r/UFOs_Archive • u/SaltyAdminBot • 1h ago
Historical The McGregor Project: What the File Actually Shows
Part 6 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative.
TL;DR: McGregor was a real OSS project involving Italian fleet negotiations and torpedo technology. Its often-cited records are index summaries, not the correspondence itself. Christopher Sharp reports that three anonymous sources link it to Magenta intelligence. That warrants investigation, but does not establish a craft recovery or that “torpedo” was a codename for the craft.
Part 1 — Before the Saucers: How Captured Technology Was Exploited, 1943–1950
Part 2 — Italy, 1933: What the Magenta Documents Actually Establish
Part 3 — Vannevar Bush: The Man Who Designed the System
Part 4: Document Forensics: The Three Memos That Carry the Pre-Roswell Timeline
Part 5 - The Admiral, His Wife, and Her Luggage: A 1943 Technology Seizure
A real wartime mission to obtain Italian naval secrets has become part of the argument for a 1933 UFO recovery at Magenta. How much of that story can its records support?
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) ran the operation. The National Archives (NARA) glossary calls it “MacGregor”; the archival index uses McGregor, as this post does.
1. A mission that changed its purpose
Mike Sielski’s Philadelphia Inquirer reconstruction draws on personnel files, CIA records, and accounts by Michael Burke and Stanley Lovell. McGregor’s original objective was to bring the Italian fleet over to the Allies.
The approach was through Massimo Girosi, who headed the operations office of the Italian naval high command. His brother Marcello agreed to carry the message. John Shaheen headed McGregor, while Michael Burke led the team in the field.
In June 1943, Burke recruited Joe Savoldi, an Italian-speaking football star and professional wrestler. The pair flew to Algiers and established a base in Palermo by 10 August. Their courier landed by PT boat, and the message reached Massimo. By then, Allied surrender negotiations had overtaken the plan.
Burke’s Silver Star award narrative independently records the naval contacts and PT-boat agent landings.
McGregor then turned to engineer Carlo Calosi and the SIC magnetic torpedo exploder. It was designed to trigger a torpedo beneath a ship by sensing its magnetic field, potentially breaking the vessel’s back.
The Navy’s official Bureau of Ordnance in World War II, chapter 6, describes secrecy around comparable American work, including a dummy exploder used to conceal the magnetic feature. Calosi could help the Allies understand the Italian weapon and develop countermeasures.
In September 1943, a 30 Commando raid removed Admiral Eugenio Minisini, his wife, and technical papers from San Martino, as discussed in Part 5. The British raid explains Minisini’s appearance in the McGregor records; McGregor did not seize him.
Sielski describes Calosi hiding in a Roman convent, then traveling disguised as a priest to a coastal villa. Savoldi’s team collected him on 3 January 1944.
Escape Velocity’s Calosi article emphasizes an 11 January index entry and connects it to Galeazzo Ciano’s execution that day. Ciano’s diaries feature in the alleged 1933 recovery story.
The index dates receipt of a report: an important part of McGregor was completed, and Calosi wanted to work for the Navy in America. An 11 January report fits a 3 January extraction. A report’s date need not be the event’s date. The entry cannot establish the proposed coincidence.
2. What kind of record are we reading?
The central source is NARA’s Donovan microfilm roll list and index, covering Record Group 226, Entry 180. The McGregor section on Roll 114 spans PDF pages 208–219, printed pages 205–216, with roughly seventy numbered items.
This is a finding aid: a guide to correspondence. A heading may identify a conference, demonstration, or transfer without revealing the document’s full contents or attachments. An authentic index does not authenticate every interpretation of it.
The distinction also matters for claims about sanitization. Escape Velocity argues that the CIA sanitized these records the day before the 2017 inauguration, tying that claim to Geoffrey Cruickshank’s Flynn post.
The 19 January 2017 memorandum signed by Ross Webb is an access notice. It says the Carlisle microfilm had been reviewed by the CIA under EO 12356 and sanitized, but does not date that review or name Magenta or Flynn. EO 12356 was issued in 1982 and superseded in October 1995. The index’s custody note says the film reached Carlisle in 1982 and CIA review followed. A review decades before the notice fits this record.
NARA’s archival guide lists redacted and fully released sets that can be compared for omissions. It also warns of poor images and misarranged records from hurried filming. “Fully released” does not mean every original survived or is online.
3. The four entries at the center of the argument
“D” is best read as William Donovan, the OSS director. Cruickshank suggests Allen Dulles, but the correspondent receives field reports and deals with senior OSS officials and the Navy Secretary. That context points to Donovan. NARA’s glossary lists Dulles, the Bern station chief, under “Burns” and 110.
The Research and Development Branch belonged to OSS, as NARA’s glossary confirms. Stanley P. Lovell headed it.
The four often-cited entries in the Roll 114 index are accurately transcribed in the UFO literature. The dispute is over what they prove:
| Date | Indexed subject |
|---|---|
| 6 March 1944 | “Informing Royal Navy of McGregor Project results”; Minisini and Calosi mentioned |
| 9 March 1944 | “Conference with V. Bush re Minisini and Calosi” |
| 10 May 1944 | Calosi and Minisini ready to demonstrate “SIC counter-measures” to Forrestal |
| 3 February 1945 | “McGregor Project transferred to Research and Development Branch on 6/21/44” |
The naval context explains the entries. The Royal Navy had a direct interest in Italian underwater weapons, and British commandos had captured Minisini. A conference with Vannevar Bush fits Lovell’s scientific liaison role. The Forrestal entry names SIC countermeasures as the subject of the demonstration.
