Philadelphia Experiment – The Strange Story of U.S Navy Ship which was made to Disappear
The Philadelphia Experiment also called the USS Eldridge Conspiracy, is among the most famous military legends ever.
It has everything from disappearing ships, aliens, paranormal activities, Albert Einstein, and everything else that could fascinate the human mind.
However, did the Philadelphia Experiment happen?
As the story goes, this Experiment was about the secret testing of an alien technology, which was carried out at the peak of World War II in accordance with Albert Einstein’s unified field theory, a term coined by Einstein to describe the interrelated nature of the forces of electromagnetism and gravity, in other words, to unite their individual fields into a single field.
Per stories, the U.S was in the middle of war and wanted to win the Battle of the Atlantic. Hence, this Experiment was conducted at the Philadephia Naval Shipyard to make ships invisible and give the U.S an advantage over its enemies at sea.
What was the Philadelphia Experiment?
Per the accounts, the newly commissioned destroyer USS Eldridge was the subject of this Experiment, which is said to have been conducted on 28 October 1943 in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard while the ship was docked here.
The ship was fitted with generators that could make it invisible to the enemy. The crew members readied themselves for the system test. On a clear summer day, it was daylight when the generators started, and a greenish-blue glow or fog from the destroyer’s hull surrounded the vessel from all sides.
The ship disappeared completely from the shipyard in no time, only to appear suddenly in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Virginia, over 200 miles away.
Witnesses reported seeing the ship appear in the waters in Virginia before it vanished again in the blink of an eye and showed back in Philadelphia.
If this is not weird enough, the crew members of USS Eldridge reported to have experienced nausea and burn marks, and some even went insane. Others were said to have been embedded in the ship’s metal structure, while others were transported from one deck or floor to another. Some even suffered from unexplained, mysterious illnesses.
The story about this too-far-to-be-true Experiment has lived on for decades, even though much of what is known cannot be actually proved. Among the several versions of this story and the additional details that have made rounds throughout history, some facts remain certain.
Origins of the Philadelphia Experiment Conspiracy
It is said that many people witnessed the Philadelphia experiment, i.e., seeing the ship Eldridge appear and disappear again. However, just one witness came forward, and it was in the 1950s that more details emerged, though just from a single source: a man named Carl Meredith Allen, an ex-merchant mariner who also went by the name Carlos Allende.
In 1956, Carl Allen began to write hundreds of letters to Morris K. Jessup, author of The Case for the UFO: Unidentified Flying Objects, published in 1955. In this book, he argued that unidentified flying objects or UFOs were mysterious objects that should be the subject of further research.
He wrote the letters under the name Carlos Allende and informed him about the Philadelphia Experiment, which he claimed to have seen with his own eyes while working as a deckhand on the SS Andrew Furuseth. He also said that the Experiment was a proof of Einstein’s unified field theory.
Jessup tried to get more information from him and even tried to investigate his bizarre claims, but unable to find any physical evidence, he dismissed his ideas.
The Involvement of the U.S Office of Naval Research
The story would have ended with Jessup dismissing Carl Allen’s claims; however, in 1957, he was called by the U.S Office of Naval Research (the ONR) regarding an anonymous package they received, labelled ‘Happy Easter,’ which contained a copy of Jessup’s book about UFOs.
The book was annotated by three people and in three different shades of blue. Among them, one was said to be an alien and the three called each other ‘gypsies’.
The notes were about UFOs, which were said to contain information about extraterrestrial life on Earth. They also suggested that Jessup’s research regarding Enistein’s unified field theory was closely related to some advanced alien technology. Several references were also made to the Philadelphia Experiment.
The strange use of punctuation marks and capitalisation led many to argue that the annotator was not a native speaker of English.
When Jessup reached the ONR in 1957, he viewed the annotated copy of his book and said that the handwriting matched the one in Allen’s letters, which he received some years back. It was confirmed that Allen sent the package to the ONR, and in 1969, he admitted to having written all the annotations.
We might wonder what his goal was in doing all this. He wanted to scare Jessup to prevent him from further researching the Unified Field Theory, which he thought was quite dangerous. Later, he took back his words.
Another twist contributed to the popularity of the Philadelphia experiment. Two agents at the U.S Office of Naval Research privately printed around 127 copies of the annotated book, which came to be known as the Varo Version or the Varo Edition after the publisher Varo Manufacturing.
However, one question lingered in everyone’s minds: Who was this, Carlos Allende or Carl Allen? In fact, not much has been known about him for a long time. In 1980, a journalist named Robert Goerman wrote about him. Goerman had a family connection with Allen and interviewed his family, who called him “a creative and imaginative loner.”
Per Goerman’s findings, Allen had a history of mental illness, which could be the reason behind his letters to Jessup and the fabrication of a bizarre experiment that never occurred.
Office of Naval Research Released an Official Statement
The Philadelphia Experiment caught the attention of many people, including some researchers across the world and remained a heated topic of discussion among social circles for the years that followed.
