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This Is the Truth Behind WWII’s Creepy Philadelphia Experiment

As military urban legends go, the Philadelphia Experiment is one of the creepiest and most grotesque ever. It alleges that there was a secret U.S. Navy experiment on the USS Eldridge during World War II and claims the ship was made invisible or "cloaked" to radar and even teleported or time-traveled. 

Originating from claims by Carl M. Allen and Morris K. Jessup in the 1950s, proposed explanations include mistaken identity, misinterpretation of real experiments, and fabrication for entertainment. 

It has endured as an infamous WWII conspiracy theory. But is there any truth to it? Let's take a look.

According to legend, on Oct. 28, 1943, the USS Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer escort, was conducting top-secret experiments designed to win command of the oceans against the Axis powers. The rumor was that the government was creating technology that would render naval ships invisible to enemy radar, and there in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, it was time to test it out.

Witnesses claim an eerie green-blue glow surrounded the hull of the ship as her generators spun up and then, suddenly, the Eldridge disappeared. The ship was then seen in Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia before disappearing again and reappearing back in Philadelphia.

The legend states that classified military documents reported that the Eldridge crew were affected by the events in disturbing ways . Some went insane. Others developed mysterious illness. But others still were said to have been fused together with the ship; still alive, but with limbs sealed to the metal.

That'll give you nightmares. That's some “Event Horizon” sh*t right there.

Which is actually a convincing reason why the Eldridge's story gained so much momentum.

In a 1994 article for the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Jacques F. Vallee theorized that deep-seated imagery is key to planting a hoax into the minds of the masses and of the educated public .

But before we break down what really happened that day, let's talk about the man behind the myth: Carl M. Allen, who went by the pseudonym Carlos Miguel Allende. In 1956, Allende sent a series of letters to Morris K. Jessup, author of the book “The Case for the UFO,” in which he argued that unidentified flying objects merit further study.

Jessup apparently included text about unified field theory because this is what Allende latched onto for his correspondences. In the 1950s, unified field theory, which has never been proven, attempted to merge Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity with electromagnetism. In fact, Allende claimed to have been taught by Einstein himself and could prove the unified field theory based on events he witnessed on Oct. 28, 1943.

Allende claimed that he saw the Eldridge disappear from the Philadelphia Naval Yard, and he further insisted that the United States military had conducted what he called the Philadelphia Experiment — and was trying to cover it up.

Jessup was then contacted by the Navy's Office of Naval Research , which had received a package containing Jessup's book with annotations claiming that extraterrestrial technology allowed the U.S. government to make breakthroughs in unified field theory.

This is one of the weirdest details. The annotations were designed to look like they were written by three different authors -- one maybe extraterrestrial? According to Vallee's article for the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Jessup became obsessed with Allende's revelations, and the disturbed researcher took his own life in 1959. It wasn't until 1980 that proof of Allende's forgery was made available.

Inexplicably, two ONR officers had 127 copies of the annotated text printed and privately distributed by the military contractor Varo Manufacturing, giving wings to Allende's story long after Jessup's death.

So what really happened aboard the USS Eldridge that day?

According to Edward Dudgeon, who served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Engstrom, which was dry-docked in the Philadelphia Naval Yard while the Eldridge was, both ships did have classified devices on board. They were neither invisibility cloaks nor teleportation drives designed by aliens, but instead, they scrambled the magnetic signatures of ships using the degaussing technique, which provided protection from magnetic torpedoes aboard U-boats.

How Stuff Works suggested that the "green glow" reported by witnesses that day could be explained by an electric storm or St. Elmo's Fire, which, in addition to being an American coming-of-age film starring the Brat Pack, is a weather phenomenon in which plasma is created in a strong electric field, giving off a bright glow, almost like fire.

Finally, inland canals connected Norfolk to Philadelphia, allowing a ship to travel between the two in a few hours.

The USS Eldridge was transferred to Greece in 1951 and sold for scrap during the 1990s, but Allende's hoax would live on in our effing nightmares forever.

More articles from We Are the Mighty: 

• 6 urban legends about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
• Why Okinawa is the most haunted place in the military
• 11 scary ghost stories, legends, and haunted military bases

We Are The Mighty (WATM) celebrates service with stories that inspire. WATM is made in Hollywood by veterans. It's military life presented like never before. Check it out at  We Are the Mighty .

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How the Philadelphia Experiment Worked

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It was the summer of 1943, two years into the United States' involvement in World War II, and a bloody sea battle was raging between American destroyers and the famed U-boat submarines of the Nazis. In the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, a newly commissioned destroyer called the USS Eldridge was being equipped with several large generators as part of a top-secret mission to win the Battle of the Atlantic once and for all.

Rumor aboard the ship was that the generators were designed to power a new kind of magnetic field that would make the warship invisible to enemy radar . With the full crew on board, it was time to test the system. In broad daylight, and in plain sight of nearby ships, the switches were thrown on the powerful generators, which hummed into action.

What happened next would baffle scientists and fuel decades of wild speculation. Witnesses describe an eerie green-blue glow surrounding the hull of the ship. Then, instantaneously and inexplicably, the Eldridge disappeared. Not just invisible to radar, but gone — vanished into thin air!

