Page 52 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Vol 24 No 2 - February 24 2015

The Philadelphia Experiment
The Vanishing Ship
Could science ever succeed in making
matter invisible? According to one self-
professed, witness, the U.S. Navy
accomplished this astonishing feat in
1943 when it allegedly made a destroyer
vanish into thin air.
“The result of the experiment was complete
invisibility of a ship, destroyer type, and all its
crew, while at sea (October 1943). The field was
effective in an oblate spheroidal shape,
extending one hundred yards…out from each
beam of the ship. Any person within that sphere
became vague in form…Somehow, also, the
experimental ship disappeared from its
Philadelphia dock and only a few minutes later
appeared at its other dock in the Norfolk,
Newport News, Portsmouth area…the ship then
again disappeared and went back to its
Philadelphia dock.”
Einstein’s theory
The above is an extract from a letter written on
January 13, 1956, by Carlos Miguel Allende
(also known as Carl Allen), a former seaman, to
Dr. Morris Jessup, and astronomer and author of
The Case for the UFO (1955). The experiment,
claimed Allende, was an application, by a
scientist called Dr. Franklin Reno, of Einstein’s
unified field theory (a theory that attempts to
connect the fundamental forces of nature).
Reno, Allende claimed, had successfully
connected the field of gravity with that of
electromagnetism.
Disappearing destroyer
Allende stated that he witnessed the
disappearance of the destroyer, the U.S.S.
Eldridge, while on board a merchant ship, the
S.S. Andrew Furuseth. However, the
appearance of the Eldridge in the Norfolk area
was something that Allende claimed he had only
read about, in a Philadelphia newspaper.
According to Allende, the success of the
experiment was marred by terrible side effects
on the Eldridge crew. Once, during a dockside
bar brawl, some of these crewmen, contended
Allende, vanished into thin air. He further
claimed that there was a report about this
incident which had appeared in a Philadelphia
newspaper, sometime in 1944-46. In the best-
selling book they wrote about this mystery, The
Philadelphia Experiment (1979), Charles
Berlitz and William Moore reproduce a
newspaper clipping of such an account. Yet the
clipping does not bear any newspaper name or
date, and its column width is greater than that of
any Philadelphia newspaper published in the
1940’s.
Naval records
Dr. Jessup seems to have believed Allende’s
story and conducted research on it. Naval
records show that Allende was, as he claimed
to be, aboard the Andrew Furuseth in October
1943. But these records show that the only
possible date on which the ship and the
Eldridge could have been (though there is no
evidence that they were) in the same vicinity
was August 16, 1943. In addition, no other
former crew members of the Andrew Furuseth
have at any time collaborated Allende’s story.
Alleged mastermind
There is also no mention of Dr. Franklin Reno,
the alleged mastermind behind the experiment,
in any reference works. Berlitz and Moore
claim that his name was a pseudonym, that
they traced and interviewed him, and that he
had died several months later. The authors say,
“Reno” told them he was a top scientist for the
U.S. military, involved in research into the use
of electromagnetic fields to deflect torpedoes
and mines.
The U.S. Navy has always denied that
the experiment took place, and these is no
other evidence that this or similar experiments
occurred. It seems probable that the
Philadelphia Experiment existed only in the
mind of Carlos Allende. []
Vivienne & Gary Tomlinson
The gusts of wind began to push against
the Tomlinsons’ They felt the wind
coming at them from the aide and from
above…so great was its force that they
were pushed off the path and into the
wheat field.
Thursday, May 17, 1990, was humid and still.
At about 9 p.m. Vivienne and Gary Tomlinson
decided to take a late evening stroll along a
public footpath that led across a wheat field
close to the home in Hambledon, Surrey, in the
south of England. As they were walking along
the narrow footpath by the edge of the wheat
field they noticed that the wheat to their right
which was dry, light green in colour, and two
feet high, swaying very gently.
Suddenly, there was a change in the
pattern of the wind. It seemed to be coming
from two directions at once. In the center of the everything became calm again. The Tomlinsons
field, the wind seemed to be gathering force,
pushing strong gusts through the wheat. The
soft rustling noise changed now, sounding to
Mrs. Tomlinson like the continuous shrilling of
a high pitched flute. The Tomlinsons looked up
to see if this sudden change in the wind could be
caused by a helicopter overhead. They could see
nothing.
Caught in a vortex
The gusts of wind grew stronger and began to
push against the Tomlinson’s. They felt the
wind coming at them from the side and from
above and so great was its force that they were
pushed off the path into the wheat field. Now
the wind had completely encircled them. Mrs.
Tomlinson could see the swirling air coming at
them. I had cloud vapor or mist in it. Looking
down, the couple saw that the wheat was being
driven down to the ground beneath them.
The Tomlinson’s appeared to be trapped
in the center of a crop circle as it was forming.
It seemed as if the little whirlwinds gathered
and increased in size, and as each of them
caught up sections of the wheat, the section was
laid down gently on the field. The Tomlinson’s
battered by the spinning wind, found it
increasingly difficult to stand upright. Mr.
Tomlinson’s hair was standing on end. Mrs.
Tomlinson’s ears began to ache from the
piercing noise. As the number of vortices
appeared to increase, Mrs. Tomlinson panicked
and with a great effort pulled her husband out of
the circle. The formation of the strange circle
into which they had been drawn was completed
in seconds. After that, the couple watched as the
wind split into two currents and zigzagged off
into the distance, where it formed other circles
in the wheat. The whole episode including the
shaping of the lesser circles, had only taken
about seven minutes.
Once the whirling vortex had passed,
said they could feel their bodies tingling as an
after-effect of the experience. []