Wendelle Stevens

Short Biography

Wendelle Stevens (image credit: Maritza Keefe)

Born and raised in 1923 in Round Prairie, Minnesota, United States of America, Wendelle Stevens enlisted in the Army shortly after high school. He graduated from the Lockheed Aircraft Maintenance & Repair School, Aviation Cadet Training and Fighter Pilot Advanced Training as a very young 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps. After that he attended the first Air Corps Flight Test Pilot School at Kelly Field, where he learned to fly all the aircraft of the Air Corps at the time, as well as a few US Navy aircraft. During his long career in the military, one of his assignments was the supervision of a highly classified team of technical specialists who were installing hi-tech data collecting equipment aboard the

Wendelle Stevens as a Major at the Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio.

SAC B-29s of the Ptarmigon Project – a research project which was photographing and mapping every inch of the Arctic land and sea area. This equipment was designed to capture, record & analyze all EMF emissions in the Arctic, photograph all anomalous phenomena, and record all disturbances in the electrical and engine systems of the aircraft – looking for external influences caused by UFOs. The data was then couriered nightly to Washington. He retired from the USAF in 1963 and worked for Hamilton Aircraft until 1972.

Unable to possess any of this information for himself, Stevens began his own research and collection effort, eventually amassing the largest private collection of UFO photographs in the world. He began to publish reports on the events, and wrote many illustrated articles for many UFO publications. Disenchanted with the dearth of detail on contact events reported in books and journals of the time, he began preparing detailed reports of his own, self-funded, investigations. His most famous one was the Billy Meier case. He has published more than 22 books.

Wendelle Stevens was actively involved in ufology for 54 years, first as Director of Investigations for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in Tucson, Arizona, where he retired. Wendelle was a founder of the International UFO Congress and was a director since its inception.

In December 1997 he received an award for lifetime achievement at the First World UFO Forum in Brazilia, capital of Brazil. Towards the end of his life, he transferred his extensive photo collection, library and archives to Open Minds Productions.

UFO research pioneer, Wendelle Stevens passed away on September 7, 2010 at 4:44 pm in Tucson, Arizona from respiratory failure.