Hours later, there were reports of the Eldridge appearing in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, before reappearing just as suddenly back in Philadelphia. According to classified military reports, members of the Eldridge crew suffered from terrible burns and disorientation. Most shockingly, a few crewmen were found partially embedded in the steel hull of the ship; still alive, but with legs or arms sealed to the deck.

So goes the story of the Philadelphia Experiment, perhaps the most famous and widely retold example of secret government experiments with teleportation and time travel. More than 70 years later, despite the absence of any physical evidence or corroborating testimony, the Philadelphia Experiment survives as "fact" in the minds of amateur paranormalists and conspiracy theorists.

To understand how the Philadelphia Experiment really worked, we must learn about the men who first brought the closely guarded secret to light, explore the suspicious government response to their revelations and get a very different version of the story from a surviving crewmember of the Eldridge.

'Call Me Carlos': A Conspiracy Is Born

The 'real' philadelphia experiment, the philadelphia experiment today.

Almost everything that we "know" about the Philadelphia Experiment and the alleged teleportation of the USS Eldridge emerged from the mind and pen of a colorful character named Carl M. Allen, better known by his pseudonym Carlos Miguel Allende.

In 1956, Allende sent the first of over 50 handwritten letters to the author and amateur astronomer Morris K. Jessup, who a year earlier had published a self-researched book called "The Case for the UFO" [source: Vallee]. In his letters, Allende criticized Jessup's naive understanding of unified field theory, which Allende claimed to have been taught by Albert Einstein himself. A unified field theory , which has never been proven (by Einstein or anyone else), attempts to merge the forces of gravity and electromagnetism into one fundamental field [source: Sutton ].

To prove that a unified field theory existed, Allende offered Jessup his eyewitness account from a nearby ship of the disappearance of the Eldridge from the Philadelphia Naval Yard in 1943. Carlos Allende's letter to Morris Jessup, which explains how the U.S. military used Einstein's revelations to teleport an entire naval destroyer and its crew, registered the first ever mention of the Philadelphia Experiment. No other witnesses from the crew of the Eldridge or nearby ships had come forward in the 13 years since the alleged event.

Jessup attempted a serious investigation of Allende's claims, but grew frustrated with the mysterious letter writer's inability to produce physical evidence. Jessup was ready to drop the investigation entirely when he was contacted by two officers from the Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) in 1957 [source: Vallee].

According to an information sheet published by the ONR, the two officers were responding to a strange package that they received in 1956. It contained a copy of Jessup's UFO book annotated by handwritten notes claiming advanced knowledge of physics that linked extraterrestrial technology to breakthroughs in unified field theory [source: ONR ].

Although the scrawled notes were meant to look like they came from three different authors (at least one, perhaps, an alien), Jessup instantly recognized the handwritings as all belonging to Carlos Allende. For unexplained reasons, the ONR officers published 127 copies of the annotated book using a Texas military contractor named Varo Manufacturing. Transcribed copies of the so-called "Varo editions" — whether real or forged — would become prized collector's items for conspiracy theorists [source: Vallee].

Sadly, Jessup's story took a tragic turn. Injured in a car accident and split from his wife, Jessup committed suicide in 1959. Carlos Allende lived until 1994, sporadically sending letters to anyone who would listen to his fantastical tale of the Philadelphia Experiment [source: Vallee].

For decades, Carlos Allende (aka Carl Allen) was the sole "witness" of the allegedly supernatural events surrounding the 1943 Philadelphia Experiment. Carlos claimed to have been stationed on the SS Andrew Furuseth, a vessel docked in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard with a clear view of the Eldridge when it disappeared.

Much later, after the release of the 1984 film "The Philadelphia Experiment," a man named Al Bielek came forward claiming to have personally taken part in the secret experiment, which he had been brainwashed to forget. Only after seeing the movie in 1988 did his repressed memories come flooding back [source: Vallee].

Despite the insistent (and constantly evolving) claims of both men, it was the testimony of a third witness that ultimately shed some light on what may have really happened in Philadelphia during that wartime summer of 1943.

In 1994, French-born astrophysicist and ufologist Jacques F. Vallee published an article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration titled "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later." In writing a previous article about the Philadelphia Experiment, Vallee asked readers to contact him if they had further information about the alleged event. That's when Vallee received a letter from Edward Dudgeon, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945.

Dudgeon had served on the USS Engstrom, which was dry-docked in the Philadelphia Naval Yard during the summer of 1943 [source: Vallee]. Dudgeon was an electrician in the Navy and had full knowledge of the classified devices that were installed on both his ship and the Eldridge, which he said was there at the same time.

Far from being teleportation engines designed by Einstein (or aliens ), the devices enabled the ships to scramble their magnetic signature using a technique called degaussing . The ship were wrapped in large cables and zapped with high-voltage charges. A degaussed ship wouldn't be invisible to radar, but would be undetectable by the U-boats' magnetic torpedoes.

