French authorities have agreed to give Italian investigators classified defence documents on the 1980 crash of Itavia Flight 870, which plunged into the sea off Ustica (a small volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, north of Sicily) on June 27, killing all 81 people aboard. The offer led Italian prosecutors to drop plans to shelve their latest inquiry; Italy's top court ruled in 2013 that the plane was downed in an aerial combat, and a former Italian president has claimed French jets targeting Libya's Muammar Gaddafi were responsible. For victims' families and an Italian public long suspicious of a cover-up, the files could finally reveal who fired and why the truth was hidden for over four decades.