Philadelphia Experiment

Project Rainbow

Disappearing Act

October, 1999

As salty old yarns go, the Philadelphia Experiment, or. As it is sometimes referred to, Project Rainbow, sits atop the rigging of nautical weirdness like a defiant Albatross. Roy Bainton reopens the records. Additional material by Mark Pilkington. Illustrations by Alexander Tomlinson.

The story, as it is usually told, goes something like this: in the autumn of I943, the US Navy carried out a series of scientific tests at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and out at sea. The 'science' involved Einstein's incomplete 'Unified Field Theory' (l). The initial aim was to render ships invisible to enemy radar. At 0900 hours on 22 October, [or 14 August depending on which source you use (2)], the Cannon class destroyer USS Eldridge, (DE I73), fitted with something called a 'Time-Zero Generator' and four electromagnetic generators, was engulfed in a greenish, hazy cloud. Before the assembled eyes of the Navy's top brass, the vessel vanished. Amazingly, the shape of the ship's hull could still be seen as a hollow in the water. Twenty minutes passed, and to everyone's mystified relief, the Eldridge re-appeared.

All was not well, however. Legend has it that some of her crew had gone mad, staggering around and speaking gibberish. Although onlookers could see them, the hapless sailors claimed that they could not see each other, or the ship. Other sailors appeared drunk, laughing hysterically.(3) Whilst in this state of limbo, many men claimed that they had seen another naval port, Newport News in Virginia, some 600 miles (965 km) distant. Another element in this bizarre tale features reports that the Eldridge did actually materialise in Newport at the time of the experiment.

Three weeks later, with a new crew installed, the Navy attempted the experiment again. This time, the Eldridge was at sea, in the company of a command vessel, the SS Andrew Furuseth (4). Another vessel, the freighter SS Malay is reputed to have been in the area and witnessed events. Once again the strange green cloud appeared, watched by observers on the command vessel; but this time the physical effects on the crew were horrendous. Some men spontaneously combusted, one vanished completely never to re-appear, others were embedded in the Eldridge's superstructure, some badly burned and many others went insane. Some sources mention an untraceable newspaper report from a 1944 Philadelphia paper of a brawl in a bar between sailors. According to the waitresses, the sailors "disappeared" into thin air as the police arrived.(5)

Hoax, fantasy, colourful codswallop? Sounds like a case for Anderson and Duchovny. Indeed, Scully and Mulder tackled this in the 1995 episode of The X-Files called 'Dod Kalm' - see panel. But, to quote Longfellow, "Whence these legends and traditions?" To attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff and establish the "facts," the best method is to break the story down into component parts and answer some questions.

DID THE USS ELDRIDGE EXIST?

Apparently, yes.(6) Her keel was laid on 22 February 1943 and she was built by the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry-docks co. of Newark, New Jersey. She was completed in six months and a day [which makes 14 August as one of the dates given for the experiment look doubtful, as she was commissioned on 27 August 1943(7)]. DE173 took her name from Commander John Eldridge Jr, who was killed in action over the Solomon Islands in 1942. He was the Commander of Scouting Squadron 71 on USS Wasp, CV7. D173 was commanded by Lt Charles R Hamilton, USNR.

After 1943 she operated in the Mediterranean and towards the end of the war in the Pacific She was taken out of service and laid up on 17 June I946, sold to the Greek Navy on 15 January 1951 and re-named the Leon with her new number, D-54. She remained in service until 1991.

HAD THERE BEEN OTHER EXPERIMENTS WITH MAGNETISM & ELECTRICITY?

Yes. When the British retrieved a new kind of German magnetic mine from the mudflats of Shoeburyness on 22 November 1939, scientists developed a method of exploding these highly effective mines several hundred yards from a ship. The method involved increasing a vessel's magnetic field by laying power lines along the deck.

HMS Borde was the first magnetic minesweeper, but the method was not initially entirely successful. The baton was passed to the RAF who fitted copper coils and a generator to a Wellington transport plane, which flew over the water at 100 feet (30.5m).

Research continued until it was discovered that ships with a southern polarity were unscathed by the mines; vessels built in the Northern Hemisphere had a northern polarity. Eventually the whole naval fleet was de-gaussed by having cables fitted around the interior of ships' hulls. The real dream, however, was still the achievement of sonar and radar invisibility.

WHEN DID THE LEGEND OF THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT FIRST APPEAR?

In 1955, Morris K Jessup, a Washington car parts salesman with a doctorate in astrophysics from Michigan University, hit the jackpot with a book on all things fortean, The Case For the UFO (8), His lecture tours to promote the book were well attended. Jessup was a keen advocate of Einstein's Unified Field theory (UFT), a subject he enthused upon regularly to the public.

