Born in Rathmore, was Brigade Adjutant and Intelligence Officer of Cork No.1 Brigade of the Irish Volunteers and transferred to the same posts in the 1st Southern Division in 1921. He took no part in the Civil War.
He served in the Defence Forces in 1940-5 as Intelligence Officer First Division and was a member of the Advisory Council of the Irish Bureau of Military History.
Major O’Donoghue was an exceptionally competent and dilgent military historian whose writings are distinguished by minute accuracy and exhaustive research. He wrote two major works on aspects of the Irish national struggle 1916-22; ‘No Other Law’ (1954) and ‘Tomas MacCurtain’ (1955). He edited Kael Schindler’s ‘Mystery of the Casement Ship’ (1965) and Diarmuid Lynch’s ‘The IRB and the 1916 Rising’ (Cork nd).
He died in 1967, a year after the death of his wife Jo, who had been his most confidential collaborators in pre-truce IRA Intelligence. He is survived by two sons and two daughters