An Insider's Encyclopedia of UFOs in the Italian Air Force: Five Decades of OVNIFA Documentation
To the point
Paolo Fiorino's book is a wide-ranging insider's encyclopedia of UFOs in the Italian Air Force, built from more than five decades of OVNIFA-collected sightings and Air Staff documents with help from Renzo Cabassi, Gino Gatti, and others, which reveals extensive internal material that is only partly declassified, presents key cases, and argues for an evidence-based, non-conspiracy view shaped by bureaucratic limits and changing priorities.
Paolo Fiorino presents an encyclopedic volume on UFOs within the Italian Air Force, an all-encompassing work built from more than five decades of collection and study. It grows out of the OVNIFA initiative, begun in the mid-1990s to gather sightings reported by young military personnel and to map documentation held by the Air Force General Staff and Defense General Staff, with broad collaboration from the Italian Center for UFO Studies, Renzo Cabassi, Gino Gatti, and scholars like Quallet and Michele. The effort uncovered extensive, partly classified material and even destroyed files, making full declassification challenging and revealing a landscape of internal-use documents, unclassified phonograms, and gaps in the synthetic file of UFO activity. A key phase involved direct contact with the Air Force leadership, culminating in meetings with high officers and the establishment of a process via Lieutenant Colonel X to obtain documents, leading to thousands of pages across hundreds of cases. After the Twin Towers incident, access tightened and requests were redirected to summaries, reducing the depth of available material and reflecting shifting priorities within the service. The book discusses notable cases such as Cecconi’s 1979 sighting near Sant’Angelo, the Caselle del 73 case, the Epiphany of 1997, the Casale Maferrato incident, and sightings by Latina pilots, weaving civilian and military perspectives into an ongoing research record. It is framed as an insiders’ encyclopedia, part of a planned broader project to document fifty years of ufology, and it rejects conspiracy theories while documenting the realities of data and the limits of what can be known. Prefaced by Giancarlo D’Alessandro and reflecting comments by General Mainini, the narrative underscores a persistent, sometimes contentious, but productive effort to understand who creates UFOs, even as bureaucratic hurdles and shifting priorities shape what can be shared.
Source: youtube.com