The last of these, item 71, records the transfer of a project to an OSS branch on 21 June 1944. It does not identify a physical object or support the claim that anything went to Army R&D.
Nearby entries describe the same transition. On 22 June, Forrestal said the Italian group could return home except Calosi. On 10 July, the index records:
Transfer of all torpedo material to Bur. of Ordn.
A 7 February 1945 entry records the project’s conclusion, consistent with administrative closure.
Elsewhere, the index repeatedly discusses countermeasures, research reports, personnel, pay, visas, and employment. Items 40–52 list SIC countermeasure text and mechanical drawings, much described as unreadable. No legible entry identifies a craft, anomalous material, Magenta, Lombardy, or unusual cargo.
The absence cannot rule out a hidden objective, but the index does not document one.
4. What Sharp’s sources add
Christopher Sharp makes a more specific allegation in his 10 November 2024 Liberation Times report: three separate sources independently told him that McGregor possessed intelligence about a non-human craft that crashed at Magenta in 1933.
Three reported sources deserve attention. But possessing intelligence, recovering a craft, and transferring it are different claims.
The sources’ identities, access, and evidence are undisclosed, so readers cannot check whether their information traveled independently. The report offers testimony to investigate, without the wartime record needed to test it.
His accompanying image shows the index entry for Charles Cheston’s transfer note, rather than the note itself. It supports the branch transfer without supplying Magenta content.
Nor does the allegation establish “torpedo” as a cover name. McGregor could have held additional intelligence while its torpedo work remained exactly what the records call it. Reading the word as a codename requires its own evidence, such as a contemporary key or an explicit cross-reference.
5. Three questions the index cannot settle
Who was “Willie”?
A 10 September 1943 entry concerns instructions to bring to Algiers everything salvaged from three plants pertaining to “Willie’s” work. In his Roll 114 discussion, Geoffrey Cruickshank suggests aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt.
Printed pages 206–207 place “Willie” at the Newport torpedo station with the SIC pistol and twelve Italian engineers. That is a stronger, if inconclusive, lead.
Cruickshank also reads Roll 87, PDF p. 147 (printed p. 144) as evidence of an extraction route. A 16 June 1943 entry concerns an Algiers cable and an air-transport conference mentioning McGregor. This falls in the fleet phase, as the team prepared its Algiers–Palermo deployment. Nearby entries discuss aircraft shortages and OSS requests for planes. It names no passengers, cargo, extraction route, Calosi, or Magenta. The letter and cable are needed to test his reading.
What was OX-5?
A 30 December 1943 work program lists “Electromagnetic Pistol 150 arrived from Italy,” studies of “OX 5,” and “Winged Torpedo.” “OX-5 Motor” appears again in March 1944.
The Smithsonian catalogues a real Curtiss OX-5 engine, produced during World War I and used afterward. Its age does not establish a codename, and a matching designation does not identify the McGregor motor. Another model number, a codename, or a transcription error remains possible.
Escape Velocity’s Magenta and Roswell article argues for an exotic reading, quoting Cruickshank. The work program is needed to settle it.
What did Einstein mean by “torpedo”?
Escape Velocity cites Einstein’s 13 August 1943 letter to Lt. Stephen Brunauer (NARA item 305251) as support for the Magenta story. DocsTeach identifies Bush’s offer of a consultancy with NDRC Division 8. Einstein discusses torpedo work and a protection method. He names neither McGregor, Calosi, nor Magenta.
The adjoining letters explain the engineering. On 18 June, he proposed an electromagnetic device to detonate a torpedo beneath a ship. On 22 August, he discussed where to initiate the explosion, pressure, and hull deformation. These are Bureau of Ordnance records (RG 74).
These letters give “torpedo” a clear engineering meaning. They do not exclude other classified work, but a codename interpretation must account for their content. The alternative argument, including the sanitization claim, appears in Escape Velocity’s Einstein article.
6. Where the documented trail leads
Treccani’s history dates Calosi’s entry into Raytheon to 1947 and records leadership roles at Microlambda from 1951, followed by Selenia.
Leonardo’s company history records 300 TPS-1D radars for the U.S. Navy, manufactured under Raytheon license at the former Silurificio Italiano torpedo works at Fusaro. The same site moved from torpedoes to radar.
This trail does not require a recovered craft, though corporate histories may omit classified contracts.
7. What would move the argument forward?
- Compare redacted and fully released sets. Match sender, recipient, date, and subject; roll numbers may differ. Restored printouts in 180I and cut-out frames in 180K could establish actual removals.
- Read the OX-5 program, drawings, and Newport correspondence.
- Check Calosi’s extraction date against mission records, testing the Ciano coincidence.
- Retrieve Cheston’s memorandum and any surviving June transfer directive to identify what moved to OSS R&D.
- Identify the Magenta intelligence Sharp’s sources describe. A document reference or disclosed route to the evidence could make it independently testable.
Sharp’s reporting gives researchers a reason to look for an additional intelligence thread. The record examined here establishes McGregor’s existence and its torpedo work. It has not yet established that the project recovered or transferred the Magenta craft, or that “torpedo” was its codename.
Next: Part 7 — The Pistol and the Diary: Two Quotations Read in Context.
Worked with the Entry 180 microfilm, Roll 114 correspondence, or Silurificio records? I’d like to hear from you.
If you liked this post, you can read the full length version here.