On 13 January, 1956 he received a rather odd letter. In it, Jessup was taken to task over his support of UFT. The author of the letter, one Carlos Miguel Allende, proceeded to outline the story of the Eldridge in full - complete with the fantastic claim that the destroyer had been 'teleported' between Philadelphia and Newport News within minutes. Allende further claimed to be a crewman aboard the Andrew Furuseth.

WHO WAS CARLOS ALLENDE?

His father was English and his mother part French. He was born Carl Meredith Allen at 6:30 am on 25 May 1925, in a house on the corner of Rosslyn Street and Porter Street in Springdale, Pennsylvania (9). He had three brothers, Donald, Frank and Randolph, and a sister, Sarah.

He had adopted his Hispanic name after living with gypsies, and claimed gypsy blood, although his family had no known gypsy connections. Carl was the oldest child. He had a brilliant reputation at school for maths and algebra and spoke several languages fluently, but was, according to his relatives, 'a drifter'. To Jessup he'd given his address as RD#1, Box 223, New Kensington, Pennsylvania.(10) His letter, however, was postmarked Gainesville, Texas.

Curious, Jessup wrote to Allende, asking for more information. Four months passed; then on 25 May 1956, while Jessup was busy with the launch of his second book 'The Expanding Case for the UFO', another letter from the would-be gypsy appeared, but this time signed 'Carl M Allen'. Jessup's further questions - names of the Eldridge's crew, times, dates, etc - remained unanswered.

Meanwhile, another curious development was taking place. Jessup was summoned to Washington, DC, for a meeting with the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Apparently, someone had mailed an annotated copy of Jessup's 'Case for the UFO' to the ONR. The annotations appeared to be written by three different people, who signed off as 'Mr A', 'Mr B.' and 'Jemi'. Each hand-written note gave answers to questions raised by Jessup in the book - and the handwriting, especially that of 'Mr A', was definitely Allende's. Jessup surrendered his two Allende letters to the Navy who had the Varo Corporation of Garland, Texas, produce 25 copies of the annotated book. Why the ONR did this remains a mystery. However, in March 1978, Allende/Allen sent a copy of the Varo edition to his father with a letter wherein he claimed: "enclosed is a book I co-authored with Professor Morris K Jessup of the University of Michigan nigh 24 years ago..." The letter concludes: "alone by myself with no Mr A or Mr B."

So what about Jemi? Throughout the Varo edition 'Mr A' and 'Mr B' refer to each other as 'twins'. Gemini - the twins - was Allen's astrological sign. Jemi is a contraction of Gemini. Disappointing, perhaps... but at least Allen was a genuine seaman. His Certificate of Seaman's Service, no. Z-416175, exists.

DID MORRIS K JESSUP COMMIT SUICIDE?

This is one of the enduring pillars of faith among the Philadelphia Experiment conspiracy theorists. Dr Manson Valentine, an oceanographer and zoologist, was the last person to see Jessup alive. He had invited him to dinner on 20 April 1959. According to Valentine, Jessup was "in a depressed state of mind" but was coming to see him that night to discuss a draft of a document in which he had reached some definite conclusions about the Philadelphia Experiment.

Jessup's body, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning, was found slumped at the wheel of his Station wagon at Matheson's Hammock in Dade County Park near Miami. A rubber hose was neatly attached to the exhaust and fed into an open rear window, which had been sealed with damp rags. No documents or manuscripts were found inside the car.

HAVE ANY WITNESSES OR SURVIVORS OF THE 'ELDRIDGE' BEEN LOCATED?

On 24 March this year (1999), 15 of the Eldridge's crew reunited in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for the first time in 53 years. Naturally, the non-events of 1943 were a hot topic of conversation. "It's my impression it's from someone with a very good imagination. It's strictly science fiction," said organiser Robert Scheer, who joined the ship as a machinist mate 3rd class in March 1945. Bill Van Allen, the ship's executive officer at the time of the alleged goings-on, claimed to have "no knowledge of anything like that happening... I can't even conceive how the rumour got started."

Interestingly, according to these veterans, the ship's disappearance can be explained by the simple fact that, although it called on many East Coast ports, it never docked at Philadelphia (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 + 26 March 1999).

There are at least two other interesting candidates for witnesses. One is Edward Dudgeon, a retired executive, who states that he was in the US Navy from 1942 to I945 and served in another destroyer close to the Eldridge, the USS Engstrom (DE 50). Dudgeon, who studied electronics at Iowa State University before joining the Navy (as Electrician's Mate third class petty officer), claims that the Engstrom was also fitted with the same secret equipment as the Eldridge.

