The Philadelphia Experiment

The Story

In 1955 Morris K. Jessup published a book called The Case for UFO's. According to an information sheet from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Jessup later received letters from a man who signed himself Carlos Miquel Allende. Allende described a secret naval experiment in Philadelphia in 1943 in which, ONR summarizes, 'a ship was rendered invisible and teleported to and from Norfolk in a few minutes, with some terrible after-effects for crew members.' It was supposedly done with Einstein's 'unified field' theory.

Allende said he had watched it from another ship and that a Philadelphia newspaper reported it. ONR says 'The identity of the newspaper has never been established,' and that 'the identity of Allende is unknown.'

'During this time frame, Eldridge was never in Philadelphia,' the Navy's historians concluded after reviewing the ship's records.

In 1956, ONR says, someone anonymously mailed it a copy of Jessup's book filled with handwritten notes about UFOs, 'described in pseudo-scientific and incoherent terms.' Two officers then at ONR took a personal interest, showed it to Jessup, and arranged a typewritten reprint of 25 copies. Jessup concluded the annotator was the same person who had written to him. ONR says it does not have a file copy of the annotated book.

Later retellings named the ship as the destroyer escort USS Eldridge. The Navy's historians checked. The Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) reviewed Eldridge's deck log and war diary from its commissioning on 27 August 1943 in New York through December 1943. The ship trained near Bermuda, escorted convoys between New York, Norfolk and Casablanca, and worked in New York waters. NHHC's conclusion: 'During this time frame, Eldridge was never in Philadelphia.'

The story also said the crew of the merchant ship SS Andrew Furuseth saw Eldridge appear in Norfolk. NHHC says it holds a letter from the Furuseth's 1943 master, William S. Dodge, 'categorically denying that he or his crew observed any unusual event while in Norfolk,' and that the movement records show the two ships 'were not even in Norfolk at the same time.'

What did happen? ONR suggests the legend may have grown from real degaussing work at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, which made ships harder for magnetic mines to detect, or from a 1950s high-frequency generator test on the USS Timmerman. ONR says it 'has never conducted any investigations on invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time' and that its scientists 'do not believe that such an experiment could be possible except in the realm of science fiction.'