From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: Philadelphia Experiment
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 17:20:12 GMT


       At the risk of spoiling someone's fun, I am reposting an
       item I wrote earlier when questions about the "Philadelphia 
       Experiment" came up.


OK, I went digging in my files, and uncovered an article from FATE magazine,
Oct. 1980 by Robert A. Goerman, called "Alias Carlos Allende". Summarizing 
what it says:

"In 1955 a Washington, DC auto parts salesman named Morris K. Jessup, who
once did graduate work in astronomy at the University of Michigan, wrote 
a book titled "The Case for the UFO" and embarked on a tour to promote it....

In 1956, "Jessup received a letter from one Carlos Miguel Allende .... (it)
scolded Jessup for suggesting continued research into UFT (Unified Field
Theory). Allende claimed that in October 1943 the United States navy had
used Einstein's theories in an experiment that not only rendered a destroyer
totally invisible but also caused it to be teleported from the Philadelphia
dock to the Norfolk News-Portsmouth area and back again in a matter of
minutes. The experiment succeeded but it left side effects so horrendous
that the navy shut down the project immediately.....

(in a later letter) "Allende, his name now anglicized to Carl M. Allen, 
could recall no exact dates, either for the experiment or for news accounts;
nor could he remember the names of the crew members or anything else
that mattered...."

Later, someone at the Office of Naval research in Washington turned up a
copy of Jessup's UFO book that had been "annotated", apparently by three
different persons, "Mr. A", "Mr. B", and "Jemi". "The writers made little
effort to conceal their contempt for mere human beings. Jessup
immediately recognized the handwriting, with its bizarre spelling, 
capitalization and punctuation, as that of his mysterious correspondant
Carl(os) Allen(de)... the three writers continually referred to that
secret 1943 naval experiment."  

"On April 20, 1959, Jessup committed suicide."

Late in the summer of 1969, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
(APRO) wrote that Allen(de) "had dropped into its Tucson, Ariz. office
and confessed the whole thing was a hoax." But Allen(de) later
apparently recanted this confession.

Allen's letters carried the return address of a house in New Kensington,
PA, the author's home town, so he investigated. 

"I learned the whereabouts of all three of Allen(de)'s brothers." He also
located Carl's father, turned out to be his neighbor. Goerman was given
full access to papers that the family had. He concludes, "Carlos loves
to play games with those foolish enough to play audience... Carl is
described as a 'master leg-puller'. Once he purportedly feigned a heart
attack while working ... ". In a letter to his parents, Carl admits
annotating Jessup's book, by himself. 

"In his letters to Jessup, Carl does not mention the name or number
of his experimental ship. In Moore and Berlitz' book he states, "It
was the DE-173."

"It is clear that the legend of Carl Allen/Carlos Allende is mostly
fiction. If someone were to write a book telling the *real* story,
its title might be 'The Philadelphia Hoax: Project Gullibility."




       (P.S: According to email I have received, Allen(de) is STILL
        writing crackpot letters to scientists, in 1992!)

-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

       "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
        Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
        broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or
        where it will end."
                               - Emerson: Essay, "Circles"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban