 of officially notifying the Holy See regarding the discovery and recovery of an object of apparent extraterrestrial origin. This unpublicized contact also helped prepare a path for securing the object with non-fascist hands before the approaching Second World War.
Italy maintained possession of the Magenta object through much of World War 2, reportedly inspiring aeronautical engineers in Italy and the other Axis powers, Dr. Pinotti reported. Sometime near the war’s end, Italy physically transferred the object itself to a secure location within the Holy See.
Thus, Pope Pius XI and his government in the Vatican prevented the object’s capture by Nazi Germany and post-war, the Soviet Union. Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton, then affiliated with the Office of Strategic Services, a US wartime intelligence agency and forerunner of the CIA, are reported to have played key roles in the Magenta object’s transfer to the contiguous United States in 1945. The object has rested in a cocoon of secrecy, under the auspices of unknown powers and agencies, ever since.
It bears mentioning for democracy that Mr. Dulles and Mr. Angleton also played important roles in recruiting and securing 1,600 Nazi scientists, including Hermann Oberth and Werner von Braun, and an unknown number of Nazi officers and spies, including Rheinhard Gehlen and Klaus Barbie, in the effort to contain the Soviet Union after the war. Of course, these Project PAPERCLIP “assets” were also put to use, many for better and too many for worse, later in the Cold War in the race to the moon and the socio-political-economic dominion of the planet Earth.
Important Documents from an Anonymous Sender
Backing up the story of the Magenta crash are three sets of documents sent anonymously in 1996 by mail to Dr. Pinotti, the editors of a popular newspaper, and to an independent journalist. The documents included a telegram from Mussolini and directed no mention of the crashed object in Magenta was to be repeated officially. Two other telegrams in the document batch mentioned the matter of a crashed object of unknown origin was being been taken most seriously at the highest levels of the Italian government. In addition, the documents included reports and drawings of other UFO encounters from pre-war Italy.
Dr. Pinotti submitted the documents for forensic analysis and received confirmation supporting the validity of the paperwork. Handwriting analysis was consistent with principals of the time, and analysis of the ink and paper were consistent with those from the 1930s and 1940s. For the record, in more recent years Guglielmo Marconi’s grandson confirmed the inventor of radio accepted the idea of extraterrestrial life as fact.
To see the documents, read their translation and learn more from Dr. Pinotti, I recommend a visit to the work archived by the team at The Black Vault: The UFO Files of Mussolini.
And there things stood. Dr. Roberto Pinotti shared a good story about a crashed flying saucer from the days before the term was generally known — in 1933 Fascist Italy, of all places.
For his trouble confirming the authenticity of the documents and affirming their contents, as best as possible, through the word of surviving relatives of the original principals, Dr. Pinotti attracted the attention of professional debunkers and their paid shills. As if singing from the same hymnal and page, a cry arose from journalists, historians, scientists and even a number of fellow ufologists to impugn his word, investigative and analytic abilities, but worst of all, good intentions.
The Reality
After years of rumors with no confirmation that this story was even true, two prominent figures involved in official UAP research on behalf of the US Government testified to the US Congress in support of Dr. Pinotti’s story of the Magenta UAP crash.
Mr. David Grusch is a physicist formerly employed by the US Air Force and, more recently, other unnamed government agencies as part of official task forces formed to investigate UAP. Mr. Grusch testified in 2023 to the Congress that he learned public United States agencies and private organizations and enterprises were in possession of several UFOs: crashed objects and landed vehicles of unknown manufacture and design. These include, Grusch testified, the object recovered in 1933 Magenta, Italy.
Read about Mr. Grusch and his testimony to Congress in PDF format: “We are not alone: The UFO whistleblower speaks.”
Separately, Dr. Harald Malmgren in an interview conducted with investigator Jesse Michel literally days before his death, confirmed the Magenta UFO crash story. Dr. Malmgren, a distinguished government economist and counsel, served in the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford.
UFO researcher Richard Dolan, historian and author of “UFOs and the National Security State” and other important works on the topic, provides an excellent overview of Dr. Malmgren’s career, work in UFOs and interview in a recent podcast:
Readers can hear Dr. Malmgren’s complete interview with researcher Jesse Michel in the following video:
The Big Picture
The discussion involves more than the story of a crashed saucer in pre-World War 2 Italy. The issue concerns money and power and new knowledge gained through the study of the UFO phenomenon. Much of this information has been sequestered by anonymous agents of the world’s superpowers, principally, it seems, those of the United States of America.
However, if ever there was a question for all humanity to consider and weigh in on, it is UAP — UFOs, flying saucers, little green men, unknown things falling from the sky — or whatever name people care to call a phenomenon that can apparently manipulate matter, energy, space and time in ways that we do not yet understand.
In addition to its potential new breakthroughs in science and engineering, the UAP issue is a question for all humanity and for democracy. Who controls what is learned should not be the exclusive purview of a secret agency or a cabal operating in the dark without oversight and outside the channels of legal responsibility. Crashed flying saucers and all they represent are the business of We the People.