Incident · 30 November 1973 · Turin-Caselle airport, Piedmont, Italy
Turin-Caselle: a light chased by a Piper pilot and seen from airliners (Italy, 1973)
Also known as Caselle 1973, Turin 1973, Torino Caselle 1973, caso Caselle, Marano case
On the evening of 30 November 1973, a private pilot landing at Turin-Caselle was warned by the tower of an unidentified object over the approach path and was guided towards it. Riccardo Marano, flying a Piper back from Genoa, said he saw a brilliant, colour-changing globe that kept its distance, and followed it as far as Voghera before fuel ran short. The commander of the military airport confirmed that the object had been picked up, describing a light that looked like a dim star drifting west, and an Alitalia captain landing from Paris said he saw a light brighter than a star.
The Italian Air Force's archive confirms the core: a report at 19:00 that day from Caselle Torinese by the civilian pilot of a private aircraft and Air Force personnel, catalogued as unidentified. Its table gives no radar data and names no one.
The contemporary press also carries the counter-evidence: the commander of the Mortara air-defence radar said his radar saw nothing, and the claim that it had tracked the object at Mach 4 was unattributed. The airport commander's own description, a dim star-like light, is much plainer than the newspaper headlines. Later sightings that week were put down to Venus by a Turin astronomer. Lists that name the airliners AZ 345 and AZ 043 with captains "Tranquillo" and "Mezzetti", airborne weather-radar tracks or a vertical climb out of radar cover go beyond what the 1973 reports say.
Sources: Aeronautica Militare, Archivio OVNI 1972–1990, p. 11 · Stampa Sera, 1 and 3 December 1973; La Stampa, 2 December 1973 (Archivio storico La Stampa)
Facts and claims
- documented The Italian Air Force archive records a report from Caselle Torinese at 19:00 on 30 November 1973: a luminous, irregularly shaped object of variable speed and direction, reported by the civilian pilot of a private aircraft and Air Force personnel, and catalogued as O.V.N.I. Source: Italian Air Force OVNI archive, 1972–1990 (summary table of 208 reports)
- claimed Riccardo Marano, a 28-year-old professional pilot returning from Genoa in his Piper, told La Stampa that as he prepared to land at Caselle around 19:00 the control tower warned him of an unidentified object stationary about 400 m above the approach path, which the ground radar showed as a return as strong as a DC-8's. Guided from the ground, he saw it at about 3,500 m: "un globo luminoso che emanava bagliori", shifting from violet to blue to red, which kept its distance, rising and falling, and headed towards Genoa at about 900 km/h. He followed it as far as Voghera, where low fuel forced him back. — Riccardo Marano Source: archiviolastampa.it (archived)
- claimed Colonel Rustichelli, commander of the military airport at Caselle, confirmed to the press that a luminous "punto materiale" had been stationary or moving very slowly, then drifted west towards the mouth of the Susa valley, and that the Piper got within about a mile and a half before it moved off and climbed. "Somigliava ad una stella di luce non molto intensa" (it looked like a star of not very intense light), he said. Stampa Sera adds that another Air Force radar confirmed the object. Source: archiviolastampa.it (archived)
- claimed Stampa Sera reported that crew and passengers of Alitalia flight AZ 043, leaving Caselle for Rome at 18:45, watched the object for a long time on their route as far as Genoa, and that one of two airliners radioed the tower that it saw an intermittent light four miles behind it and would keep clear. Source: archiviolastampa.it (archived)
- claimed Captain Giovanni Mezzalami, commanding Alitalia DC-9 flight AZ 325 arriving from Paris, told Stampa Sera that the Turin tower had said both its radar and the Mortara military radar saw the object, and that he saw it himself on the way down and while taxiing: "Era molto più luminoso di una stella, anche più di un satellite", apparently at the height of the mountains around Turin. He offered no hypothesis and recalled that other strange sights had turned out to be sounding balloons, satellites or flocks of birds. Source: archiviolastampa.it (archived)
- claimed Major Cespa, commanding the Mortara military radar station, told Stampa Sera: "noi non abbiamo visto nulla; il radar non ha individuato alcun oggetto misterioso" (we saw nothing; the radar picked up no mysterious object). The same article's unattributed report that Mortara had tracked the object at about Mach 4 rests on no named source. Source: archiviolastampa.it (archived)
- claimed Sightings around Turin and the Susa valley continued for days. On 10 December Stampa Sera reported that the director of the Pino Torinese observatory, Professor Fracastoro, said the object that set off the previous evening's alarm over Turin was in all probability the planet Venus, very bright that evening, and that the Caselle control tower agreed. That explanation concerns the later alarm, not the 30 November chase. Source: archiviolastampa.it (archived)
Connected files
Documents
People
- Riccardo Marano (witnesses) — The Piper pilot guided by Caselle tower towards the object; he followed it as far as Voghera
Mentioned in this file
- Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare) (Organization)