"The Eldridge and the Engstrom were in the harbour together," says Dudgeon. "In fact our ships were outfitted at the same time: the 48, 49, 50 and the Eldridge, in June or July of 1943. The Navy used to de-gauss all the ships in dry dock, even the merchant ships, otherwise the vessels acted as bar magnets which attracted the magnetic torpedoes.

There was nothing unusual about the Eldridge. When we went ashore, we met with her crewmembers in 1944, we had parties, there was never any mention of anything unusual. Allende made up the whole thing."

Did Dudgeon know Allende? He thinks not. But what about the notorious bar-room brawl? "I was one of the two sailors said to have disappeared," Dudgeon claims. The other fellow was named Dave; he served on the DE 49. The fight started when some of the sailors bragged about the secret equipment and were told to keep their mouths shut. Two of us were minors - I cheated on my enlistment papers. The waitresses scooted us out the back door as soon as trouble began and later denied knowing anything about us..."

What had Dudgeon to say about the mysterious 'teleportation' ? "The Eldridge had already left (Philadelphia) at 11 p.m. Someone looking at the harbour that night would have noticed she wasn't there any more and it did appear in Newport.

She was back in Philadelphia Harbour the next morning, which seems like an impossible feat: if you look at the map, you'll see that merchant ships would have taken two days to make the trip. They would have required pilots to go around the submarine nets, the mines and so on at the harbour entrances to the Atlantic. But the navy used a special inland channel, the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, that bypassed all that.

We made the trip in about six hours." Why Newport? "That's where we loaded the explosives. I know that's where the Eldridge went, because we passed her as she was on the way back from Virginia, in Chesapeake Bay."

The other claimant to have been a crewmember of the Eldridge is 'Drue'(12) He was in the Marine Corps for 22 years and goes under the one name. As Drue retired in 1993, it appears obvious that he was not in naval service in 1943; however, he claims to have 'flashbacks' of the Philadelphia Experiment.

The whole X-Files shooting match is in Drue's story: alien technology, a conspiracy to rewrite history, Nikola Tesla, etc. He claims that the Eldridge - with him in his 1943 incarnation - made a journey through time with convenient ports of call at Amistad Reservoir, Texas, in 1954; Chicago, Illinois, in 1969; Sebago Lake, Maine, 1997, etc. If you live in the following locations, keep an eye out as the Eldridge is due (presumably with the permission of the Greek Navy) in Imperial Reservoir, California (2005), the Great Salt Lake in Utah (2043); and Niagara Falls (in 3543). Its log book should make interesting reading; more tour dates and venues to be announced. (If you don't believe this, you can write to Drue at PO Box 586026, Oceanside, California 92058-6026, USA.)

Another player on Drue's team has also cleaned up on the lecture circuit; this is Alfred Bielek (13), who has both feet firmly in the secret-government-conspiracy-with-aliens camp.

CONCLUSIONS?

William L Moore and Charles Berlitz have a lot to answer for. If there is a launch pad for this enduring, entertaining, and hugely profitable legend, then it can be traced to an out-of-print book, which precedes Bill and Charlie's 'The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility' (I979) by a few years. It's called 'Thin Air', by R Burger and Neil Simpson. It's a work of well-penned fiction and says so on the cover. It stars a sailor having nightmares, and a destroyer called... yes, the USS Eldridge. And, surprise, surprise, much of the testimony of a character in Thin Air appears almost verbatim in Moore & Berlitz's 'factual' blockbuster.

'Reality' imitating art? Conspiracy. Dozens of books. Movies. Dozens of web sites. And still it goes on. Perhaps the final question is 'Why?'

Morris Ketchum Jessup was a bright but gullible, depressed man. Carlos Allende appears as a classic eccentric with a vivid imagination. Moore and Berlitz's laughter can be heard yards away from the Bank. Gillian Anderson is lovely.

All we have left are two queries. Why is the Eldridge's log book for July-December 1943 missing, and why did the Office for Naval Research have copies of Jessup's annotated book printed?

If one writes to the US Navy today asking about all this, you'll get a standard "it never happened" letter.

But the Area 51 freaks march on with "Ah, yes - but remember the stealth bomber?" Why bother with research? Why waste time? Like dogs in a garden, it isn't always the bone we imagine is buried beneath the chrysanthemums that turns us on. The fun is in the digging.

After his huge success charting the Bermuda Triangle, that wily old bird Charles Berlitz, in tandem with William L Moore, gave the Eldridge story his best shot in a mega-bucks 1979 book, The Philadelphia Experiment. Back in FT30, Bob Rickard described it as "a good read", adding that "one is left with no tangible or unequivocal proof, only a series of impressions based on the authors' word."

