One of brave military men used for ghoulish scientific experiments and an intriguing government cover-up that has led to nearly 81 years of research and prying into secrets held as tight as a Kraken’s grip. This is a story of the dreaded Philadelphia experiment, A tale that bends the rules of physics and tears of the very fabric of reality at the expense of lives of one of the most unfortunate destroyers crew.

Situation

July 1943 for two years the United States has been embroiled in one of the most devastating conflicts the world has ever seen desperate to aid their allies and battled in fortress Europe and North Africa. It convoys braved the waters of the Atlantic constantly trying in any way to keep a constant supply train from the United States to Europe. But the brave sailors of the US Navy, US Coast guard and merchant marines take their lives into their hands each time they leave the pier and steam out into the Atlantic. Because seemingly every convoy becomes the prey to the wolf pack the German U-boats. In 1942 alone German U-boats sank a total of six million tons of allied shipping amounting to nearly two ships sunk every day. Over thirty thousand allied sailors lost their lives from U-boats alone. They were sinking allied ships nearly faster than they could build them. Something had to be done. Something desperate.

The Concept

So in early summer of 1943 a small canon class escort destroyer sat in dry dock at the Philadelphia naval yards. The ship, the USS Eldridge was being loaded with advanced generators and technology. The ship not even a month into the fleet was about to make the biggest leap in technology, since the Wright brothers took to the sky. They were being outfitted with an experimental device that would render the vessel invisible to detection utilizing the brilliant physicist Albert Einstein’s Unified Field theory. The ship would alter not only its gravitational field but also its electromagnetic field by using powerful generators to bend the rays of light around the ship the vessel would be rendered entirely invisible.

The Ship

The USS Eldridge DE173 was ordered by the us navy in 1942. One of 116 other canon class destroyer escorts ordered around that time. Its keel was laid in Newark, New jersey’s federal shipbuilding and Dry dock company’s yard on the 22nd February 1943. The ship was 306 feet or 93 meters in length 36 feet 10 inches or 11.23 meters at the beam and had an 11 foot 8 inch or 3.56 meter navigable draft. It was powered by four general motors, a main diesel engines that could produce 6000 ship horsepower. The engines were connected to four diesel electric transmissions that drove the ship’s two screws. This allowed USS Eldridge to move along at about 21 knots not blazingly fast but the ship wasn’t a destroyer. It was a destroyer escort for those unaware or unfamiliar. A destroyer is utilized for escorting and screening for large Military fleets. They’re designed to outpace and move faster than the cruisers battleships and carriers of Navy fleets. Thus they are pretty speedy. Destroyer escorts on the other hand are designed for escorting merchant ships or Troop transports. They tended to be a bit smaller and less heavily armed but they were most notably lower.

The Journey And Experiment

The Eldridge had a compliment of 216 sailors 201 enlisted and 15 officers. It was armed as well as any other destroyer escort. Freshly painted loaded with new tech and ready for war USS Eldridge DE173 sat in a dry dock in the Philadelphia Navy Yards. Around 100 military officers researchers and technicians observed it as its entire crew sat on board ready for this test that could very well change the tide of the war and the way the navy fought altogether. The generators on board were energized and before the very eyes of all in attendance the ship didn’t just become hard to detect for radar or sonar. It became shrouded in a greenish fog then entirely invisible. Einstein’s Unified Field theory was correct. Light was bent around the ship rendering it invisible to the naked eye. The researchers were elated this experiment couldn’t have gone any better. So they thought the machine was powered down and what they found on board was disturbing.

The Disturbing Sceneries

Several sailors had received terrible burns on their bodies. All of them felt nauseous. Some seemed to be terrified and emotionally unhinged from the experience. One man had ended up one deck below the one. He had been standing on seemingly. Facing through the deck plates beneath his feet. But more disturbing his hand had somehow become fused with the bulkhead next to him, to the steel. But despite the terrible effects on the crew the experiment had been an incredible success. A 300 foot long 1600 ton hunk of steel had just been made entirely invisible. This was an incredible breakthrough.

Another Experiment

So another test was ordered this time on the 28th of October 1943 one more test on the USS Eldridge. One more chance to iron out the kinks before sending. This technology to win the war for the allies utilizing a fleet of invisible warships. So on the 28th October, In broad daylight the Eldridge was used as a Guinea pig once more. They activated the field once more. Again the ship vanished but not from sight at all but from Philadelphia entirely. The ship seemed to almost phase out of reality. The ship immediately and astoundingly reappeared almost 300 miles away in Norfolk Virginia. There, at anchor was the merchant vessel SS Andrew Furiceth, the crew stared in astonished wonder as with a blue flash of light appeared an entire destroyer escort fully loaded ready for war and glowing a dull green. The ships bobbed inside of each other for a few minutes until the Eldridge just as fast as she appeared disappeared it popped back into existence back in Philadelphia. The amazed and horrified researchers surged aboard to congratulate the crew and ask what had occurred but what they found was more horrific than before.

The Result and Cover-up

Men screamed in agony as their bodies angled and burned all half insane in screaming bloody murder. More than a few had become fused with the metal of the ship entire limbs now forever part of the Eldridge. Some had half their bodies engulfed in steel and were breathing their last breath in one spot was simply a pile of bone and organs what had once been a man was now turned inside out, left to die in a horrific fashion. Some people never seen again vanished trapped, some people between the folds of our reality and the next. The experiment was deemed a massive failure. An intense cover-up and clean-up operation was performed. Men were brainwashed and reassigned by. The government scientists were paid off logs were modified. Everything the government did everything to hide their insidious testing. That day, testing that led to the deaths dismemberments of devastation of numerous navy sailors.