Dudgeon was familiar with the wild rumors about disappearing ships and mangled crewmen, but credited the fabrications to loose sailor talk about "invisibility" to torpedoes and the peculiarity of the degaussing process. The "green glow" was probably due to an electric storm or St. Elmo's Fire. As for the Eldridge's mysterious appearance in Norfolk and sudden return to Philadelphia, Dudgeon explained that the Navy used inland canals — off-limits to commercial vessels — to make the trip in six hours rather than two days [source: Vallee].

In another turn of events, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1999 on a reunion of sailors who served on the USS Eldridge in Atlantic City. The sailors said the ship never docked in Philadelphia. Indeed, it was in Brooklyn on its supposed date of disappearance. The ship's log confirmed this. Further, the captain said no experiments were ever conducted on the vessel.

Despite the differing accounts, both Dudgeon and the Eldridge crew confirm that nothing otherworldly happened on the ship. Yet, people continue to believe otherwise. We'll look at some reasons why the hoax has endured for more than 70 years.

In 1951, the U.S. transferred the ship to Greece where it was renamed the HS Leon and used in joint exercises between the two countries during the Cold War. It was eventually sold for scrap in the 1990s. A very ignoble end [source: Veronese ].

Despite its near universal debunking as a hoax, the Philadelphia Experiment endures as a paranormal cultural landmark.

The 1984 movie — based loosely on Carlos Allende's original narrative — was hardly an Oscar contender, but its '80s-era special effects were good enough to plant some indelible images in the moviegoer's mind. One particularly graphic scene near the end of the film depicts a badly burned crewmember writhing on the deck of the Eldridge with half of his body swallowed up in steel.

In his article explaining the stickiness of the Philadelphia Experiment myth, Jacques F. Vallee theorizes that powerful imagery is key to the success of any long-lived hoax . Like the debunked "surgeon's photo" of the Loch Ness Monster or the doctored pictures of the Cottingley fairies, it was the clear mental images of a disappearing ship and the mangled crewmen that helped capture the public's imagination.

The plausibility of the Philadelphia Experiment story is also fortified by a general mistrust of the military and the federal government, which have admitted to carrying out unethical experiments on their own soldiers and citizens. The claims are lent further legitimacy by invoking the names of brilliant scientists like Einstein and associating the secret technology with a scientific theory that remains just out of reach.

Though the ONR said it has never conducted experiments on invisibility and that such experiments could only happen in science fiction, true believers think this is one more case of the government performing a cover-up.

Even as more evidence has emerged about the true identity of Carlos Allende — a charismatic drifter with a host of mental problems — the Philadelphia Experiment refuses to die. It has even spawned a related myth called the Montauk Project. In this version, set at an Air Force base in the 1980s, the government built on the success of the Philadelphia Experiment to "manipulate the flow of time" [source: Vallee].

For lots more information about unexplained phenomena and contagious conspiracies , check out the related HowStuffWorks articles on the next page.

Philadelphia Experiment FAQ

How many movies were made about the philadelphia experiment, did the uss eldridge really disappear, what happened to the uss eldridge, what is the montauk project, who is carl m. allen, lots more information, author's note: how the philadelphia experiment worked.

You can't keep a good hoax down. The story of the Philadelphia Experiment has all of the trademark signs of a lie: a single witness, a secret government plot, pseudoscientific revelations possibly from alien sources ... It's a wonder that this thing ever caught on, let alone endured for decades. The Internet has certainly done its job. There are dozens of dubious websites dedicated to the "hidden facts" that the "government doesn't want you to know" about the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project. Anyone who dares to debunk the hoaxers is "debunked" themselves — allegedly unmasked as a CIA stooge or a paid accomplice. I can only hope that somewhere in the bowels of cyberspace, there's a brand-new article debunking me.

Related Articles

• 10 Conspiracy Theories About the JFK Assassination
• 10 False History Facts Everyone Knows
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• McCrary, Lacy. "Legend Says the Eldridge Briefly Vanished in 1943." Philadelphia Inquirer. March 26, 1999. (Jan. 28, 2015) http://articles.philly.com/1999-03-26/news/25511825_1_uss-eldridge-philadelphia-experiment-ship
• Office of Naval Research. "Information Sheet: Philadelphia Experiment; UFO's." (Jan. 22, 2015) http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/homeland_defense/UFOs/onr_ph1.pdf
• Sutton, Christine. "Unified Field Theory." Encyclopedia Britannica (Jan. 22, 2015) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/614522/unified-field-theory
• Vallee, Jacques F. "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later." Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 8, No. 1. 1994 (Jan. 22, 2015) http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_08_1_vallee.pdf
• Veronese, Keith. "What really happened during the Philadelphia Experiment?" Sept. 21, 2012 (Jan. 22, 2015) http://io9.com/5944616/what-really-happened-during-the-philadelphia-experiment

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Philadelphia Experiment

USS Eldridge (DE-173) ca. 1944

The Philadelphia Experiment was a naval military experiment alleged to have been carried out at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA sometime around October 28, 1943. The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge was claimed to be rendered invisible (or " cloaked ") to enemy devices.

