Allende letters and the Philadelphia Experiment

Allende letters and the Philadelphia Experiment

Type	Event (hoax correspondence)
Writer	Carl Meredith Allen (1925–1994), alias "Carlos Miguel Allende"
Recipient	Morris K. Jessup, author of The Case for the UFO (1955)
First letter	Received 13 January 1956
Claimed event	USS Eldridge (DE-173) made invisible and teleported, Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, about 28 October 1943
Annotated book	Sent anonymously to the Office of Naval Research, 1955; reprinted as the "Varo edition" (127 copies)
Navy position	No such experiment took place
Date	April 1956
Topics	Military encounters (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic)
People	Morris K. Jessup, Carl Meredith Allen, William Moore
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 57
Year	1956 in UFO history
Timeline	1956 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	9

The Allende letters were a series of letters written from January 1956 to the UFO author Morris K. Jessup by a man signing himself "Carlos Miguel Allende". In reality he was a former merchant seaman named Carl Meredith Allen. They are the origin of the Philadelphia Experiment, the legend that in 1943 the U.S. Navy made a warship invisible and teleported it. Allen confessed to the hoax several times, recanted, and confessed again. The Navy says no such experiment ever took place.^[1][2]

The annotated book

In 1955 Jessup published The Case for the UFO, which speculated that anti-gravity and electromagnetism would be better than rocket fuel for propelling spacecraft. Jessup is often called an astronomer. One account describes him as an auto parts salesman who had once studied for a doctorate in astrophysics at the University of Michigan. That year a paperback copy of the book arrived anonymously at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington. One account dates its arrival to July 1955, another to late 1955. It had been mailed from Seminole, Texas, addressed to a non-existent "Admiral N. Furth", with "Happy Easter" written on the envelope. Its margins were filled with notes in three shades of blue ink, apparently a debate among three people, one called "Jemi", who called each other "Gypsies". The notes discussed UFO propulsion, two races of beings in space and a "great bombardment". They worried that Jessup was too close to discovering the beings' technology, and made oblique references to an experiment in 1943.^[1][4][6]

The letters

Allen had heard Jessup lecture on the need for government research into gravity and Einstein's unified field ideas. His first letter, received on 13 January 1956, warned Jessup that such research was already "horribly" complete. Writing as Carl Allen and as Carlos Miguel Allende, he said that around 28 October 1943 a scientist named Franklin Reno had applied unpublished theories of Albert Einstein at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. In Allen's account, the destroyer escort USS Eldridge was made invisible, teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, for several minutes, and then reappeared in Philadelphia. Its crew suffered insanity, intangibility and being "frozen" in place. Allen said he had watched from the deck of the merchant ship SS Andrew Furuseth, between 17:05 and 17:20. He described seeing the "impression" of the invisible hull pushing down into the water. When Jessup asked for corroboration, Allen said his memory would have to be recovered. He also referred Jessup to a Philadelphia newspaper article that researchers have never found. A clipping later printed in the literature describes a tavern brawl in which two sailors "just sort of vanished into thin air".^[1][3][8]

The Navy connection

In 1957 Jessup was invited to ONR and shown the annotated copy. He recognised the handwriting as that of his correspondent. Two ONR officers, Captain Sidney Sherby and Commander George W. Hoover, took a personal interest. Hoover later said he found nothing of substance in the alleged invisibility experiment. Hoover discussed the notes with Austin N. Stanton, president of Varo Manufacturing Corporation of Garland, Texas, an ONR contractor. Varo's office produced mimeographed copies of the book with the annotations and Allen's letters, first a dozen and eventually 127. This "Varo edition" gave the story an aura of official interest. Navy attempts to find "Carlos Allende" in 1956 failed. Jessup lost his publisher and suffered personal setbacks. He died by suicide in Florida on 30 April 1959.^[1][3][5][6]

