The Philadelphia Experiment - Full Documentary - History's Mysteries

The Philadelphia Experiment is an alleged military experiment supposed to have been carried out by the U.S. Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, sometime around October 28, 1943. The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge (DE-173) was claimed to have been rendered invisible (or "cloaked") to enemy devices. The story first appeared in 1955, in letters of unknown origin sent to a writer and astronomer, Morris K. Jessup. It is widely understood to be a hoax; the U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment was ever conducted, that the details of the story contradict well-established facts about USS Eldridge, and that the alleged claims do not conform to known physical laws.

Origins of the story

In 1955, astronomer and UFO buff Morris K. Jessup, the author of the just published book The Case for the UFO, about unidentified flying objects and the exotic means of propulsion they might use, received two letters from a Carlos Miguel Allende (who also identified himself as "Carl M. Allen" in another correspondence) who claimed to have witnessed a secret World War Two experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. In this experiment, Allende claimed the destroyer escort USS Eldridge (DE-173) was rendered invisible, teleported to New York, teleported to another dimension where it encountered aliens, and teleported through time, resulting in the death of several sailors, some of whom were fused with the ship's hull. Jessup dismissed Allende as a "crackpot".

In early 1957, Jessup was contacted by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C., who had received a parcel containing a paperback copy of The Case for the UFO in a manila envelope marked "Happy Easter." The book had been extensively annotated in its margins, written with three different shades of pink ink, appearing to detail a correspondence among three individuals, only one of which is given a name: "Jemi." The ONR labelled the other two "Mr. A." and "Mr. B."

The annotators referred to each other as "Gypsies" and discussed two different types of "people" living in outer space. Their text contained non-standard use of capitalization and punctuation, and detailed a lengthy discussion of the merits of various elements of Jessup's assumptions in the book. There were oblique references to the Philadelphia Experiment (one example is that "Mr. B." reassures his fellow annotators who have highlighted a certain theory which Jessup advanced). Based on the handwriting style and subject matter, Jessup concluded a large part of the writing was Allende's, and others have the same conclusion, that the three styles of annotations are from the same person using three pens.

The ONR funded a small printing of 100 copies of the volume by the Texas-based Varo Manufacturing Company, which later became known as the Varo edition, with the annotations therefore known as the Varo annotations.

Jessup tried to publish more books on the subject of UFOs, but was unsuccessful. Losing his publisher and experiencing a downturn in his personal life led him to commit suicide in Florida on April 30, 1959.