10.07
Research into the supposed “Experiment” has revealed many contradictions and inconsistencies. In addition, no scientific support for the described phenomena or the purported events exists.
Evidence and research
Many observers argue that it is inappropriate to grant much credence to an unusual story promoted by one individual, in the absence of more conclusive corroborating evidence. An article written by Robert Goerman for Fate magazine in 1980, determined that “Carlos Allende” / “Carl Allen” was in fact Carl Meredith Allen of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, who had an established history of psychiatric illness, and who may have fabricated the primary history of the experiment as a result of his mental illness. Some sources indicate that Allen was a known prankster, and that the “Philadelphia Experiment” story may have been an elaborate hoax.
The historian Mike Dash notes that many authors who publicized the “Philadelphia Experiment” story after Jessup did seemed to have conducted little or no research of their own: through the late 1970s, for example, Allende / Allen was often described as mysterious and difficult to locate. But after only a few telephone calls, Goerman was able to determine Allende / Allen’s true identity. Others speculate that much of the key literature emphasizes dramatic embellishment rather than pertinent research. Though Berlitz and Moore’s famous account of the story (The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility) contained much supposedly factual information, such as transcripts of an interview with a scientist involved in the experiment, their work has also been criticised for plagiarising key story elements from the fictitious novel Thin Air which was published a year earlier. It is argued that this undermines the credibility of the text as a whole.
Scientific aspects
No fully-developed Unified Field Theory currently exists or ever has existed, although it is still a subject of ongoing research. William Moore’s book on the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment” claims that Albert Einstein completed, and subsequently destroyed, a theory before his death.
Also, shortly before his death in 1943, Nikola Tesla supposedly claimed to have completed some kind of a “Unified Field Theory”. It was never published.
While very limited “invisibility cloaks” have recently been developed using metamaterial, these are unrelated to theories linking electromagnetism with gravity.
Timeline inconsistencies
The USS Eldridge was not commissioned until August 27, 1943, and she remained in port in New York City until September 1943. The October experiment allegedly took place while the ship was on her first shakedown cruise in the Bahamas, although proponents of the story claim that the ship’s logs might have been falsified, or else still be classified.
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) stated in September 1996 that “ONR has never conducted investigations on radar invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time”. Pointing out that the ONR was not established until 1946, it denounces the accounts of the Philadelphia Experiment as complete “science fiction”.
A reunion of navy veterans who had served aboard the USS Eldridge told a Philadelphia newspaper in April 1999 that their ship had never made port in Philadelphia. Further evidence discounting the Philadelphia Experiment timeline comes from the USS Eldridge’s complete World War II action report, including the remarks section of the 1943 deck log, available on microfilm.
Alternative explanations
Researcher Jacques Vallée describes a procedure on board the USS Engstrom (DE-50), which was docked alongside the Eldridge in 1943. The operation involved the generation of a powerful electromagnetic field on board the ship in order to degauss it, with the goal of rendering the ship undetectable or “invisible” to magnetically-fused undersea mines and torpedoes. This system was invented by a Canadian, and the Royal Navy and other navies used it widely during the Second World War. British ships of the era often included such degaussing systems built into the upper decks (the conduits are still visible on the deck of the HMS Belfast (C35) in London, for example). Degaussing is still used today. However, it has absolutely no effect on visible light or radar. Vallée speculates that accounts of the USS Engstrom’s degaussing might have been garbled and confabulated in subsequent retellings, and that these accounts may have influenced the story of the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment”.
According to Vallée, a Navy veteran who served on board the USS Engstrom noted that the Eldridge might indeed have travelled from Philadelphia to Norfolk and back again in a single day at a time when merchant ships could not: by use of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and the Chesapeake Bay, which at the time was open only to naval vessels. Use of that channel was kept quiet: German submarines had ravaged shipping along the East Coast during Operation Drumbeat, and thus military ships unable to protect themselves were secretly moved via canals to avoid the threat. It should be noted that this same veteran claims to be the man that Allende witnessed “disappearing†at a bar. He claims that when the fight broke out, friendly barmaids whisked him out the back door of the bar before the police arrived, because he was under age for drinking. They then covered for him by claiming that he had disappeared.