"I take note, because the office informs me that that evening, most likely, Volpe 132 lowered itself near the Capo Carbonara Air Force weather station, in such a way as to almost touch the ground." "I am asked if this is a usual and permitted maneuver. I answer that if this actually happened I consider it an anomalous maneuver that in those specific flight conditions must not be performed unless there is a landing pad adequately lit to be able to perform a night landing." And again: "I could not give an explanation as to why such a maneuver was performed."

These are the statements of the then Guardia di Finanza pilot Alessandro Comitini, recorded on February 20, 1998, as part of the investigation into one of the unsolved Italian mysteries: the case of Volpe 132, the helicopter of the Fiamme Gialle that on March 2, 1994 sank in the waters off the south-eastern coast of Sardinia. Since then, there has been almost no trace of the aircraft. Nor of the two soldiers on board: Fabrizio Sedda and Gianfranco Deriu, who were engaged in a reconnaissance flight. Only a few fragments and the helmet of one of the two.

The unpublished testimony was discovered by Avvenire journalist Marco Birolini, among the declassified papers of the investigation that has so far led nowhere. The last radar trace of the Volpe was recorded at Capo Carbonara, the fragments were found further north, a short distance from the Quirra Polygon.

There is an expert report by Professor Donato Firrao: analyzing the findings he had come to the conclusion that the helicopter had been hit by a missile. Did the merchant ship Lucina, which had been sighted in the previous days in that stretch of sea, in Feraxi, have anything to do with it? The same one whose crew, shortly after, in July, was exterminated in the Algerian port of Djendjen: seven Italian sailors, all slaughtered, and their cargo – officially wheat semolina – disappeared. Only two members escaped the massacre, because they had stopped in Cagliari. One was Gaetano Giacomina, a member of the Gladio covert structure. He then died in mysterious circumstances in Cape Verde. Mysteries upon mysteries, which overlap and have never found an answer.

Now another small piece is added, with the testimony of Comitini, a companion of the missing soldiers. Volpe would have engaged in the strange maneuver above the Capo Carbonara weather station, which is part of the Air Force. A move that would remain without explanation. And it would not be the only one: «Neither that evening nor the next day were we pilots of the air section of the Guardia di Finanza of Elmas employed aboard our vehicles for the searches», it is added to the report. Even if two colleagues had died.

Enrico Fresu

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