Did a US Navy Battleship Completely Disappear from Sight and Teleport Somewhere in 1943?
Allegation
In October 1943, an experiment was conducted at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on a cannon-equipped US Navy escort destroyer named DE-173 and named USS Eldridge. The content of the experiment was to create a force field that would make the ship invisible to both eye and radar. The experiment was watched by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sailors both on shore and on nearby ships. Unfortunately, the crew on the ship where the experiment was conducted suffered serious side effects. Some were reincarnated within the metal of the ship, some were never seen again, and some were tormented or driven mad for years by mysterious appearances and disappearances. In typical Navy fashion, all was denied.
Really?
Fake
What’s Real?
An experiment called the Philadelphia Experiment has never been conducted. What is claimed in the experiment is physically impossible. Moreover, at the time of the experiment, USS Eldridge was not even located in the area claimed by the claimants.
Origin of the Claim
The claims about the experiment in question are a false (and have been extensively debunked) conspiracy put forward by a dreamer named Carl Allende, who likes to make outlandish claims and make up stories from them.
Informations
The mysterious experiment and its horrific consequences were kept secret for 12 years. Until one day, Morris Jessup, the author of a book about UFOs, was suddenly called to the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR). ONR had received a copy of Jessup’s UFO book in the mail, complete with handwritten notes. The notes were all written in the same handwriting, but with three different characters and three different colors. The notes explained all the details of the Philadelphia Experiment, and ONR wanted to know if Jessup knew who might have written the notes and who might have sent them the book.
Jessup immediately recognized the owner of the crazy handwriting. He had received a series of letters from a man calling himself Carlos Allende who claimed to have seen the experiment from the nearby freighter SS Andrew Furuseth. Jessup did not care because he saw Allende as a crackpot. Among Allende’s claims was that Albert Einstein personally advised him for several weeks on topics such as invisibility and faster-than-light travel. Many copies of the book full of notes were made, and the rest is already known: The Philadelphia Experiment story became a part of the fabric of popular culture.
Robert Goerman, who investigates paranormal events, noticed that the return address of Allende’s mail to the ONR was given as his hometown of New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Goerman, who was trying to gather the history of the Philadelphia Experiment, was surprised to learn in 1979 that Carlos Allende, whose real name was Carl Allen, was the son of a close family friend. Over time, Goerman managed to piece together all the pieces of the story and published them both in magazine articles and on television programs such as History’s Mysteries, Unsolved Mysteries, and The Unexplained. Just appearing on these three television shows was enough to give Carl Allen more credibility to his stories.
Carl Allen was the strangest member of his family: a dreamer who liked to live on his own and was very creative. He was famous for taking notes on everything in the house and sending outlandish texts and outlandish claims to everyone in the family at every opportunity.
Goerman also brought together all the facts about USS Eldridge:
The ship was not even near Philadelphia when the experiment was performed!
There is detailed and strong evidence that the ship was in fact performing its normal duties during the stated period.
None of the crew members who have ever served on the ship have any knowledge of such an experiment.
USS Eldridge had been launched just two months before the experiment. If it was home to Albert Einstein and the most surprising experiment in history, someone would definitely know about it. It has been easily proven that every fact, without exception, that Carl Allen presented as evidence for the Philadelphia Experiment was a complete fabrication.
Here’s the problem: The problem when discussing government conspiracies is that believers often refuse to accept factual evidence because they see it as part of the conspiracy. This is a bit like discussions about Creationism: Believers simply say “God created.” says. There is no question of evidence or fact here, it is a matter of faith… If the government is trying to cover something up, every false claim is evidence in favor of conspiracy. In summary, any evidence collected will not be accepted by the conspiracy theorist. To the conspiracy theorist, evidence against is actually evidence in his favor.
One of these imaginary and fabricated evidence is the US Navy’s response to the Philadelphia Experiment story.
US Navy’s Statement on the Philadelphia Experiment
Reportedly, the event known as the Philadelphia Experiment was when a US Navy destroyer suddenly teleported invisibly from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Norfolk, Virginia, in the fall of 1943. In the records obtained as a result of repeated research by the Operational Archives Branch of the Naval Historical Center, there are neither confirmation of this event nor documents proving that the navy achieved success.
The ship used in the experiment is allegedly USS Eldridge. In the Exercise Archives, the ship’s logbook and war diary were reviewed to examine Eldridge’s activities at the New York Naval Range from 27 August 1943 to December 1943. We can summarize the activities learned from the ship’s war log as follows:
Once deployed, Eldridge remained in New York and Long Island Sound until sailing for Bermuda on 16 September. From 18 September to 15 October, Eldridge was in ongoing training and sea rehearsals off Bermuda until 18 October, when she joined a convoy bound for New York… until 1 November, when Eldridge became escort for convoy UGS-23. It remained in New York harbor. The convoy entered Norfolk Maritime Exercise Base on November 2. Eldridge and Convoy UGS-23 departed for Casablanca on 3 November and arrived on 22 November. Eldridge set out as the escort of Convoy GUS-22 on November 29 and arrived in New York Harbor on December 17. Eldridge continued training in New York and Block Island Sound until December 31. He then sailed for Norfolk with four other ships. During this time frame, Eldridge came nowhere near Philadelphia.
