Chapter I: Roots and Speculations

The Philadelphia Experiment got it's name from secret tests of the US Navy concerning radar invisibility conducted in 1943 in the military section of Philadelphia Harbor in 1943. These tests allegedly include a test ship, referred to as the Destroyer Escort (DE) 173 USS ELDRIDGE by Carlos Allende. Allende claimed repeatedly to be a eyewitness of at least on of these experiments. Although the official ship records don't show , that the ELDRIDGE ever was in Philadelphia, I learned, that those official ship records may not tell the truth.

The War and a Secret Weapon

For a better understanding of the circumstances, which led to the need of finding new ways to protect the Allied Forces, we have to consider, that the German U-boats indeed were a deadly threat to every Allied vessel crossing the Atlantic. Great Britain as a kind of "carrier vessel" located close to the European land mass was desperately depending on fuel, weapons, machinery and food carried over the Atlantic from the USA and Canada. If the Allied would loose UK, they may loose the war. Radar as a mean to dramatically improve weapons employment on both the German and the Allied side became a very important factor. The side able to locate the opponent before they themselves were located would win the battle. This included not only the battle fought with airplanes, but as well the battle between the ‚wolfpacks' and the Allied convoys. This is, why so many scientist under the leadership of the OSRD and the NDRC were ordered to undertake everything necessary to keep the leading role in radar employment. In order to do so, every aspect of radar employment and, naturally, radar countermeasures was discussed, test devices were built and tested and when found useful, immediately handed over to the industry for large-scale production. This included radar-guided anti-aircraft-artillery, surveillance radar for ground troops as well as for the navy units, the famous proximity fuse used in innumerable grenades and airborne radar for U-boat hunting.

But a few, promising projects were kept under extreme secrecy. Everybody involved was checked and double-checked before he was informed about what was to be developed. If the Germans would be notified about what US scientists were working on, they might have developed it even faster and that was a real nightmare for everybody involved in those projects. One of these projects became obvious to the world, when the first nuclear weapon was released over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Another top secret project, which - if it would turn out to be practical - would have had a similar impact on warfare against the Germans and the Japanese was - The Philadelphia Experiment. A device, capable to effectively create radar invisibility was, what was desperately needed to protect Allied Navy vessels and the thousands of transport, cargo and tanker vessels needed to keep logistics running for UK and the Allied troops forwarding towards Berlin from the Mediterrenian Sea.

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Roots

When somebody starts to look for background information concerning the Philadelphia Experiments, he soon will discover, that actually there are at least three different versions of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment (PX) known. Here I listed these version in a brief form:

The Classic PX Version

The US Navy Destroyer Escort USS ELDRIDGE (DE 173) was used as a test ship for a top-secret invisibility experiment during World War II. The test led to complete invisibility of the vessel and sometimes, a instantaneous teleportation of the ship from the testbed in the Philadelphia Harbor to Norfolk Naval base and vice versa is reported to has taken place as well. The experiments were stopped, after the first full-scale test resulted in partially deadly side-effects to the human crew, although complete invisibility was achieved.

The Alternative Explanation

There had been tests with US Navy vessels including magnetic fields, but the ELDRIDGE was not involved, it was another ship and the aim was not optical invisibility, but a countermeasure against so-called magnetic mines. This version is strongly promoted by a person known as Colonel Corso. He tells a story about a small yacht, the SARDONIX, which was involved in tests in order to develop anti-mine devices for the US Navy.

The British Version

The test was conducted with the ELDRIDGE, but she was "transmitted" to Portsmouth (UK) and everybody onboard was toasted including Nicola Tesla. The vessel was found drifting without any survivors and a investigation team including at least one member of a small british company called ROTAX was employed to find out the cause for this disaster. All electrical machinery onboard was found completely burned out including the ships compass which was molten. The ELDRIDGE then was sunk by the Royal Navy at a hidden position, including the bodies of the test crew. The US Navy was informed and further tests were abandoned.

During the last 3 years, I checked out a lot of material concerning all three versions of the PX, and could find some hints, which support the classic version of the Philadelphia Experiment. The second version, PX modified, is supported only by the famous Col. Corso (I included a link to his stuff) and other sceptic researchers like Robert Goerman.
The third version is not very well known, I ran across it when I scanned some PX related e-mail boards. A guy from New Zealand claimed, that his brother worked for a small company named ROTAX in UK during World War II, and that this company was involved in the investigation of the accident, when (according to this guy) the ELDRIDGE was found drifting next to Portsmouth (UK) harbor with a dead crew onboard after the PX had failed and the vessel was teleported to UK. Then, the ELDRIDGE was towed to a secret position by the UK Navy and sunk. According to this New Zealand guy, the Portsmouth newspaper published an article about the ELDRIDGE accident, but that issue was suppressed by the UK government and all newspapers shredded within hours after publishing. In fact, for the day in question, which was the 27. September 1943, there were three different issues of the Portsmouth newspaper, and two only exist as microfilm copies (so for that part, the guy was right), but none of the other two issues listed this ELDRIDGE accident. Additionally, the mentioned company ROTAX was real, they were doing electrical installations and built electrical machinery, probably for the UK Armed Forces as well. I located the old company address, but the company was gone soon after WW II and no documents survived so far.

Probably the oldest and most popular source mentioning the Philadelphia Experiment for the very first time are the so-called Allende letters, which were written by Carlos Allende (or Carl Allen) in 1955 and sent to the US scientist Morris Ketchum Jessup. It is not very difficult to find transcripts of the letters on the internet. I have added some links to those letters to my archive. Soon after those letters (there were in total three of them sent to Jessup), another source was discovered in a book written by Jessup titled "The Case for the UFO". This book, later well-known as the Varo-edition, was sent anonymous to the ONS and contents the handwritten remarks of three different persons, who allegedly were well informed about the existence and nature of the UFOs and who additionally referred to the PX as well.

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