A year later Berlitz and Moore were pivotal in regenerating the legend of the Roswell saucer crash, co authoring The Roswell Incident Moore went on to gain notoriety in UFO circles for his key roles in the MJ12 and Paul Bennewitz affairs (see FT 121 & 122)

Borrowing loosely from suggestions made by Berlitz in Without a Trace (1977) and the later book, 1984 saw the release of The Philadelphia Experiment, an enjoyable film which follows the adventures of the two disappearing crewmen as they are blasted from 1943 into the future - well, 1984. Not only do they have to contend with the vagaries of Reaganite America, but they must return to 1943 to stop the world being sucked into a messy "time tornado."

"The claim that it was based on an actual incident seems a bit tall," surmised the film critic Leslie Halliwell. A 1993 sequel involved secretive German World War I experiments, and an alternative present-day America under Nazi rule.

Meanwhile, the 1995 'Dod Kalm' X-Files episode - see FT 82, brought the Berlitz and Moore themes together, hinting that alien technology was used in the Philadelphia Experiment. For the reverse scenario, in which a modern aircraft carrier is sent back in time to Pearl Harbour, try The Final Countdown (1980) starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen.

In recent years Eldridge lore has been woven tightly into the wider NW0 conspiracy matrix by authors such as Al Bielek and 'Commander X'.

The following extract is taken from the writings of net-scribe 'Branton' and demonstrates how far the story has evolved: "Forty years later the project [Project Rainbow, aka the Philadelphia Experiment] was reportedly taken over and continued by a cabal of CIA agents in league with the Bavarian Illuminati of Germany and it's [sic] fellow occult lodge, the Bavarian Thule Society, which had created the Nazi Empire. These experiments were carried out in an underground base below Montauk Point, Long Island, and involved time-space window experiments and mass microwave mind-control ... these fascists who had wrested control of the 'Philadelphia' technology from Navy Intelligence were at that time in full co-operation with the alien Grays in a joint effort to establish a one-world National Socialist Empire"

Montauk, of course, was in the news recently as close to the scene of J FK s son s fatal plane crash. Cue spooky music.

ENDNOTES:

1). Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published his Unified Field Theory for Gravitation and Electricity in 1925. His mathematical research was based on the inexplicable results of earlier experiments by the German-born US physicist Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) and Edward Williams Morley, (1838-1923), a US physicist and chemist.

The resulting Michelson - Morley experiments were famous for their research into the 'etherdrift' and the speed of light. Einstein looked for some relationship between gravity, magnetism and electricity His theory was that the three elements were governed by similar forces, and his opinion was that by altering the relationship between magnetism and electricity, gravity and mass could also be manipulated. He withdrew his theory as 'incomplete'

2). See Patrick S Carbone, 'What Really Happened on The Eldridge' in FATE magazine (February 1997).

3). As an ex-sailor, the author can verify that this is a common condition amongst the sea-going fraternity

4). In Invisible Horizons (1965), Vincent Gaddis spells the name Andrew Furnseth - "a Matson Lines Liberty ship out of Norfolk"

5). This is also a regular phenomenon with brawling seamen ashore...

6). See Mack W. Shelton, Jr, 'Quest For Truth: The Philadelphia Experiment' in 'Planes of Reality' magazine (16 May 1996).

7). Janes Fighting Ships simply gives her as 'USS Eldridge' (DE-173) -1943. Some researchers state she was launched on 25 Judy 1943. Curiously, her log book from August to December 1943 is recorded as "missing and therefore unavailable".

8). Maurice K Jessup, The Case for The UFO (Citadel Press, 1955). See also FATE magazine, October 1980.

9). Robert A Goerman, Alias Carlos Allende FATE magazine (October 1980) - available at www.parascope.com/en/articles/allende.htm

10). See Brad Steiger & Joan Whitenour, New UFO Breakthrough: The A11ende Letters (Award Books, 1968). Steiger claims that an investigator visited Allende's address and found a vacant farmhouse. Vincent Gaddis makes a similar statement in Invisible Horizons. This has since been proved incorrect. The house has always been occupied and still owned by the Allen's today.

11). Jacques Vall�e, 'Anatomy of A Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment 50 Years Later' in Journal of Scientific Exploration (v 8 n.1, Spring 1994, Stanford University CA.) - available at www.geocities.com/Area51/7354/Hoax.txt

12). Drue -'I Survived A Journey Through Time' in FATE magazine (February 1997).

13). See Brad Steiger, Alfred Bielek and Sherry Hanson-Steiger, The Philadelphia Experiment and Other UFO Conspiracies (Inner Light Publishing, NJ. 1990),