All World War II movement reports and daily battle records, including notes from Eldridge’s 1943 logbook, are available on microfilm NRS-1978-26. The cost of the copied film is stated on the pay slip. To order a copy, you can fill out the form and pay the stated fee to the Naval Drill Archives for easy access to these documents.
Allegedly, a civilian merchant ship named SS Andrew Furuseth observed Eldridge beaming to the Norfolk area. Tenth Fleet records, including Andrew Furuseth’s movement report cards, were obtained by the Modern Military Branch and the National Archives and Records Administration. was put under surveillance. These institutions also include World War II, including Eldridge. They also keep under surveillance the logbooks, war logs and movement reports of World War II Navy ships. The list of movement report cards includes information about the ports the merchant ship called, the days on which it visited these ports, and which convoys, if any, it was assigned to.
This movement report card shows that Andrew Furuseth left Norfolk on 16 August 1943 with convoy UGS-15 and arrived in Casablanca on 2 September. The ship left Casablanca on 19 September and arrived at Cape Henry (Norfolk) on 4 October. Andrew Furuseth left Norfolk with convoy UGS-22 on 25 October and arrived at the Port of Oran (Algeria) on 12 November. After staying in the Mediterranean for a while, he returned to Hampton Roads on January 17 with convoy GUS-25.
The archives contain a letter written in 1943 by Naval Lieutenant William S. Dodge, captain of the Andrew Furuseth, in which he stated that his crew encountered no unexpected situations in Norfolk. Eldridge and Andrew Furuseth were never in Norfolk at the same time.
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has stated that the use of a force field to make a ship and its crew invisible does not comply with the known laws of physics. The Office of Naval Research also includes Dr. He also claimed that Albert Einstein’s Unified Field Theory was never completed. During this period, Einstein was working as a part-time consultant at the Naval Ordnance Bureau, where theoretical research on explosives and explosions was carried out. There are no findings in this mission of Einstein that can be associated with issues related to invisibility or teleportation. The Office of Naval Research’s Philadelphia Experiment information page can be accessed here.
The Philadelphia Experiment is also known as the “Rainbow Project”. As a result of extensive research in the archive, no records such as teleportation or destroying a ship could be detected in the Rainbow Project. In the 1940s, the codename RAINBOW referred to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo line. The RAINBOW plans mentioned were war plans established to defeat Italy, Germany and Japan. RAINBOW V is a plan put into action by the United States against the Axis powers when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Some researchers mistakenly conclude that reducing the ship’s magnetic field will make an object invisible. Reducing the ship’s magnetic field (English: “degaussing”) is a process in which electrical cables are installed around the hull of the ship, from the bow to the stern of the ship. A measured electric current passes through these cables to cancel the ship’s magnetic field. These equipment, which are installed on the hulls of Navy ships to reduce the ship’s magnetic flux, can be easily activated when the ship is in waters containing magnetic mines. This situation is usually encountered in shallow collision areas. It is a fact that reducing the ship’s magnetic field makes the ship invisible to magnetic mine sensors. However, this does not mean that the ship cannot be seen by human eyes, radar or underwater listening devices.
After many years of research, it has been determined that the Exercise Archives and independent investigators’ personnel are not included in any of the official documents supporting cloaking or teleportation experiments of a Navy ship in Philadelphia or any other location.
What Does All This Mean?
As you can imagine, the answer is simply that they have no idea what this man is talking about, where both ships were at the time in question, what they were doing, and the statements of their officers. The report is entertaining as well as predictable…
Interestingly, there are some unanswered questions about the Philadelphia Experiment. As you can imagine, Eldridge and two or three retired officers of the USS Engstrom, which was docked next to him on one occasion in 1943, claimed that they were the person Allende said disappeared in a bar or that they found themselves transported between dimensions.
It should not be overlooked that these claims were made long after the Philadelphia Experiment became a popular culture event. In more than one case, it turned out that these men were not retired officers or anything. A more interesting question concerns the very beginning of the story, when Morris Jessup is summoned to the office by the Navy ONR to talk about the book full of strange notes. If there was nothing in these notes that really interested them, then why did they call?
Who knows! Goerman stated that ONR officers did this during off-duty hours and out of personal curiosity, or that some of the insinuations in the notes were similar to the Navy’s actual investigation and that ONR was simply fulfilling its duty to follow up on every lead. Conspiracy theorists argue that Allen’s notes must be accurate in this case. However, there is no valid and sufficient reason for us to think this.
Resources and Further Reading
NHHC. The Philadelphia Experiment. (November 28, 2000). Date Received: October 1, 2019. Retrieved From: NHHC | Archive Link
B. Dunning. The Real Philadelphia Experiment. (December 24, 2006). Date Retrieved: October 1, 2019. Retrieved From: Skeptoid | Archive Link