Fiction?

Well, I guess you will this was like a tale straight out of a science fiction novel. A disturbing scientific experiment that sounds way too crazy to be true but it is true. You see it’s all just s government conspiracy and they just want you to think it’s all fake. In researching this one, I’ve kind of discovered that even the usual crackpots tend to all agree that this entire thing is a load of crap see unlike the ships Mary Celeste and the Ourang Medan which had some plausibility and truths mixed in with the craziness. This one just goes all in and refuses to even give a scrap of evidence. Yet somehow almost 80 years later this one still pops up and is defended tooth and nail by absolute lunatics in spite of the fact that it’s entirely supported by just one man whose credibility would make Richard Nixon.

Book and Letters Publishing

In truth no one had even heard of the Philadelphia experiment and likely the USS Eldridge until 1956. Over a decade later in 1955 a man named Morris K. Jessup wrote a book named “The Case For The UFO Unidentified Flying Object” in which he discussed the possibility of aliens and other paranormal and Extraterrestrial things of the sort. After writing this mildly successful book, he received letters from a man named Carl Meredith Allen, a man who came forward with fascinating claims ridiculing Jessup’s knowledge about physics and other things and proclaiming his own knowledge of certain events. He described having witnessed a naval experiment in 1943 using Einstein’s Unified Field theory. He also later claimed to have been personally tutored by Albert Einstein so not sure where that came from intrigued naturally by all this. Jessup wrote back prying for more information to which Allen was happy to comply giving him the full fascinating story. But where he did get quiet was when asked for evidence, to which he assured Jessup it did exist but when pressed for it he would never be able to provide, even a scrap, over a series of 50 letters. The two corresponded until Jessup was about fed up with it understandably.

Comments on Book and Letters

So then finally in 1957 the office of naval research contacted Jessup stating that they had received a copy of his book in the mail, but the margins had all been filled with notes and annotations. It appeared that three different individuals had written in the margins. Various comments pertaining to strange pseudoscience and odd otherworldly research. One of these writers seemingly extra-terrestrial in origin in actuality it was described as crackpot rambling about nonsensical science fiction nonsense. More damning Jessup recognized the handwriting of all three sets of writers, they were all Carl Meredith Allen. He had just used three different shades of ink to try and make it look like more than one author. So this dude sends a copy of his fanfic to the government. Naturally the ONR was curious on Jessup’s take on all this to which he explained the correspondence between himself and Carl Meredith Allen. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped. Ridiculous Speculation based upon nothing even spawning a movie in 1984 by the same name which was mildly successful. So let’s get to the truth behind this story.

Reality

The USS Eldridge was a real ship commissioned in 1943 sold to the greek navy. In 1951 they sold for scrap and torn apart in 1999, so too was the SS Andrew Furuseth. In fact this Carl Meredith Allen was in the merchant marines and was stationed aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth during the time of this alleged experiment but that’s about all the truth that you’ll get from this story the official logs. From the USS Eldridge have it going to a number of places during this time period. It was put in the water in July in New Jersey, but wasn’t completed and commissioned until August, then it stayed in port in New York until September. After this it steamed down to the Bahamas to perform her shakedown cruise and readiness testing throughout the month of October. The month that the experiment apparently took place, she didn’t return to New York until November.

The ship had never even been to Philadelphia which is all in the logs the ship’s war diary and something all the members of the crew stated when subsequently harassed from the 1950s onwards. After this story was made up as for the SS Andrew Furuseth not only does the captain of the ship deny, he or any of the crew saw anything whilst in Virginia. At the time they not only weren’t in Virginia. At the time they weren’t even in the same area as the Eldritch. At the time they were steaming towards the Mediterranean.

Possibilities of Becoming True

Now there are a lot of theories to explain what happened. Some says that the Government was testing de-gaussing equipment on the ship. This was a relatively new method developed around 1943. It would use electrical cables surrounding the ship to reduce the ship’s magnetic signature making it invisible to magnetic mines and torpedoes. Some says perhaps Carl Meredith Allen heard this and was confused others state that the USS Eldridge utilized a special protected shipping channel from Philadelphia to Norfolk, which of course was kept a secret at the time so the ship travelled a long distance at a seemingly impossible amount of time.

Carl Meredith Allen

Honestly, these theories are moot points because you actually need evidence of a real thing occurring, to provide evidence to the contrary the only evidence for the event comes from a single man’s testimony Carl Meredith Allen. Carl Allen was born in 1925 and was the eldest of five brothers he was described by his family as rather intelligent in school but never held down a job long and was a drifter. He was also apparently very well known for pulling pranks and lying to get out of work. In 1942 he joined the marine corps but apparently served for less than a year before being discharged immediately. After he joined the merchant marines in 1943 serving until 1952 before finding some other jobs. He spent his life moving around and sending crazy letters to anyone that will listen on two separate occasions. He even came out saying the whole thing was made up as a hoax. Only rescinding that before dying in 1994 claiming it was real and leaving us with the plague of this insane story.

Conclusion

The end this hoax has no leg to stand on and people only seem to be able to sputter about government cover-ups and hypnosis. The only people that ever support this nonsense are the folks that are just too insane to even be argued with despite apparently hundreds of witnesses all saying they saw nothing. We apparently had just one man the government forgot to brainwash was a drifting well-known liar that even himself said he made it up twice. This story is cooked up by a prankster. I feel dumber for having researched it. 

.    .    .