The Office of Naval Research was flooded with constant inquiries into the same and became quite overwhelmed, so much so that it released an official statement in 1996 in which it denied the event, saying:
“ONR has never conducted any investigations on invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time. In view of present scientific knowledge, ONR scientists do not believe such an experiment could be possible except in science fiction.”
Moreover, the logs of the USS Eldridge and other ships contradict the theory. On the alleged date of this Experiment, 28 October 1943, the ship’s logs state that it was in the Bahamas. However, proponents of the story argue that the ship’s logs were falsified.
But there was nothing other than Allende’s claims and the annotations to prove that such an experiment actually happened. Hence, most people brush it aside as a hoax since there is no evidence and it is not scientifically possible, given the proven law of physics.
Government Organisations like the ONR denied it openly, so no documents relating to the Philadelphia Experiment were ever found. The annotations in Jessup’s book are the only written mention of the Experiment.
Books & Movies which talk about the Philadelphia Experiment
Vincent Gaddis published a book in 1965, ‘Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea, in which he recounted the story of the Philadephia Experiment from the Varo version.
In 1978, a novel titled Thin Air presented the story with a touch, where a naval officer investigates several happenings that led him to wartime invisibility experiments and a conspiracy that involved matter transmission technologies.
The story of the Philadelphia Experiment was popularised in 1979 when Charles Berlitz, author of the best-selling book about the Bermuda Triangle, and his co-author, William L. Moore, published their book, The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility.
It was a success and became quite popular. It expanded on stories of strange happenings, Einstein’s unified field theories, and government coverups, all based on Allen’s letters.
The Philadelphia Experiment had everything to become a Hollywood blockbuster, and the story was made into a 1984 time travel movie, the Philadelphia Experiment. It was directed by Stewart Raffill and dramatised the main elements of the original story.
However, a historian named Mike Dash made an important point. He said that many authors who wrote books, articles etc on the Philadephia Experiment story and some who even deemed it true, never did any independent research and relied more or less on the annotated book and Allen’s claims.
While everyone had their own versions or explanations of the event, ranging from government contact with aliens to paranormal activities in the Naval Yard, the fact that only Allen was the witness to such a mind-boggling event held back right-minded people from believing in the story, which was till then dismissed by many.
However, this changed when another witness came forward in 1988.
Another Witness comes forward
In 1988, four years after Hollywood released the movie Philadelphia Experiment, a man named Alfred Bielek claimed to have been onboard the USS Eldridge when the Experiment was performed.
He addressed the 1990 MUFON Conference and asserted that Raffill’s movie was quite consistent with the happenings he witnessed in 1943. He also spoke about this on radio talk shows, on the internet and at conferences, which gave him a wider audience.
He added that he was brainwashed to forget what had happened, but after seeing the movie, his memories came back, and he could remember everything clearly.
A Logical Explanation Behind the Philadelphia Experiment
Edward Dudgeon, who worked as a Navy electrician and was stationed close to USS Eldridge in 1943 summer, offers a logical explanation of the event.
He said generators were placed on Eldridge and his vessel, the USS Engstrom, to render them invisible to the enemy. However, invisible did not translate to physical invisibility; rather, it meant the ship’s ability to remain undetected by enemy radar and the magnetic torpedoes fired by German U-boats.
The process was called degaussing, and ships of the era were fitted with such systems on their upper decks; however, this did not make the ships literally invisible to the naked eye.
Researcher Jacques Vallée says that it is quite possible that accounts of USS Engstrom’s degaussing circulated among people and the retellings of the story led to the story of the Philadelphia Experiment.
Dudgeon also had a practical explanation for the greenish-blue hue or glow that many witnessed the day of the Experiment.
He added that the glow was probably a result of a lightning-like phenomenon called St Elmo’s fire. Also, the fact that the ship appeared in Virginia before it was seen in Philadelphia again can be explained by the inland canals. The civilians did not know about these canals because they were kept a secret. These canals shortened a 2-day commercial voyage to only 6 hours.
Although Dudgeon provided an understandable and logical explanation of the events, many still choose to believe the exciting version of the story. Since there are no official documents, there is no proof to cross-check either story.
The USS Eldridge was taken to Greece and renamed the HS Leon. It also participated in a naval exercise during the Cold War era and was later sold for scrap in the 1990s.
Conclusion
Some believe the Philadelphia Experiment to be true, while others call it a conspiracy theory. Still, others dismiss it as a hoax perpetrated by an old, lonely man whose family called him a master leg puller.
The Philadelphia Experiment story was known worldwide, so much so that the Office of Naval Research had to issue an official statement due to the constant inquiries.
It also became the subject of many movies, dramas, and TV shows. Its popularity was revived once again when it was linked to another secret experiment, the Montauk Project, which involved time travel and two people: Wilhelm Reich and Nikola Tesla.
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About Author
Zahra is an alumna of Miranda House, University of Delhi. She is an avid writer, possessing immaculate research and editing skills. Author of several academic papers, she has also worked as a freelance writer, producing many technical, creative and marketing pieces. A true aesthete at heart, she loves books a little more than anything else.
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