Edward Dudgeon and the Philadelphia Navy Yard
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
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| Person | Edward Dudgeon, U.S. Navy veteran and later a retired executive |
|---|---|
| Ship | Destroyer escort USS Engstrom (DE-50), at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1943 with USS Eldridge (DE-173) |
| Published by | Jacques Vallée, "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1994 |
| Explanation | Secret degaussing against magnetic mines and torpedoes; a fast inland passage to Norfolk; a bar-room fight |
| Legend | The "Philadelphia Experiment", launched by Carl M. Allen ("Carlos Allende") in 1955–56 |
| Date | 1994 |
| Topics | Military encounters (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic) |
| People | Jacques Vallée, Edward Dudgeon |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 119 |
| Year | 1994 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1994 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 10 |
Edward Dudgeon was a U.S. Navy veteran who served in the Second World War aboard the destroyer escort USS Engstrom. In 1943 the Engstrom was at the Philadelphia Navy Yard at the same time as USS Eldridge, the ship at the centre of the "Philadelphia Experiment" legend.[2][10] He gave Jacques Vallée an ordinary explanation of the legend. Vallée published it in 1994 in the Journal of Scientific Exploration; earlier accounts also tied the episode to his journals.[1][4][6][10] His account offers ordinary explanations for each of the legend's key elements: the "invisibility", the ship's reappearance in Norfolk, and the sailors who "vanished" from a bar.[6][10]
The legend
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According to the legend, on 28 October 1943 the Navy made the destroyer escort Eldridge invisible at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard as part of a test of Einstein's "unified field theory". Witnesses supposedly saw a green-blue glow around the hull before the ship vanished, appeared at Norfolk, Virginia, and reappeared in Philadelphia. Crew members were said to have gone mad, fallen ill or been fused into the ship's metal.[2][6][7]
The story began in late 1955 with Carl M. Allen.[4] How it developed:[2][4][6]
- The annotated book. Allen anonymously sent the Office of Naval Research a copy of Morris K. Jessup's The Case for the UFO, annotated in three shades of blue ink as if by three different writers.
- The letters. From January 1956 he wrote to Jessup as "Carlos Miguel Allende". He claimed he had watched the experiment from the merchant ship SS Andrew Furuseth, carried out by a scientist named Franklin Reno.
- The Varo edition. Two ONR officers had the military contractor Varo Manufacturing print 127 copies of the annotated book.
- Jessup's death. Jessup took his own life in 1959.
- The exposure. In 1980 the writer Robert Goerman showed that "Allende" was Carl Meredith Allen of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, a family friend with a history of mental illness.
The tale was popularized by several later works:[4][6]
- Vincent Gaddis (1965)
- Charles Berlitz (1977)
- Berlitz and William L. Moore's The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility (1979)
- a 1984 film
- Brad and Sherry Steiger with Alfred Bielek (1990). Bielek claimed to have been aboard and to have travelled in time from 1943 to 1983.
Dudgeon's account
Vallée found Dudgeon, a retired executive who had served aboard the Engstrom (DE-50), a ship similar to the Eldridge (DE-173). The two ships, and two other similar ones, were in the Philadelphia yard together.[10] His account:[4][6][10]
- Degaussing. Both ships carried classified equipment, but not invisibility cloaks or teleportation devices. The Navy was "trying to make our ship invisible to magnetic torpedoes" by degaussing them. Crews were sent ashore while the vessel was wrapped in heavy cables carrying high voltages to scramble its magnetic signature.
- How the rumour spread. The work involved contract workers, and merchant ships were nearby. Civilian sailors could easily have heard Navy men say "they're going to make us invisible", meaning undetectable by magnetic torpedoes.
- Nothing unusual. Crews of both ships partied together ashore, and "there was never any mention of anything unusual". They did see some spectacular electric storms.
- Norfolk. The Eldridge left at 11 p.m. one night, went to Norfolk and was back the next morning. Merchant ships would have needed two days and pilots to get through the harbour defences. Navy ships used the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, open only to naval vessels, and "made the trip in about six hours". The passage was kept quiet because German submarines were ravaging East Coast shipping.
- The vanishing sailors. He said he was one of two sailors said to have "disappeared mysteriously" from a bar. A fight broke out when some sailors bragged about secret equipment. Because he and another were under age, the waitresses "scooted us out the back door" and later denied knowing anything about them.
Other writers have suggested the reported green glow may have been St Elmo's fire, which is common in the area.[2][3][6] A HowStuffWorks article cited for that suggestion could not be retrieved directly.[3]
Other evidence
The record also undercuts the legend:[4][6]
- The Eldridge's history. The ship was not commissioned until 27 August 1943 and stayed in New York until September. In October it was on a shakedown cruise in the Bahamas, and its full war record and deck log are on microfilm.
- Its crew. At a reunion in 1999, veterans who had served aboard told a Philadelphia newspaper that their ship had never made port in Philadelphia.
- The Navy. The Office of Naval Research said in 1996 that it had never investigated radar invisibility. It noted that it was not founded until 1946.
Degaussing itself was real. The system was invented by the Canadian Charles F. Goodeve and widely used in the war, though it has no effect on light or radar.[4] The Eldridge was transferred to Greece in 1951 and scrapped in the 1990s.[2][7]
Significance
Vallée used Dudgeon's account in his 1994 analysis of the legend's origins, "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later". He argued that powerful imagery is key to planting a hoax in the public mind.[2][10] He concluded that "the Philadelphia experiment hoax, which rested on very flimsy data to begin with, should have died a long time ago".[10] The blog UFOs – Scientific Research drew the further conclusion that the "Montauk Project" stories, which build on the Philadelphia legend through Bielek, Preston Nichols and Duncan Cameron, fall with it.[10]
Not everyone accepted Dudgeon's account. A self-described "Special Civilian Investigator", Marshall Barnes, called it disinformation and accused Vallée of covering up real government activity. The Skeptic's Dictionary treats Dudgeon's story as "the mundane stuff that urban legends are made of".[6] Vallée's journals, published as the Forbidden Science series, record his wider investigations in this period.[1][5][8][9] Dudgeon's main contribution was a down-to-earth explanation that most historians accept.[4][6]
People and topics
- U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
- Edward Dudgeon — Navy veteran who linked the Philadelphia Experiment to degaussing.
- Allende letters and the Philadelphia Experiment — Allende letters and the Philadelphia Experiment
On the Timeline
- Andrew Kissner and the 1947 crashes (1994) — A former New Mexico legislator says sources told him 1947 disc crashes caused deaths.
- John Brandenburg's theories (1994) — Engineer John Brandenburg discusses theories tied to his space program work.
See every 1994 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Philadelphia Experiment — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Jacques Vallée — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- "Forbidden Science — the journals of Jacques Vallée", Anomaly Archives · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- "The truth behind WWII's creepy Philadelphia Experiment", Military.com (May 2020) · military.com · archived copy
- "How the Philadelphia Experiment worked", HowStuffWorks · people.howstuffworks.com · archived copy
- Philadelphia Experiment — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science series — Anomalist Books · anomalistbooks.com · archived copy
- The Philadelphia Experiment — Skeptic's Dictionary · skepdic.com · archived copy
- Philadelphia Experiment conspiracy theories — We Are The Mighty · wearethemighty.com · archived copy
- Review of Forbidden Science 6 — SFCrowsnest · sfcrowsnest.info · archived copy
- Forbidden Science Dispatches — Tanner Boyle (journal summaries) · tannerfboyle.substack.com · archived copy
- ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Philadelphia Experiment”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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