Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by Susan Katz Keating
The movie just dropped. The files keep coming out. We’ve been covering this for years. Here’s your field briefing.
With a major UFO film hitting theaters today, the timing feels almost scripted. But at Soldier of Fortune, we didn’t wait for Hollywood to greenlight a script before digging into what’s real, what’s rumored, and what the government doesn’t want to talk about. Here’s a quick-intel roundup of how SOF has tackled the phenomenon, from a 1933 Italian crash site to nuclear triangles in New Mexico to a dusty FBI memo that broke the internet.
Before Roswell: Mussolini’s Crashed Saucer
Mussolini’s UFO File: The 1933 Magenta Crash Declassified
Fourteen years before Roswell, locals reported that a bell-shaped craft slammed into a field near Magenta, Italy. Afterwards, Il Duce ordered a total media blackout. Soldier of Fortune contributor Austin Lee walks us through what happened next. The telegrams, the secret research group, and the Axis powers’ obsession with reverse-engineering the craft’s reportedly non-terrestrial materials. Ancient texts were cross-referenced. And by 1943, the Nazis were reportedly experimenting with a gravity-manipulation device called “Die Glocke” inspired by the Magenta find. Conspiracy? Maybe. But Mussolini’s own silenzio assoluto order is in the record.
The Ground Zero of UFO Lore
Beyond the Crash: Roswell, the Nuclear Triangle, and UFO Questions That Remain Unanswered
Writer Martin Kufus lays out the geographic and strategic context that made Roswell the most famous UFO story in history. By summer 1947, central New Mexico was the most militarized, most nuclear-saturated piece of real estate on the planet. It included the Trinity blast site, Los Alamos, the Enola Gay’s home base, and early rocket tests from captured German V-2 scientists. Whatever fell near Roswell that July fell into the most sensitive airspace on Earth. Kufus examines the Pentagon’s official position, Project Blue Book’s 701 unexplained cases, and why the government still won’t flatly rule out that something strange is out there.
The FBI Hunted UFOs — Then Quit
The FBI’s ‘Hottel’ UFO Memo That Broke the Internet
In the 1940’s, the FBI had a UFO file. They walked away from it in mid-1950, four months after a Washington field supervisor named Guy Hottel wrote a memo about three recovered saucers and three-foot occupants in metallic suits. The memo sat in the vault for decades until the internet found it in 2011, and raised more questions.
Nukes and UFOs: A Pattern Too Consistent to Ignore
Beyond Roswell: UFO Sightings and Nuclear Weapons
Martin Kufus’s continues his deep-dive, addressing a question the Air Force has quietly been wrestling with for decades: why do UFO sightings cluster around nuclear weapons sites?
All Those UFO Sightings in 2023? Blame the Radar Filter.
Are UFO Sightings the Result of Switching Off Radar Filter?
SOF publisher Susan Katz Keating broke this one in real time. When the Chinese spy balloon crossed North America undetected in early 2023, the subsequent embarrassment forced the military to switch off an automated radar filter that had been quietly ignoring slow-moving objects for years. The moment they did, “UFO’s” started popping up everywhere — over Alaska, Canada, Montana, Lake Huron. Four objects were shot down in quick succession. As one security source told SOF: “We’re not filtering out slow-moving objects as per usual. That’s why you’re seeing all these UFO’s pop up around the country.”
The files keep getting released. The questions keep not getting answered. SOF will keep reporting. Stay locked in.
Susan Katz Keating is the publisher and editor in chief at Soldier of Fortune.
