The Real Philadelphia Experiment
Did a US Navy warship completely disappear in 1943?
Filed under Conspiracies, Paranormal, Urban Legends
| Skeptoid #16 December 24, 2006 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode
16 , December 24, 2006
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/
4016
Today we're going to pull a giant switch on the wall and activate powerful generators, which will create a mysterious force field around us and cause us all to disappear. For we're going to discuss the perennially silly "Philadelphia Experiment."
The story goes that in October of 1943, at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, an experiment was conducted aboard a US Navy Cannon-class destroyer escort called the USS Eldridge, number DE-173. The experiment involved the creation of a force field which rendered the ship invisible both to the eye and to radar. The experiment was witnessed by hundreds, possibly thousands, of sailors both ashore and on other ships nearby. Unfortunately, there were severe side effects to the crew on board ship. Some were found materialized inside the metal of the ship, others were never seen again, and still others were driven insane or plagued for years by mysterious cases of phasing in and out of existence. In typical Navy fashion, everything has been denied.
None of the above ever actually happened. What follows, did actually happen.
The secret of the mysterious experiment and its terrible aftermath was kept for 12 years, until one day when Morris Jessup, the author of a book about UFO's, was unexpectedly summoned to the US Navy's Office of Naval Research. The ONR had received, in the mail, a copy of Jessup's UFO book, filled with handwritten annotations. The notes were all in the same handwriting, but in three characters, in three colors of ink. The notes revealed all the details of the Philadelphia Experiment, and the ONR wanted to know if Jessup knew anything about who might have written these notes and sent the book to them.
Jessup recognized the crazy handwriting immediately. He had received a series of letters from a man calling himself Carlos Allende, who claimed to have witnessed the experiment from aboard a merchant marine ship nearby, the SS Andrew Furuseth. Jessup had dismissed Allende as a crackpot — among Allende's claims was that Albert Einstein had personally spent several weeks mentoring him on subjects such as invisibility and faster-than-light travel. Several copies of the annotated book were produced, and the rest is history: The Philadelphia Experiment story became part of the fabric of pop culture.
Robert Goerman, a researcher of the paranormal and a friend of mine, noticed that the return address of Allende's original mailing to the ONR came from his own home town, New Kensington, Pennsylvania. He had spent some time putting together the history of the Philadelphia Experiment story and in 1979, found to his great surprise that Carlos Allende, whose real name was Carl Allen, was the son of a close family friend. Over time, Goerman filled in the blanks and presented the complete case in magazine articles and on television shows such as History's Mysteries, Unsolved Mysteries, and The Unexplained — three show titles which by themselves lend far too much credence to Carl Allen's stories. Carl Allen was something of the dark horse of the family, a creative and imaginative loner, notorious for annotating anything and everything in the house, and sending bizarre writings and claims to everyone in the family for any occasion. Goerman also assembled all of the facts of the USS Eldridge: little things, like the ship was nowhere near Philadelphia when the experiment happened, the ship had detailed corroborated records for the normal duties that it was in fact performing at the time, and that nobody who had ever been a crewman on board the ship knew anything about any experiment. The Eldridge had been launched only two months before the experiment, and you'd think that if it was hosting Albert Einstein and the most amazing experiment in history, somebody would have known about it. Without exception, every single fact that Carl Allen presented as evidence of the Philadelphia Experiment has been easily proven to be a complete fabrication.
And therein lies the problem. The trouble with discussing government conspiracies is that the believers generally refuse to accept the factual evidence, because it becomes part of the conspiracy. It's a bit like having a debate about Creationism: believers simply say "God did it" and it's a matter of faith, not of evidence or fact. If the government is trying to cover something up, every falsified claim becomes evidence for the conspiracy. In summary, there is no amount of evidence that can be compiled that will be accepted by a conspiracy theorist. In the conspiracy theorist's mind, evidence against is actually evidence for.
Among this schizophrenic evidence is the US Navy's reply to the Philadelphia Experiment story, which is available online at http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-1.htm. As you might surmise, it simply says that they have no idea what this guy could be talking about, here's where both ships were and what they were doing at the time, and here are the statements from their officers. It's an entertaining report, but predictable.
Interestingly, there are some question marks left standing about the Philadelphia Experiment. As you might expect, two or three veterans of the Eldridge and the USS Engstrom, which was once moored alongside the Eldrige in 1943, have claimed to be a guy whom Allende saw disappear in a bar or who have found themselves transported across dimensions. It should be noted that such claims were made well after the Philadelphia Experiment became a pop-culture phenomenon, and in more than one case it turned out that these guys were not actually veterans at all. A more interesting question comes from the very genesis of the story, when the Navy ONR first summoned Morris Jessup to their office to talk about the strangely annotated book. If there was nothing in those annotations of genuine interest to them, why did they call?
