- Background
Similarly to other countries around the world, Italy represents an historical rich country with respect of the number of UFO observations and the different UFO researches undertaken. As a result of a wave of UFO sightings in 1978 and some questions raised by members of the Italian Parliament, the then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti designated the Air Force as the institutional Body to collect, verify and monitor the UFOs. As a result, the Minister of Defense ordered a specific office within Air Staff Headquarters to centralize all UFO data, and all armed forces were asked to forward their data to this office. Nowadays, this activity is carried out by the General Security Department of the Air Force. Anyone wishing to submit an event pertaining to a UFO sighting can do this by using the specific questionnaires available on the Air Force’ website. After the form has been submitted on line, it will be delivered to the nearest “Carabinieri” station (the national military police of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations). This will result in launching an investigation for trying to identify the nature of the phenomena observed, i.e. attempting to find an explanation in terms of human-made events and/or natural phenomena. If necessary, this research will also involve the participation of some other Italian competent bodies. Overall, such investigation will aim at ensuring that there is no potential defense of national security issue associated with the UFO sighting. If it is eventually not possible to identify the nature of the phenomena, the event will be classified as an observation of an Unidentified Flying Object. Obviously this will not mean that an alien vehicle was flying above Italy, but simply will indicate that it was not possible to identify the origin of the phenomena observed.
The yearly UFO summaries of the Air Force covering the period 2001- 2013 are available at the following link:
http://www.aeronautica.difesa.it/Organizzazione/SMA/EntiDipendenti/Pagine/RGS_OVNI.aspx.
As I had the opportunity in some previous posts to provide some statistics pertaining to the numbers of UFO observations in others countries (e.g. Canada, USA, France), I thought that it would also be useful in the context of this interview to retrieve some data regarding Italy. In that respect, I have found a recent chart which that was presented by Italian researcher Gian Paolo Grassino at the 26th National UFO convention “150 years of UFO in Italy”, an event organized by CISU in November 2011 in Torino. The below chart shows that CISU had collected an impressive number of sightings (+/- 25.000) on the period 1947-2010, and that there has also been a considerable increase of UFO reports since 2002.
(Source: CISU, http://www.ufo.it/torino2011/grassino.pdf).
Fig. 1: CISU number of UFO sightings (Source: Gian Paolo Grassino, cisu, 2011).
Regarding the declassification of official governmental UFO information, it should be emphasized that as early as 1978 the Air Force started to release some UFO reports to Italians Ufological associations. A quick summary of the release of Italian official files, compiled by Spanish researcher Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, is as follows:
1978
6 (1977-1978) Air Force UFO reports released to CUN, CNIFAA and CIRSUFO.
1986
Summaries for 70 Air Force UFO reports (1979-1985) released to CUN and CISU.
1988-2001
Yearly Air Force UFO sighting summaries (1987-2000) released to CUN and CISU.
1993
Air Force statistical study of 111 UFO reports (1979-1990) published.
1996-2001
Full Air Force UFO files (1979-1990) released to CISU: 372 reports, ~3,000 pages.
2001 to date
UFO sighting summaries online (2001-2013)
For interested readers, further historical information and supporting details can be found in the following article of Edoardo Russo (CISU, http://www.cisu.org/): “A Summary of Official UFO Research in Italy” . This article can be found on line on line at the following link (pages 110-112 of the excellent document “Proceedings of the 1999 Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop”): http://www.project1947.com/shg/proceedings/shgproceed1.pdf
- “UFO, I Dossier Italiani”
In March 2014, for the first time a book focusing on the Italian military files appeared on the Italians bookstores’ shelves. Two journalists (Lao Petrilli and Vincenzo Sinapi) managed to get access to the registered military UFO files and were allowed to consult, photograph, copy and store many UFO testimonies to be used for writing a book. In order to clarify the information contained in this book, UAP Observations Reporting Scheme contacted one of the authors. Vincenzo Sinapi kindly accepted to answer specific questions and provide at the same time some supporting statistical data.
Fig. 2: Book UFO. I dossier italiani, Petrilli Lao; Sinapi Vincenzo, Editore Ugo Mursia Editore, 2014.
Some information about the authors:
– Lao Petrilli, journalist, founder and director of WikiLao.it, works for RDS, to “La Stampa” and the Australian broadcaster SBS. He is the author of “Embedded, hunt for terrorists with the Marines “(2005) and, with Vincenzo Sinapi, “Nasiriyah, the true story” (2007).
– Vincenzo Sinapi is the managing editor added to the Chronicles Italian news agency ANSA. After working for a decade on judicial investigations and major processes, he began writing in 1998 about defense and security, following closely the activities of the Italian soldiers in theaters of war.
Why did you write this book and do you plan to issue an English edition ?