The story is thought to be a hoax . [1] [2] [3] The U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment was ever conducted, and details of the story contradict well-established facts about the Eldridge itself, as well as commonly accepted physics. [4]

• 2.1 Morris Jessup and Carlos Miguel Allende
• 2.2 The Office of Naval Research and the Varo annotation
• 2.3 Misunderstanding of documented naval experiments
• 3.1 Hollywood interpretation and the Bielek testimony
• 3.2 Evidence and research
• 3.3 Scientific aspects
• 3.4 Timeline inconsistencies
• 3.5 Alternative explanations
• 4 In popular culture
• 7 External links

Synopsis [ ]

The experiment was allegedly based on an aspect of the unified field theory , a term coined by Albert Einstein. [ citation needed ] The Unified Field Theory aims to describe mathematically and physically the interrelated nature of the forces that comprise electromagnetic radiation and gravity , in other words uniting the fields of electromagnetism and gravity into one field. Consequently, if light were bent, then space-time would be bent, effectively creating an invisible time machine. [ citation needed ]

According to the accounts, unspecified 'researchers' thought that some version of this Unified Field Theory would enable a person to use large electrical generators to bend light around an object via refractioon, so that the object became completely invisible. The Navy would have regarded this as being of obvious military value, and by the accounts, it sponsored the experiment.

Another unattributed version of the story proposes that researchers were preparing magnetic and gravitational measurements of the seafloor to detect anomalies, supposedly based on Einstein's attempts to understand gravity. In this version, there were also related secret experiments in Nazi Germany to find antigravity , allegedly led by SS - Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler . [ citation needed ]

There are no reliable, attributable accounts but in most accounts of the experiment, the destroyer escort USS  Eldridge was fitted with the required equipment at the Philadelphia Naval Yard . Testing allegedly began in the summer of 1943, and it was supposedly successful to a limited degree. One test allegedly resulted in the Eldridge being rendered almost completely invisible, with some witnesses [ citation needed ] reporting a "greenish fog" appearing in its place. Crew members supposedly complained of severe nausea afterwards. Also, it is said [ citation needed ] that when the ship reappeared, some sailors were embedded in the metal structures of the ship, including one sailor who ended up on a deck level below that where he began, and had his hand embedded in the steel hull of the ship, as well as some sailors who went "completely bananas". [5] At that point, it is said [ citation needed ] that the experiment was altered at the request of the Navy, with the new objective being solely to render the Eldridge invisible to radar. None of these allegations has been independently substantiated.

The conjecture then alleges that the equipment was not properly re-calibrated , but in spite of this, the experiment was repeated on October 28, 1943. This time, the Eldridge not only became invisible, but she physically vanished from the area in a flash of blue light and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, over 200 miles (320 km) away. It is claimed that the Eldridge sat for some time in full view of men aboard the ship SS  Andrew Furuseth , whereupon the Eldridge vanished from their sight, and then reappeared in Philadelphia at the site it had originally occupied. It was also said that the warship went approximately 10 seconds back in time. [ citation needed ]

Many versions of the tale include descriptions of serious side effects for the crew. [ citation needed ] Some crew members were said to have been physically fused to bulkheads, while others suffered from mental disorders, and still others supposedly simply vanished. [ citation needed ] It is also claimed that the ship's crew may have been subjected to brainwashing , in order to maintain the secrecy of the experiment. [ citation needed ]

Origins of the story [ ]

Morris jessup and carlos miguel allende [ ].

In 1955, Morris K. Jessup , an astronomer and former graduate-level researcher, published The Case for the UFO, a book about unidentified flying objects that contains some theories about the different means of propulsion that flying-saucer-style UFOs might use. Jessup speculated that antigravity, or the manipulation of electromagnetism, might be responsible for the observed flight behavior of UFOs. He lamented, both in the book and during the publicity tour that followed, that space flight research was concentrated in the area of rocketry , and that little attention had been paid to other theoretical means of flight, which he felt might ultimately be more fruitful. Jessup emphasized that a breakthrough revision of Albert Einstein's "Unified Field Theory" would be critical in powering a future generation of spacecraft.

On January 13, 1955, Jessup received a letter from a man who identified himself as one "Carlos Allende." In the letter, Allende informed Jessup of the "Philadelphia Experiment," alluding to two poorly sourced contemporary newspaper articles as proof. Allende directly responded to Jessup's call for research on the "Unified Field Theory," which he referred to as "UFT." According to Allende, Einstein had developed the theory, but had suppressed it, since mankind was not ready for it—a confession that the scientist allegedly shared with the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell . Allende also said that he had witnessed the Eldridge appear and disappear while serving aboard the SS  Andrew Furuseth , a nearby merchant ship. Allende named other crew members with whom he served aboard the Andrew Furuseth, and claimed to know the fate of some of the crew members of the Eldridge after the experiment, including one whom he witnessed disappearing during a chaotic fight in a bar. Although Allende claimed to have observed the experiment while on the Andrew Furuseth , he provided no substantiation of his other claims linking the experiment with the Unified Field Theory, no evidence of Einstein's alleged theory, and no proof of Einstein's alleged private confession to Russell.

