Magenta UFO Crash — Mussolini's RS/33

In June 1933, a bell-shaped metallic craft approximately 10 meters in diameter reportedly crash-landed in fields near the town of Magenta, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately 25 kilometers west of Milan. Italian authorities recovered the object and moved it to the SIAI-Marchetti aviation facility at Vergiate, near Varese — one of Italy's leading military aircraft manufacturers, providing technical expertise for examination of the craft.

Benito Mussolini reportedly ordered an immediate and absolute press blackout — 'silenzio assoluto' — suppressing all reporting on the incident. He subsequently established a secret scientific study group designated RS/33 (Gabinetto RS/33), placing it under the nominal direction of Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of radio, who had strong ties to the Italian military-industrial establishment. The RS/33 Cabinet reportedly included Italian aeronautical engineers and scientists tasked with reverse-engineering or otherwise analyzing the craft's propulsion and materials.

The craft was reportedly held at various secure Italian facilities through the early 1940s. As Allied forces advanced into Italy during World War II and German control over northern Italy increased, US Army assets — reportedly operating under intelligence directives — allegedly identified and acquired the object in 1944 or 1945, potentially transferring it to the United States. If accurate, the Magenta incident would represent the first known government UFO retrieval program in modern history — occurring fourteen years before the 1947 Roswell incident.

The case remained in the domain of Italian UFO research for decades, known primarily through declassified Fascist-era documents and the accounts of researcher Roberto Pinotti, who published extensively on the RS/33 program. It entered mainstream international attention when David Grusch, the former National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency officer turned UAP whistleblower, specifically named the 1933 Italian crash under oath before the House Oversight Committee in July 2023. Grusch stated he had been briefed on the incident as part of his investigation into the US government's alleged UAP material retrieval programs. The Vatican's alleged involvement — through concordat relationships with the Italian state — has also been speculated upon but not confirmed. The Magenta case remains one of the most historically provocative alleged crash-retrieval incidents in the record.