Vincenzo Sinapi: We are not ufologists, but investigative journalists. In the Italian media there has always been a lot of discussion about the Italian Air Force UFO “secret archives” and we decided to enquire about them. We determined the location of these archives and managed to access the UFO documentation. We realized that we had in our hands the real documents, and in fact that most of them had never been published before. One scoop, in fact. This is how the idea of a book was born. A book about UFOs written according to journalistic criteria, aseptically and neutral. UFO Sightings reports from these military files are reported in our book in their entirety, without adding any personal assessment. We wanted to make available these official documents to all citizens, in order to allow them to “get an idea” of the UFO phenomenon in Italy, without withholding any part of the official documentation or adding any of our personal views. For the interest of UFO researchers, we offer some cases that have largely been unpublished until today. Even at the international level, in our opinion, our book stands out due to both the working method and the content. Hence, we indeed have the idea of translating this book into English in the future.
Have you encountered any difficulty for accessing/consulting these official UFO files ? Did you need any special authorization and where are the files kept ?
The material is kept at the premises of the General Security Department of the Air Force, the department which deals with collecting and archiving national reports of “Oggetti Volanti Non Identificati (O.V.N.I.)” (UFOs in Italian). We did not encounter particular difficulties in accessing these files, despite the fact that the Air Force has always been very careful to open their UFO archive’ doors. They hold an archive containing a large quantity of documents that were once protected by various classifications of secrecy and that have been declassified since some years. What we have done is to ask for permission to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, to inspect and make copies of the material. This authorization was granted only after a few days. From our side, there was the promise that we would publish the material without any distortion and that the book would not favor any specific thesis, but only strictly reported the facts as quoted in the official reports. From the side of the Air Force, there was no restriction or control whatsoever regarding the content of the book. In fact, we have been free to publish whatever we wanted.
Are the files properly archived at the General Security Department’s premises and is there any plan to make them available on line (like the CNES/GEIPAN reports) ?
Reports of UFO sightings are contained in yearly folders starting from 1972, when the Air Force began to store this material in a systematic way. However and as previously mentioned, it was only in 1978 that the Air Force was formally instructed by the Government to deal with the UFO matter. In each binder, you can find all material relating to individual reporting cases. If a sighting was made by a citizen, the binder typically contains the following:
Firstly the original declaration made by the witness to the Police. Secondly a specific UFO questionnaire filled in by the witness: “Report of sighting of unidentified flying object” which contains 21 questions and some drawing of the UFO made by the witness. This questionnaire follows the format of the standard form that had been adopted in the United States at the time of the official American Project Blue Book. Thirdly, any photographs or video recordings made by the witness. Finally, the investigations’ results conducted by departments or the Air Force civilian agencies that were tasked at the time to perform the relevant verifications. On the web site of the Air Force (see link given above), there is a section dedicated to UFOs which includes a yearly summary sheet of every Unidentified Flying Object’ sighting, starting from the year 2001. However, these tables show only a very few details and therefore not the files’ contents.
Fig. 3: Soncino (Cremona), 09/09/2013
How many cases originate from military sources and what are their origins (e.g. Navy, Air Force) ?
The messages contained in the Archive of the Air come from various sources. Most are those of from all categories of individuals (e.g. adults, teens, men, women, workers, professionals, priests). There are also, in fewer numbers but still of significant interest, reports of witnesses belonging to the Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force, both pilots ground staff), to the Police Forces and also some reports originating from civilian planes pilots.
What are the most documented military UFO events and from which years?
Several UFO reports made by the military are quite detailed, especially the ones coming from the pilots. You can find them in several years, like for example one of 1977 (27 October), when a “disco light” was observed by several Army helicopters’pilots at the airport of Cagliari (capital of the island of Sardinia). In fact, it is one of the cases that will push the government to engage into the UFO topic and to instruct the Air Force to take care of the matter henceforth. A case quite unique, in light of the number of trained and experienced witnesses, and due to the fact that an UFO had even violated the restricted and protected airspace of an Italian military base. In the book, there are many episodes of UFO flying over military bases or UFOs that have been observed and chased by military pilots. For example, the case which occurred in Foggia (Southern Italy) on the June 6, 1978, when a pilot chased a “red-orange light” for a certain amount of time but which was then forced to return to base due to lack of fuel. Another occurrence took place in Cisterna di Latina (central Italy) when a top Air gun’s pilot managed to come close as to 50 meters from an object that he had “never seen before” in his career. Or also an event in La Spezia (northern Italy) on March 18, 2003, when an Navy helicopter observed for about 20 minutes a “hard white circular light of about a meter’s diameter”. These are only a few illustrating examples of such military UFO observations, as in fact there are dozens of such cases in the Air Force documentation.
Are there any military cases which include specific supporting scientific data (e.g. radar, traces, pictures) ?
Even in the files relating to military reports and this is also applicable to all UFO observations recorded in the Air Force files, the documentation only provides, at the exception of very few exceptions, the results of the investigations without the support of any additional documentation. Such information is kept with the department that carried out the investigation, as requested at the time of the investigation.
Do you know if any of this UFO information has been shared with other countries or with the Italian scientific community ? Is there any cooperation agreement existing in Italy with some research institutes, laboratories or scientists ?