Jessup replied to Allende by a postcard, asking for further evidence and corroboration. The reply arrived months later, with the correspondent identifying himself as "Carl M. Allen." Allen said that he could not provide the details for which Jessup was asking, but he implied that he might be able to recall some by means of hypnosis. Suspecting that Allende/Allen might be an impostor, Jessup discontinued the correspondence.

The Office of Naval Research and the Varo annotation [ ]

According to a 2002 book by the popular writers James Moseley and Karl Pflock, in early 1957, Jessup was contacted by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C. , and was asked to study the contents of a parcel that it had received. [6] Upon his arrival, Jessup was surprised to learn that a paperback copy of his UFO book had been mailed to the ONR in a manila envelope marked "Happy Easter." The book had been extensively annotated in its margins, and an ONR officer asked Jessup if he had any idea as to who had done so.

Moseley and Pflock claim that the lengthy annotations were written with three different shades of pink ink, and they appeared to detail a correspondence among three individuals, only one of which is given a name: "Jemi." The ONR labelled the other two "Mr A." and "Mr B." The annotators refer to each other as "Gypsies," and discuss two different types of "people" living in outer space. Their text contained non-standard use of capitalization and punctuation, and detailed a lengthy discussion of the merits of various elements of Jessup's assumptions in the book. Their oblique references to the Philadelphia Experiment suggested prior or superior knowledge. (One example is that "Mr B." reassures his fellow annotators who have highlighted a certain theory which Jessup advanced.) [6]

Based on the handwriting style and subject matter, Jessup identified "Mr A." as Allende / Allen. Others have suggested that the three annotations are from the same person, using three pens. [ citation needed ] The annotated book supposedly sparked sufficient interest for the ONR to fund a small printing of the volume by the Texas-based Varo Manufacturing Company. [7] A 2003 transcription of the annotated "Varo edition" is available online, complete with three-color notes. [8]

Later, the ONR contacted Jessup, claiming that the return address on Allende's letter to Jessup was an abandoned farmhouse. They also informed Jessup that the Varo Corporation, a research firm, was preparing a print copy of the annotated version of The Case for the UFO, complete with both letters he had received. About a hundred copies of the Varo Edition were printed and distributed within the Navy. Jessup was also sent three for his own use.

Jessup attempted to make a living writing on the topic, but his follow-up book did not sell well. His publisher rejected several other manuscripts. In 1958, his wife left him, and his friends described him as being depressed and somewhat unstable when he traveled to New York. After returning to Florida, he was involved in a serious car accident and was slow to recover, which added to his depression. He was found dead on April 20, 1959, and the death was ruled a suicide. [ citation needed ]

Misunderstanding of documented naval experiments [ ]

While personnel at the Fourth Naval District have suggested that the questions surrounding the alleged event arise from routine research which was performed during the Second World War at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, it was previously believed "that the foundation for the apocryphal stories arose from degaussing experiments which have the effect of making a ship undetectable or 'invisible' to magnetic mines." [9] Another possible genesis of the stories about levitation, teleportation and effects on human crew might be attributed to experiments with the generating plant of the destroyer USS Timmerman , whereby a higher-frequency generator produced corona discharges, though none of the crew reported suffering effects from the experiment. [9]

Repetitions of the story [ ]

There have been non-fiction and fictional accounts of the legend:

In 1963, Vincent Gaddis published a book of Forteana titled Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea. In it he recounted the story of the experiment from the Varo annotation.

George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger published a 1978 novel titled Thin Air. In this book, set in the present day, a Naval Investigative Service officer investigates several threads linking wartime invisibility experiments to a conspiracy involving matter transmission technology.

In 1979, the linguist Charles Berlitz and his co-author ufologist William L. Moore published The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, which purported to be a factual account. Moore's by-line said that he had written the book "in consultation with" Berlitz.

More recently, Simon R. Green included references to "The Philadelphia Experiment" in his book The Spy Who Haunted Me, while Paul Violette's book Secrets of Anti-Gravity Propulsion recounts some mysterious involvement of the physicist Thomas Townsend Brown of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. (Moore and Berlitz devoted one of the last chapters in The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility to "The Force Fields Of Townsend Brown.")

Hollywood interpretation and the Bielek testimony [ ]

In 1984, the story was adapted into a time travel film called The Philadelphia Experiment directed by Stewart Raffill . Though only loosely based on the prior accounts of the "Experiment," it served to dramatize the core elements of the original story. In 1990, Alfred Bielek, [10] [11] a self-proclaimed former crew-member of the USS Eldridge and an alleged witness of the "Experiment," supported the version as it was portrayed in the film. He added details of his claims through the Internet, some of which were picked up by mainstream outlets. [12]

In 2003, a small team of investigators, including the American Marshall Barnes, the Canadian Fred Houpt, and the German Gerold Schelm, rejected Bielek's story of his participation in "The Philadelphia Experiment." Their consensus was that Bielek was nowhere near the ship at the proposed time of the experiment. [12]

The horror/action movie Outpost , in which the Nazi Germans were supposedly conducting similar tests on soldiers, has a reference to the "Philadelphia Experiment."