Who knows. Goerman suggested that these ONR officers did this on their own time out of personal intrigue, or that some of the allusions in the annotations were similar to actual Navy research and the ONR was simply being responsible at following every lead. Conspiracy theorists maintain that this proves Allen's annotations must have been true. Whatever the truth, I happen to love that this story has this annoying little footnote that can't be easily explained away. I love a good mystery and I remember a streak of disappointment when Goerman's debunking of the case was laid out before me — like most people I'd done no thorough research of my own and only knew what the average moviegoer knows about the Philadelphia Experiment. Intellectually I know the story is silly, but I still love that little loose end. Carl Allen may have been a prankster, but I thank him for making the century just that little bit more interesting.
© 2006 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
Barnes, M., Houpt, F., Schelm, G. "Al Bielek finally debunked." Al Bielek Debunked. Golf Sierra, 18 Jun. 2003. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://www.bielek-debunked.com/>
Broderick, James F., Miller, Darren W. Web of Conspiracy: A Guide to Conspiracy Theory Sites on the Internet. Medford, N.J.: CyberAge Books, 2008. 175-188.
Goerman, Robert A. "Alias Carlos Allende: The Mystery Man Behind the Philadelphia Experiment." FATE Magazine. 2 Oct. 1980, Volume 33, Number 10.
Knight, Peter. Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2003. 583-585.
Vallee, Jacques F. "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later." Journal of Scientific Exploration. 1 Oct. 1994, 8: 47-71.
Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian.
"The Real Philadelphia Experiment." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
24 Dec 2006. Web.
4 Feb 2012. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4016>
Discuss!
5 most recent comments | Show all 85 comments
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
Having a "closed" mind is a virtue. It requires rigor and discipline. There's nothing wrong with it, heck, by the twisted definition used by the pro-bunkers here, I'd say it's a good thing that good scientists have closed minds. What it means is that you are accepting facts and weighing experimental evidence, and that you understand what a scientific theory is, that it must have predictive power, etc.
Being open to every silly thing out there is a waste of time at best. People who misappropriate having an "open mind" for believing in every crackpot's theory out there should be ashamed of themselves.
Almost every single comment here that uses technical or engineering terms is wrong in some respect, with most being mostly wrong instead of mostly right. It makes one cry over lack of understanding of the very basics of electromagnetism!
Degaussing is a process that randomly reorients the tiny magnetic domains that are part of every ferromagnetic material (like rusty steel). To nondestructively degauss all you need is to produce a decaying and alternating magnetic field within the volume of the material to be degaussed. There are various ways of doing that -- a technically simple way is to put the material into a solenoid powered via a variable transformer from the AC mains. The buzzing comes from magnetostriction of the solenoid and/or the target -- change in dimensions due to change in magnetic field. It's a conceptually simple thing that has been done to ships for decades.
Kuba, OH, U.S.A.
November 21, 2011 7:17pm
geez, Kuba, can you do that in differential equations?
The ICP promised that!
Mud, Back in the hack shack! NSW, Oz
November 22, 2011 12:53am
hi i'm saltxdogson the Philadelphia Experiment sad cool and exciting but i what to now more can you tell me more my email is saltxdogson@yahoo.com
saltxdogson, guyton
December 15, 2011 8:57am
It's odd that even in the face of rationale scientific explanation that the conspiracy theorists still cling to their ridiculous ideas. It's as if they actually want their horrible plots to be true just so they can say "I told you so". Also love how a c.t. will also believe one quack "research" article in favor of their theory and not the thousands of true research journals against it. People love to be fear mongers.
Sean, North Providence
December 21, 2011 6:16am
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" I love a good mystery and I remember a streak of disappointment when Goerman's debunking of the case was laid out before me — like most people I'd done no thorough research of my own "
Here's the truth about Goerman's so-called debunking, as well as some real research and investigation into the scientific aspects of this legend which been consistently ignored, along with solid evidence of how the military will lie to your face and on record to cover something up -
http://viewzone.com/philadelphia.html
I might add that it appears that some 10 or more years later, none of those caught doing the cover-up have attempted to sue for defamation or slander, which means this account it as solid as it gets.
Dave Tanner, Dublin
October 13, 2011 4:29pm