Carl Allen

Allen was born on 31 May 1925 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Wikipedia calls him the eldest of five children, while another researcher describes him as the youngest. He joined the Marine Corps on 14 July 1942 and was discharged on 21 May 1943. He then served in the Merchant Marine, on the SS Andrew Furuseth from 16 August 1943 to late January 1944, and on 27 ships in all, until October 1952. His seaman's certificate, found from the number he gave Jessup, confirmed his service on the Furuseth. Relatives described him as having a "fantastic mind" but as a drifter and "master leg-puller". He used many aliases, including "Colonel Carlos Miguel Christofero Allende", and once wrote to Wernher von Braun as "Dr. Karl Merditt Allenstein". He claimed to have met Einstein and been taught physics by him. In 1967–68 he wrote to Jacques Vallée from Mexico and Minneapolis, offering to sell a further annotated Varo edition for $1,950. He died in Greeley, Colorado, on 5 March 1994.^[2][3][5]

Confessions

In 1969, bitter that others were profiting from his story, Allen gave Jim Lorenzen of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization a copy of the Varo edition with a "confession" attached. It said the underlined passages "were and are the craziest pack of lies I ever wrote". Their object, it said, was "to encourage ONR Research and to discourage Professor Morris K. Jessup from going further". Allen said he had written all the annotations himself "to scare the hell out of Jessup". Yet Lorenzen reported that Allen still believed a vessel had vanished from its Philadelphia dock. In 1980 Robert Goerman traced Allen's family for Fate magazine and found a letter in which Allen admitted annotating the book himself. Goerman concluded that "Carlos loves to play games with those foolish enough to play audience". He also noted Allen's history of psychiatric illness.^[1][3][4]

The legend grows

The story was retold in Vincent Gaddis's Invisible Horizons (1965) and in fringe journals of the late 1960s. It was popularised by the 1979 book The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, which was criticised for borrowing from the 1978 novel Thin Air. A 1984 film directed by Stewart Raffill followed. In 1989 Alfred Bielek claimed he had been aboard the Eldridge during the experiment. The historian Mike Dash noted that many later authors did little research of their own. Allen, supposedly impossible to find, was identified by Goerman after a few phone calls.^[1][7][9]

Debunking

The Navy says no such experiment took place. In September 1996 ONR said it had "never conducted investigations on radar invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time", noting that it had not existed until 1946. The Eldridge was commissioned on 27 August 1943 and stayed in New York until September. Its action report and deck log place it on a shakedown cruise in the Bahamas at the key time. Veterans at an April 1999 reunion said it had never made port in Philadelphia. Researchers suggest the legend grew out of wartime "degaussing" work, which made ships "invisible" to magnetic mines but had no effect on light or radar. Jacques Vallée found a veteran of USS Engstrom, docked alongside the Eldridge in 1943. He said the ship was degaussed, and had sailed from Philadelphia to Norfolk and back in a day through the Navy-only Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. The same veteran said he was the sailor who "vanished" from a bar fight: barmaids had whisked him out because he was under age. Robert Goerman summed it up: "If someone were to write a book telling the real story, its title might be The Philadelphia Hoax: Project Gullibility."^[1][2][4]

People and topics

• Morris K. Jessup — Astronomer and author of The Case for the UFO (1955), linked to the Varo edition and the Philadelphia Experiment.
• U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
• Carl Meredith Allen — Letter writer behind the Philadelphia Experiment story and the Varo edition annotations.
• William Moore — Researcher who admitted in 1989 that he cooperated with intelligence agents in the Bennewitz affair.

On the Timeline

• Varo edition of The Case for the UFO (April 1956) — Navy researchers receive an annotated copy of Morris Jessup's UFO book with strange handwritten notes.
• Air Force Manual 190-4 (1 May 1956) — A former Air Force spokesman says a manual governed all official statements about UFOs.

See every 1956 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Philadelphia Experiment”, “Carl Meredith Allen”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.