The 2008 science fiction 100 Million BC has a clear reference to "The Philadelphia Experiment" or "The Rainbow Project." [13]

The 2013 movie Devil's Pass has many references to "The Philadelphia Experiment", including showing alleged photos of the crew members fused to the hull of USS Eldridge.

Evidence and research [ ]

Observers have argued that it is inappropriate to grant much credence to an unusual story promoted by one individual, in the absence of more conclusive corroborating evidence. Robert Goerman wrote in Fate magazine in 1980, that "Carlos Allende" / "Carl Allen" was Carl Meredith Allen of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, who had an established history of psychiatric illness, and who may have fabricated the primary history of the experiment as a result of his mental illness. Goerman later realized that Allen was a family friend and "a creative and imaginative loner... sending bizarre writings and claims." [14]

The historian Mike Dash [2] notes that many authors who publicized the "Philadelphia Experiment" story after that of Jessup appeared to have conducted little or no research of their own: through the late 1970s, for example, Allende/Allen was often described as mysterious and difficult to locate. But Goerman determined Allende/Allen's identity after only a few telephone calls. Others speculate that much of the key literature emphasizes dramatic embellishment rather than pertinent research. Berlitz's and Moore's account of the story ( The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility ) claimed to include supposedly factual information, such as transcripts of an interview with a scientist involved in the experiment, but their work has also been criticized for plagiarising key story elements from the novel Thin Air which was published a year earlier.

Scientific aspects [ ]

The claims of "The Philadelphia Experiment" contradict the currently known laws of physics. While Einstein's theory of general relativity shows that light waves can be bent near the surface of an extremely massive object, such as the sun or a black hole, current technology could not manipulate the astronomical amounts of matter needed to do this.

No Unified Field Theory currently exists, although it is a subject of ongoing research. William L. Moore claimed in his book on "The Philadelphia Experiment" that Albert Einstein completed, and destroyed, a theory before his death. This is not supported by historians and scientists familiar with Einstein's work. Moore bases his theory on Carl Allen's letter to Jessup, in which Allen refers to a conversation between Einstein and Bertrand Russell acknowledging that the theory had been solved, but that man was not ready for it. [15]

Shortly before his death in 1943, the Serbian-American inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla was said to have completed some kind of a "Unified Field Theory" . [16] The 2006 movie The Prestige makes reference to this claim with a device powered by a large Tesla coil that is created by Tesla himself, to make things disappear, but instead creates an exact replica that comes into being a short distance away.

These claims are completely at odds with modern physics as it is currently understood. While it is true that Einstein attempted to unify gravity with electromagnetism based on classical physics , his geometric approaches, called classical unified field theories , ignored the modern developments of quantum theory and the discovery of the strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force . Einstein collaborated with other physicists to discuss the possibilities of unified field theory, but to this day is considered unsuccessful. [17] The attempts made by recent scientists to develop a unified theory have focused on the development of a quantum theory that also includes gravitation.

While very limited "invisibility cloaks" have recently been developed using metamaterial , [18] these are unrelated to theories linking electromagnetism with gravity.

Timeline inconsistencies [ ]

The USS Eldridge was not commissioned until August 27, 1943, and it remained in port in New York City until September 1943. The October experiment allegedly took place while the ship was on its first shakedown cruise in the Bahamas, although proponents of the story claim that the ship's logs might have been falsified, or else still be classified.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) stated in September 1996, "ONR has never conducted investigations on radar invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time." Pointing out that the ONR was not established until 1946, it denounces the accounts of "The Philadelphia Experiment" as complete "science fiction".

A reunion of navy veterans who had served aboard the USS Eldridge told a Philadelphia newspaper in April 1999 that their ship had never made port in Philadelphia. [19] Further evidence discounting the Philadelphia Experiment timeline comes from the USS Eldridge’s complete World War II action report, including the remarks section of the 1943 deck log, available on microfilm. [4]

Alternative explanations [ ]

Researcher Jacques Vallée [20] describes a procedure on board the USS  Engstrom  (DE-50) , which was docked alongside the Eldridge in 1943. The operation involved the generation of a powerful electromagnetic field on board the ship in order to deperm or degauss it, with the goal of rendering the ship undetectable or "invisible" to magnetically fused undersea mines and torpedoes . This system was invented by a Canadian, Charles F. Goodeve , when he held the rank of commander in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve , and the Royal Navy and other navies used it widely during WWII. British ships of the era often included such degaussing systems built into the upper decks (the conduits are still visible on the deck of HMS  Belfast  (C35) in London, for example). Degaussing is still used today. However, it has absolutely no effect on visible light or radar. Vallée speculates that accounts of the USS Engstrom’s degaussing might have been garbled and confabulated in subsequent retellings, and that these accounts may have influenced the story of "The Philadelphia Experiment."

