The Philadelphia Experiment is a classic example of government conspiracy lore. According to the story, in 1943 the destroyer escort USS Eldridge took part in a top-secret experiment that turned the ship invisible, teleported it from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Virginia, and then returned it back to Philadelphia. The bending of known physical laws did not come without a price, as the crew was subjected to powerful forces that resulted in death and insanity, forcing the government to quickly bury the experiment under the deepest levels of secrecy possible. Despite the lack of any substantiating evidence and the unreliable nature of its major sources, the Philadelphia Experiment remains popular for its fantastic combination of terrifying science fiction and otherworldly forces.
The narrative of the Philadelphia Experiment is fraught with inconsistencies, but the most common version of the story begins with Albert Einstein developing a unified field theory during World War II. Military researchers were eager to utilize the principles of the theory to attempt to cloak ships from enemy detection, as German U-boats were using magnetically guided torpedoes and mines to devastate Allied shipping. Over the course of two trials in 1943, large electromagnetic coils were used to create powerful energy fields around the test ship USS Eldridge. During the second experiment in October 1943 a green fog surrounded the Eldridge and the ship faded from sight until it had disappeared completely. Instead of shielding the Eldridge from detection from radar or magnetic tracking, the experiment had achieved physical invisibility. After a short time, the Eldridge reappeared, only to blink out of existence in a blue flash of light, reappearing 300 miles away in Norfolk, Virginia. There the sudden appearance of the ship was reportedly witnessed by the shocked crew of the SS Andrew Furuseth. After a few moments, the Eldridge vanished once again, teleporting back to its original location in Philadelphia. While the experiment may have succeeded in ways unanticipated by the military, the impact on the sailors aboard the Eldridge was allegedly horrific as the incredible energies unleashed by the experiment played havoc with the flesh and blood crew. Men fused with metal bulkheads and deck plating, burst into flames, were driven insane, or simply vanished. Even after the experiment concluded, the crew was reportedly still exhibiting symptoms such as sudden bouts of invisibility and spontaneous combustion. The story of the experiment ends with the sinister note of a massive cover-up, with the crew and witnesses committed to mental institutions, threatened into silence, or manipulated to forget their experiences. The government, shaken by the bizarre aftermath of the experiment, closed the books on the matter, classified the entire affair, and abandoned the research.
The beginning of the Philadelphia Experiment legend can be traced to 1955 with three letters delivered to UFO researcher Morris Jessup from a man named Carl Allen, who also went by the name Carlos Miguel Allende. Jessup had recently completed work on a book entitled The Case for the UFO, which argued that the American space program should investigate Einstein’s universal field theory as a means of propulsion instead of rocketry. In his letters, Allen originated the story of the Philadelphia Experiment, claiming to have witnessed the teleportation of the Eldridge as a crewman aboard the Andrew Furuseth. A copy of Jessup’s book was later sent to the Office of Naval Intelligence with curious annotations in the margins, making it appear as if it were the work of three different nonhuman authors. The book was copied and disseminated under the name of the Varo Edition by a research company and a group of officers without official approval. This gave the Philadelphia Experiment legend a document with tenuous government connections. Carlos Allende eventually retreated from the spotlight, reportedly admitting to authorship of the annotated book and recanting his story on several occasions, while Jessup died of an apparent suicide in 1959. By that time others had stepped in to continue investigating Allen’s claims in a 1979 book, The Philadelphia Experiment AKA Project Rainbow. The mantle of Philadelphia Experiment eyewitness was taken up in the late 1980s by Al Bielek, who at times claimed he was a crewman aboard the Andrew Furuseth, a survivor of the experiment, or part of the naval research team. Bielek and other authors have added new elements to the original version of the Philadelphia Experiment, creating a complicated tale of time travel, alien intervention, psychic warfare, and government conspiracy.
A possible answer to the Philadelphia Experiment story can be found in the documented degaussing experiments that took place in American naval shipyards during World War II. To foil magnetically guided Axis weaponry, the U.S. Navy worked with a system of degaussing (neutralizing the magnetic signature) of a ship by having a vessel pass between large electromagnets. The process of running a ship through large electromagnetic coils is similar to the description of the invisibility process in the Philadelphia Experiment. To sailors and work crews unfamiliar with the degaussing procedure and encountering the wall of secrecy that surrounds military experimentation, the concept of rendering a ship invisible to magnetic sensors may have become distorted into the idea of physical invisibility. Other theories contend a secret experiment involving high-powered magnetic fields to eliminate a ship’s magnetic signature did take place but only resulted in nausea and hallucinations in the crew of the test vessel, paving the way for the later elements of the experiment’s terrible side effects on sailors.
The conspiracy theory contains many factual errors further discrediting its already dubious credibility. Naval records indicate the Eldridge was not near Philadelphia when the experiment was said to have taken place nor was the Andrew Furuseth in Norfolk. The code name RAINBOW was used during the war as reference to the Axis powers and as the name of a series of contingency war plans. Albert Einstein was indeed a consultant to the U.S. Navy, but his work was in explosives technology. Finally, the science behind the Philadelphia Experiment defies the current understanding of physics. Proponents of the experiment counter with the argument that the very people in charge of the experiment are also the ones in charge of maintaining the records, an accusation that has lent the fantastic tale a margin of plausibility and has kept the story alive for decades.
More than many of the other mysteries of World War II, the Philadelphia Experiment has endured in the public imagination, helped in part by a successful 1984 movie and by a connection to other popular paranormal topics such as UFOs and secret government projects. References to the experiment appear in video games such as Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and the story is the subject of a 2012 television movie, a reimaging of the original 1984 film. The Philadelphia Experiment raised enough interest that the U.S. Navy created an official Web page of information on the subject in an attempt to debunk the story. The name also evokes the very real harbinger of the atomic age, the Manhattan Project. Although all signs indicate a hoax, the core elements of the Philadelphia Experiment—a military cover-up, unknown energies, secret technology, teleportation, and terrifying side effects on humans—ensure it will remain a part of American conspiracy and paranormal lore.
Movie poster advertising The Philadelphia Experiment, a 1984 feature film starring Michael Pare and Nancy Allen. Although widely discredited as a hoax, popular lore persists about a technology developed during WWII to render Navy ships invisible. The Hollywood movie also developed a time-travel theme. (Everett Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)
Daniel Fandino
See also Area 51; Conspiracy Theories; Legend Tripping; Montauk Project; Nuclear Lore; Roswell (New Mexico) UFO Landings; September 11 (2001) Conspiracy Theories; X-Files
Further Reading
Aaronovitch, David. 2010. Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History. New York: Riverhead Books.
DeHaven-Smith, Lance. 2013. Conspiracy Theory in America. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Goldberg, Robert Alan. 2001. Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Moore, William, and Charles F. Berlitz. 1979. The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
Olmsted, Kathryn S. 2009. Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. Oxford: Oxford University Press.