''The Flying Saucers Are Real'' by
Donald Keyhoe
Donald Edward Keyhoe (June 20, 1897 – November 29, 1988) was an American United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps naval aviator,
Donald E(dward) Keyhoe. (April 30, 1998) Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource ...
, was a book that investigated numerous encounters between
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
fighters, personnel, and other aircraft, and
UFO
An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...
s between 1947 and 1950.
Synopsis
It was printed in paperback by
Gold Medal Books
Gold Medal Books, launched by Fawcett Publications in 1950, was an American book publisher known for introducing paperback originals, a publishing innovation at the time. Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1949 the c ...
, in 1950, and sold for 25 cents. In December, 1949, prior to the publishing of the book, Keyhoe published an article by the same name in
True magazine, with similar material. The book was a huge success and popularized many ideas in
ufology
Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and f ...
that are still widely believed today.
''The Flying Saucers Are Real'' is short — only 175 pages.
Keyhoe contended that the Air Force was investigating these cases, with a policy of concealing their existence from the public until 1949. He stated that this policy was then replaced by one of cautious, progressive revelation.
Keyhoe further stated that Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials for two centuries, with the frequency of these visits increasing sharply after the first atomic weapon test in 1945. Citing anecdotal evidence, he intimated the Air Force may have attained and adapted some aspect of the alien technology, its method of propulsion and perhaps its source of power. He believed the Air Force or the United States federal government would eventually reveal these technologies to the public when the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
was no longer a threat.
Reception
"Keyhoe's book ''Flying Saucers Are Real'' ... was the first influential attempt to promote the idea of "flying saucers" as alien spacecraft."
A loose parody of Keyhoe's book and of reports of UFO sightings and alien abductions is ''The Flying Saucers Are Very Very Real'' (2016).
See also
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Close encounter
In ufology, a close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it were first suggested in astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek's 1972 book ''T ...
*
Circular wing A circular wing is a disc-shaped wing having the outer planform of a circle.
If the aircraft has no fuselage or tail the disc-shaped craft is sometimes described as a ''flying saucer''. If the entire disc rotates it is called a ''disc wing''.
Disc ...
*''
Flying Saucers from Outer Space'' (also by Keyhoe)
*
UFO conspiracy theory
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the Government of the United States, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlle ...
Citations
External links
Full texta
sacred-texts.com
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1950 non-fiction books
Alleged UFO-related aviation incidents
Books about extraterrestrial life
Gold Medal Books books
Flying saucers
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