According to Vallée, a Navy veteran who served on board the USS Engstrom noted that the Eldridge might indeed have travelled from Philadelphia to Norfolk and back again in a single day at a time when merchant ships could not: by use of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and the Chesapeake Bay, which at the time was open only to naval vessels. [20] Use of that channel was kept quiet: German submarines had ravaged shipping along the East Coast during Operation Drumbeat , and thus military ships unable to protect themselves were secretly moved via canals to avoid the threat. [21] This same veteran claims to be the man that Allende witnessed “disappearing” at a bar. He claims that when the fight broke out, friendly barmaids whisked him out the back door of the bar before the police arrived, because he was under age for drinking. They then covered for him by claiming that he had disappeared. [21]

In popular culture [ ]

• References to the experiment can be found in many other works, including an episode of The X-Files titled " Død Kalm ", Sanctuary , The Triangle , the Doctor Who audio drama The Macros , the collaborative science-fiction novella Green Fire by Eileen Gunn , writer, writer, and Michael Swanwick .
• The experiment is the subject of the science fiction film The Philadelphia Experiment . The film highlights the time travel aspects of the urban legend.
• The computer game Command & Conquer: Red Alert references this in a video regarding the Allied Chronosphere, in which footage is shown of a ship disappearing then reappearing seconds later. One of the commanders remarks that some of the men on board died and the process is still experimental.
• The experiment has been the subject of several television shows dealing with the paranormal and with , including The Unexplained , History's Mysteries , Vanishings! , Unsolved Mysteries , [22] and Dark Matters: Twisted But True .
• The "Experiment" is also referenced again in the fourth Doctor Who:The Adventure Games release, " Shadows of the Vashta Nerada ".
• The date and name of "The Philadelphia Experiment" are referred to in the first game of the video game series Assassin's Creed . The password to access the conference room is "10281943" (the proposed date in month-day-year format ) and an email also refers to the "project". An email to one of the characters in the game mentions that the ship, instead of turning invisible, "briefly manifested in a future state for approximately 18 minutes." The same email also says that the fictional company that engineered the project, Abstergo Industries, chose to drop the project, citing "paradox concerns."
• The ship's barometer from the Eldridge is an Artifact on the Syfy show Warehouse 13 . Activating it freezes time in a localized area for forty-seven seconds, with the person who activated it being unaffected.
• "The Philadelphia Experiment" is referenced in Brad Thor 's The Athena Project . The novel suggests that the U.S. Navy was trying to recreate matter teleportation experiments originally conducted by Hans Kammler and the Nazi German SS Wunderwaffen group.
• At Morey's Piers theme park in New Jersey there's a haunted attraction called "Ghost Ship" in which a second ship "Ignis Fatuus" who took part in the "Philadelphia Experiment" has come back from beyond the grave and the crew are not happy with what has happened to them.
• In the manga Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku , the experiment is mentioned for its proof the Tesla Coils can be used to create invisibility fields.
• The Philadelphia Experiment is indirectly referenced in Valve's Half Life and Portal franchise, sharing a similar story to that of the Borealis , a research ship (owned by the fictional company Aperture Science ) that disappeared during experiments with teleportation.
• Cliver Cussler's Mirage, a book of the Oregon Files series, ties into the story around the Philadelphia Experiment and Nikola Tesla.

See also [ ]

• Andrew Furuseth , namesake of the SS Andrew Furuseth
• Morris K. Jessup
• List of conspiracy theories
• ↑ Carroll, Robert Todd (2007-12-03). "Philadelphia experiment" . The Skeptic's Dictionary . http://skepdic.com/philadel.html . Retrieved 2008-02-05 .  
• ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Dash, Mike (2000) [1997]. Borderlands . Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN  978-0-87951-724-3 . OCLC  41932447 .  
• ↑ Adams, Cecil (1987-10-23). "Did the U.S. Navy teleport ships in the Philadelphia Experiment?" . The Straight Dope . http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_293.html . Retrieved 2007-02-20 .  
• ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The "Philadelphia Experiment"" . Naval Historical Center of the United States Navy . 2000-11-28 . http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-1.htm . Retrieved 2007-02-20 .  
• ↑ History Channel : That's Impossible!
• ↑ 6.0 6.1 Moseley, James W. & Karl T. Pflock (2002), Shockingly Close to the Truth!: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-991-3 .
• ↑ Introduction to the Varo edition of M. K. Jessup's Case for the UFO
• ↑ Jessup, M. K. (2003) [1973] (pdf). "Varo Edition" — The Case for the Unidentified Flying Object . The Cassiopaean Experiment . http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/Varo-Jessup.pdf .  
• ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Information Sheet: Philadelphia Experiment" . Naval Historical Center of the United States Navy . 1996-09-08 . http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-2.htm . Retrieved 2012-09-08 .  
• ↑ Death of Al Bielek announced on Coast to Coast AM broadcast by George Noory on 13 October 2011
• ↑ Al Bielek (March 31, 1927 – October 10, 2011) dies in Guadalajara, Mexico, age 84. http://educate-yourself.org/ab/albielekpasses14oct11.shtml
• ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Al Bielek Debunked" . 2008-01-14 . http://www.bielek-debunked.com .  
• ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136683/
• ↑ Brian Dunning (2006-12-24). " The Real Philadelphia Experiment: Did a US Navy warship completely disappear in 1943? " . Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena . http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4016 . Retrieved 2011-12-12 .  
• ↑ The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, William L. Moore, in consultation with Charles F. Berlitz, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, New York, 1979, pages 18-19.
• ↑ " Prepared Statement by Nikola Tesla " (.doc file). Pepe's Tesla Pages . 1889 . http://www.tesla.hu/tesla/articles/19370710.doc .  
• ↑ http://discovermagazine.com/2004/sep/einsteins-grand-quest#.Uax-l0A-ZzA
• ↑ See, for example here and here .
• ↑ Lewis, Frank (August 19–26, 1999). "The Where Ship? Project: Though long dismissed by the Navy, the legend of The Philadelphia Experiment shows no signs of disappearing" . Philadelphia City Paper . http://citypaper.net/articles/081999/news.cb.ship.shtml . Retrieved 2008-02-05 .  
• ↑ 20.0 20.1 Vallée, Jacques F. (1994) "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later" Journal of Scientific Exploration Vol 8 No 1 pg 47-71
• ↑ 21.0 21.1 abstract of "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later" by Jacques F. Vallee, URL accessed February 21, 2007
• ↑ TV.com: Philadelphia Experiment, Unsolved Mysteries aired 1/1/06, Dark Matters aired 8//31/11, 10/31/11

