|
Donald E. Keyhoe was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, on June 20,
1897. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland,
in the Class of 1920, with a B.S. degree and the commission of a 2nd Lieutenant
in the Marine Corps. The young Lieutenant became a Naval aviator, piloting
both balloons and airplanes in the period between the World Wars. After
a night crash at Guam, he retired from active duty and began freelance
writing. During the 1930s and early 1940s Keyhoe wrote fictional aviation
adventure stories for then popular pulp magazines. He also wrote factual
articles for major newsstand magazines of the time such as Saturday Evening
Post, Cosmopolitan, American, Redbook, and True. During the late 1940s
and early 1950s, Keyhoe personally test-flew a wide variety of aircraft
and evaluated their performance and features for True Magazine. When the
first "flying saucer" sightings were reported in June of 1947, Keyhoe,
as an experienced aviator was skeptical. But when True asked him to investigate
in 1949 and he interviewed numerous fliers as well as military officers
in the Pentagon, he discovered that expert observers had seen the unexplained
discs, many at close range. His article "Flying Saucers Are Real" in the
January 1950 issue of True became one of the most widely read and discussed
articles in publishing history, and caused a sensation. The article was
expanded into a paperback book. In January 1957 Keyhoe had become Director
of the newly formed National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP) in Washington, D.C., which under his leadership gave serious publicity
to the UFO mystery through the 1960s and encouraged Congressional hearings.
UFO Books written
by Donald Keyhoe
"The Flying Saucers Are
Real" (New York: Fawcett, 1950)
"Flying Saucers From
Outer Space" (1953)
"Flying Saucer Conspiracy"
(1955)
"Flying Saucers: Top
Secret" (1960)
"Aliens From Space" (1973)
Donald Keyhoe spent
his later retirement years at "Bluemont" in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley
outside of Luray, Virginia, with his wife Helen Gardner Keyhoe, a native
of Page County, Virginia.
|
