The Philadelphia Experiment

The story of the Philadelphia Experiment originated in '56 with Carlos Allende (Carl Allen) in bizarrely-styled letters to astronomer Morris Jessup and the bizarrely-styled annotations of Jessup's book, The Case for the UFO, from '55, sent to the USN, which it published as the Varo edition, annotations supposedly done by 3 different people, including Allende, but which were done by only 1 person: Allende himself. His claim was that an experiment was done by the US Navy aboard the USS Eldridge, DE (destroyer escort) 175, in October '43, a phase of which was done at the Phily shipyard and another at sea,  to test a new radar stealth technology but obtained optical invisibility and took on disastrous side effects and possibly teleported the ship. Allen was supposedly witness to the event from the USS Furuseth. He recanted in '69 but then returned to his original premise 10 years later.  Allen was later found by researchers to be a perrenial deceiver and compulsive annotator. In the summer of '58  Jessup turned over his collected information (including his notes and his own version of the Varo edition) on the Phily Experiment  to writer-researcher Ivan Sanderson in New York for safekeeping “in case anything should happen to me.” Jessup's other UFO books were  The UFO and the Bible (1956), The UFO Annual (1956), and The Expanding Case for the UFO (1957).

It should be noted that the current writing syle is just as bizarre, sometimes in the same ways (lack of apostrophe for the possessive and strange misspellings, but Allende did use punctuation), sometimes in different ways: bizarre semantics ('gay' for 'homosexual'; 'guys' for 'folks', 'people', 'girls', or 'ladies;' 'issue' for 'problem'; 'literally' for 'figuratively'; having a 'problem with for having an 'objection to'; anti-introvert and anti-intellectual slurs; etc.; etc.), annoying repitition of names due to fear of pronouns, bizarre orthography (using the possessive for the plural and the 3rd person singular, placing the comma or period before the parentheses, omitting the hyphen between the maiden name and married name, omission of the Oxford comma, using the semi-colon for the colon, lack of punctuation, etc.), using the double possessive, and using the Latin plural as singular. Some of these confusionisms were around in the '50s.

The Navy Department’s official history of the Eldridge states that it was one of 4 destroyer escorts of the Bostwick class. It was built by Federal Shipbuilding & Dry-Docks, Port Newark, New Jersey, was launched on July 25, 1943, skippered by Lt. Charles Hamilton, and commissioned in the New York Navy Yard on August 27, 1943. Its shakedown cruise was September to December '43 in the Bermuda area, and it served in the Atlantic and Pacific. It was decommissioned in 1946 and finally transferred to Greece under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, as one of 4 ships in the U.S. Cannon class, to the Greek Navy in 1951, and renamed the Léon.

In the '94 JSE article by Jacques Vallée, Anatomy of a Hoax, Edward Dudgeon, electrician's mate aboard the U.S.S. Engstrom, DE 50, in '43, said the Navy used to degauss all the ships in dry dock, even the merchant ships, to make them invisible to magnetic torpedoes. The green mist or glow he attributed to being typical of electric storms, saying St. Elmo’s fire is quite common at sea. He explained the alleged disappearance of 2 sailors, one of which was him, the other named Dave, who served on the DE 49, as follows: a fight started in a bar in August, '43 when some of the sailors bragged about the secret degaussing equipment and were told to keep quiet. He and Dave  were minors, so the waitresses ushered them out the back door and later denied knowing anything about them. And he explained the alleged teleportation as follows: the Eldridge had already left at 11 p.m. and someone looking at the harbour that night would have noticed that it wasn’t there anymore, and it did appear in Norfolk; it was back in Philadelphia harbour the next morning, which seems like an impossible feat, as it would have taken 2 days, but the Navy used a special inland channel, the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, so the trip took only about 6 hours, so the process was out of dry dock, down the canal, loading ammunition in Norfolk, back to Phily, and out to sea to set the compasses and test radar and sonar gear.

However, St. Elmo's fire is blue or violet, not green, and this is because the atmosphere is made up of nitrogen and oxygen, as the colour of the glow depends on the type of gas involved. If the atmosphere was made of neon, St. Elmo's fire would be red or orange. (What causes the strange glow known as St. Elmo's fire?-scientificamerican.com). Also, the green glow is associated with a mist, while St. Elmo's fire is not.