We do not know whether or not there is an exchange of information through official channels between Italy and other countries. In the documents that are kept in the Air Force UFO archives, there is no sign of such cooperation. We personally believe that as part of the existing collaboration between the Italian Air Force and the allied countries’ Air Forces, there is no obstacle against the exchange of information regarding individual UFO cases. However, during our research we have not found any record of such correspondence in the UFO files. Surely because the Air Force’s archived messages cover exclusively domestic UFO cases. With regard to the cooperation with civilian agencies and the Italian scientific community, the government’s proposal at the time, dating from 1978 and continued by the successive governments, was involving the CNR (National Research Council). In that respect, we found in the documents that we consulted, the project of a cooperation agreement involving six different ministries. However it appears that at the end such collaboration never materialized, however for reasons that we don’t understand.
Fig. 4: Casoria (Napoli), 12/05/2011
Have the military taken any proactive action in order to detect such phenomena ? For example in the context of specific UFO field experiments ? Has there ever been any deployment of scientific/military equipment for the detection and tacking of UFO in locations where there had been a sudden increase of UFO sightings ?
The Italian Air Force and in particular the general security department (which replaced the SIOS II Department, Information Services and Operational Situations, the “secret service” of the Armed Forces which was abolished January 1,1998) has been tasked to exclusively deal with the UFO topic in relation with potential issues of flight safety, defense or national security. The UFO investigations only aimed at ensuring that the country was not facing any potential threat; therefore not at determining the origin of the UFO phenomena. The Air Force performs verifications associated to airspace control and air defense, but this is not in relation to technical aspects and the scientific nature of the phenomenon. According to us, there has been are no specific UFO field surveys, at the exception of course of the “Carabinieri” who will have received the UFO report alert and decided to go on the field for further investigating it.
From studying these files, what do you think is the opinion of the Italian Army regarding the UFO phenomena ?
For each message sufficiently serious received by the Air Force, the necessary verifications are systematically performed. In the different records, the police officers often provide an assessment of the seriousness and reliability of the witness. But not concerning the origin of the event. No general consideration regarding the “UFO phenomenon” is given by the military. Our opinion is that the Defense’s world – and the Air Force in particular – look carefully into this UFO matter, without underestimating it.
However this is always performed within the limits of their respective mandates, and also in light of their budgetary constraints. These are certainly the limitations that prevent someone you from performing those additional investigations that may be necessary and useful. But such actions belong to the scientific community and not to the military forces.
Fig. 5: Rivalta (Torino), 28/08/2010
What have you learnt from these files and what cases have impressed you the most (if any) ?
What we have learnt is that the number of UFO observations in Italy was much larger than we had originally expected. Indeed, UFOs have been seen in all the Italian regions, every year and by all sort of witnesses. Since 1972,a total of 445 UFO reports has been officially registered and filed by the Italian Air Force (see chart below). The year that recorded the highest number of sightings, perhaps due to the after effects of the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (released in Italians theaters at the end of 1977) has been 1978, with 69 reports. Others years depicting many UFO observed flying over the country has been the year 1980 with 32 cases, followed up by 1997 and 2010 with 22 sightings each of them. After that there have been 18 cases in 1995 and 17 for both 1998 and 2011. With respect to low numbers, in addition to 1976 which represented the only year without any sightings at all, the years 1975, 1972, 1982, 1987 and 2004 have just registered two UFO files . Last year, seven observations were officially catalogued as reports of Unidentified Flying Objects. An amount quite similar to the one of 2012 (10).
Fig. 6: Number of registered UFO sightings (Source: Sinapi Vincenzo)
Concerning the geographical areas of these 445 reports, in the south there were 160 sightings, the north following closer with a total of 154, while the Centre of Italy showed a slightly lower number of reports (120). Only one case has been registered in San Marino, but it is true that this can be easily explained by the fact that this republic is an enclaved microstate of only 62 km² and 32 000 inhabitants.
Looking at the details per region (see below illustration), the numbers clearly placed Lazio at the top with 53 cases. This region was then followed by Tuscany with 43 reports, Lombardy and Campania (36), Puglia (34), Emilia Romagna (32), Sicily (31), Veneto (23) Brands (21), Sardinia (19), Calabria, Piemonte and Abruzzo (18), Liguria (17), Friuli Venezia Giulia (15), Trentino Alto Adige (11), Basilicata (3), Umbria (3), Valle d’Aosta (2) and Molise (1).
Fig. 7: Number of registered UFO sightings per region (Source: Sinapi Vincenzo)
Browsing through the various reports that have been collected by the Air Force since 1972, we have noticed throughout the decades a change of attitude from the witnesses towards the unknown and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. In the early years the persons observing a UFO were mostly afraid, and even in some cases terrified. More recently however, the witnesses were almost chasing the “flying saucers” or ready to confront UFOs and photograph them. As previously mentioned, the interesting cases reported in the book are many. If we were asked to select only one of them, with respect to the quality of the witness and the level of details available, we would choose the sighting by an Air Force top gun which took place on February 9, 1994 in Cisterna di Latina, central Italy. The pilot, engaged in a training mission with a student, saw a UFO and chased it until it was only 50 meters away. The observation was very precise and clearly described an object with stubby wings, a bright green back and a gray belly. According to the military pilot, this object for sure “was not any type of known aircraft” and the UFO was able to escape pursuit.
Many thanks Mr Sinapi for your time and we will be looking forward to the English edition of your book.
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