External links [ ]

• The Philadelphia Experiment from A-Z
• History of the Eldridge
• Science Article about High Tech Materials that can funnel light around an object
• "Experts test cloaking technology" . BBC News . 2006-10-19 . http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6064620.stm . Retrieved 2008-08-05 .   using Metamaterials
• Link catalogue for the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project
• Site debunking the claims of one Alfred Bielek, allegedly an eyewitness and survivor of the Philadelphia Experiment
• Naval Historical Center's entry for the "Philadelphia Experiment"
• Navweaps.com entry for the "Philadelphia Experiment"
• Skeptic's Dictionary entry for the "Philadelphia Experiment"
• The Philadelphia Experiment at the Internet Movie Database
• 100 Million BC at the Internet Movie Database
• The UFO and the Sailor
• Robert Goerman's Alias Carlos Allende: The Mystery Man Behind the Philadelphia Experiment
• Joe Turner's The Philadelphia Experiment: What They Don't Want You to Know
• Straight Dope on the Philadelphia Experiment
• 1 Pete Hegseth

• What Happened During the Philadelphia Experiment?

What Was the Philadelphia Experiment?

The Philadelphia Experiment is a supposed military experiment conducted by the United States (US) Navy on October 28, 1943, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is claimed that during the experiment the military managed to make the USS Eldridge , a US Navy destroyer escort, invisible to enemy devices. The tale of the Philadelphia Experiment emerged in 1955 through a letter sent to American astronomer and writer Morris K. Jessup. The story is believed to be a hoax, and the US Navy maintains it has never performed such an experiment. Additionally, details of the tale contradict well-established facts about the USS Eldridge . The US Navy also claims that the alleged story does not conform to the laws of physics.

Alleged Details of the Experiment

According to several accounts, the US Navy funded a group of unspecified scientists who believed that they could render an object invisible by bending light over it using large electrical generators, which would be very useful to the military. Unfortunately, there is no reliable, attributable account of what happened that day, but most theories suggest that all equipment necessary for the experiment was installed in the USS Eldridge  at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The experiment began during the summer of 1943, and one of the tests resulted in the ship becoming almost invisible, with witnesses claiming to have seen a green fog in its place. Most of the sailors aboard the vessel complained of nausea after the experiment, and when the ship reappeared, some of its sailors had been embedded in the ship’s metal structure, while others became mentally unstable.

The US Navy repeated the experiment on October 28 after altering the equipment. During the second experiment, the ship disappeared from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and reappeared 200 miles away in Norfolk, Virginia. The vessel was supposedly seen by crew aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth , before vanishing and appearing in the shipyard in Philadelphia. Some claim that the USS Eldridge traveled through time. There are many versions of the tale describing what happened to the sailors, including severe side effects. For example, some sailors were physically fused to the ship’s bulkheads, while others suffered various mental disorders. Some crew members vanished, while others were re-materialized inside-out. It is also alleged that the remaining sailors were brainwashed to help keep the experiment a secret.

Origin of the Story

The story originated from Morris K. Jessup, who had published a book about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), after receiving two letters from Carlos Miguel Allende in 1955, who claimed to have seen a secret Second World War experiment conducted at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Allende explained that the US Navy rendered destroyer escort USS Eldridge invisible before it was teleported to New York. Allende believed the vessel was teleported to another dimension where it encountered aliens and was transported through time. Jessup dismissed Miguel’s tale and labeled him as a "crackpot." The Philadelphia Experiment was also featured in the book Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea , written by Vincent Gaddis in 1963. The story was popularized by Berlitz Charles, who wrote a book on the topic in 1979. The tale was adapted into a movie The Philadelphia Experiment , which was directed by Raffill Stewart in 1984. The version of the story portrayed in the film was supported in 1990 by Bielek Alfred, a self-proclaimed survivor of the Philadelphia Experiment.

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