And, according to Farrell, there is a serious discrepancy between the official story and the reality, as usual, and there is proof of cover-up (Secrets of the Unified Field, Joseph Farrell, pp. 116-20, 2008,  AUP). The deck logs of the Furuseth were destroyed by executive order, which means the event was so significant and important it had to be obfuscated at such a high level as the Oval Office. An action report for the Eldridge, kept secret for 34 years, and the engineer's log for the Eldridge completely contradict  the official story. As well, a former naval commander wrote to Wm. Moore, co-author with Charles Berlitz of ''The Bermuda Triangle'' and ''The Philadelphia Experiment,''  indicating the Eldridge was launched before the date the official history maintains (June 25 instead of July 25), and Greek naval records confirm the commander's story and also indicate a discrepancy in weight of 380 tons, which can be explained as the removal of electronic equipment before sale (to the Greek Navy). The invisibility was associated with a green haze, which is also  associated with Bermuda Triangle disappearances.

The USN met with Jessup to discuss Allen and to ask him to continue work on the experiment (Farrell, p. 97), which Jessup found possibly suspicious.

As well, engineers K.L. and J.F. Corum and J.F.X. Daum designed an experiment in order to test the conceptual foundations of the Phily Experiment, which demonstrates the feasibilty of the latter even in the time frame of the '40s (Farrell, loc.cit).  

Also, the authors of a book on the subject, Special Investigative Report #1: Case Solved! Carlos Allende's Witness Account of the "Philadelphia Experiment", Howard Strom ("Dru") and Debra Cunningham, and their website, about a year after an appearance on Coast to Coast AM, hosted by George Noory, on Sept. 15, 2003, where they talk about the incident,  have disappeared, either intimidated into dropping the story or eliminated by the ONR, and a 2nd and more comprehensive  book on the subject, promoted on the website, promising important new information, called Phase, never happened (Farrell, p. 191). In this 1st report they had found that there was a cover-up and that  the test at sea was near Bermuda, possibly in the Bermuda Triangle, and that it was in September.

Also, the USN said that it went to the Pennsylvania address indicated Allen's communications but found only a  vacant farmhouse. The Allen family said it was never vacant.

Manson Valentine, zoologist, archeologist, and oceanographer, who had investigated the Bermuda Triangle and was a friend of Jessup, says the full-scale (2nd) experiment used pulsing and nonpulsing generators, and it was there that the accidental results occured.

The decease of Morris Jessup in Coral Gables of CO inhalation, officially a suicide, is considered suspicious by some.  Indeed, there are several anomalies and discrepancies connected with it, which are elucidated at DE173.Com, the major ones being the fact an autopsy wasn't done, which is required by Florida law; his briefcase seen with him in the morning was nowhere to be found; he was pronounced DOA by a Dr. Harry Reed, who is a mysterious figure; his body was later identified by a Leon Seoul, who claimed to be a friend of the family, but no one ever heard of him. There is also the story that, just prior to his passing away, he had contacted Valentine to tell him that he had come across something very important, but this apparently originates with Gray Barker, who was known for inventing stories.  The decease was considered a homicide by notable French sci-fi writer and ufologist, who was also a Freemason, Jimmy Guieu, who knew Jessup. It is claimed that Guieu was himself murdered, for his opposition to the Cabal, which he called a super-Mafia. Coincidentally, Jessup's decease was April 20, 59 years ago in '59, and he was 59.

At the same time there is a fair amount of evidence he was suicidal, including a suicidal note/letter that he wrote to his friend John Nebel in NY, host of The Long John Nebel Show. His wife, however, says that he wasn't. Manson Valentine, was one who was suspicious of the suicide story, but also says that Jessup was depressive, and he says, as well, that he was still alive when he was found but was allowed to die.

The connection between EM, invisibility, antigravity, and the Bermuda Triangle is poorly understood, but EM and antigravity (electrogravitics) are part of the UFO propulsion system, and invisibility is an effect of it (gratuitously attributed to 'extra dimensions', which are not even possible). Jessup believed controlled magnetism was a key to the sudden appearance and disappearance of certain UFOs and the disappearance of planes and ships in the Bermuda Triangle. According to Farrell, he also believed that UFOs represented a very ancient civilization that may have originated from the 5th planet, which exploded. This is close to Van Flandern's speculation that humans originated on Mars, in which case they would be giants (because of the low gravity), which have figured prominently in the past and are called Nephilim in the Bible. Also according to Farrell, Jessup was familiar with ancient texts that refered to an ancient interplanetary war, which also implied a similar origin (from the 5th planet) to the ''gods'' that fought that war.