ATLANTIC CITY -- The truth is out here. It is in a hospitality room of
a boardwalk hotel, with some old salts sitting around white-clothed
tables laughing at reports that their ship was involved in a
top-secret World War II experiment.
Sailors who served on the USS Eldridge, the ship that legend says
vanished briefly in 1943 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, met here this
week for their first reunion in 53 years and spent part of their time
joking about the so-called Philadelphia Experiment.
The Eldridge, they said yesterday, may well have been invisible to
Philadelphia because it was never in Philadelphia.
The ship's log and several veterans who were on the ship from its
launching on July 25, 1943, at Port Newark, N.J., say it called on
many East Coast ports, but never Philadelphia.
Two movies, two books and several Web sites have kept the myth about
the Eldridge alive. As the story goes, the destroyer escort was
surrounded by a greenish fog, disappeared for a few minutes, then
reappeared.
But none of the veterans believes it.
\"I think it's somebody's pipe dream,\" said Ed Wise, 74, of Salem, Ind.
Ted Davis, 72, of Grand Island, Neb., was more emphatic. \"It never
happened,\" he said.
Bill Van Allen, 84, who was executive officer and then captain of the
Eldridge in 1943 and 1944, said he never saw any sign of experiments
aboard the ship. \"I have not the slightest idea how these stories got
started,\" said Van Allen of Charlotte, N.C.
These former sailors said they sometimes had fun pretending the
experiment actually occurred. \"When people would ask me about it, I
would play along with them and tell them I disappeared. After a while
they realized I was pulling their legs,\" said Ray Perrino, 72, of
Cranston, R.I.
None of the 15 at the reunion could explain why writers picked their
ship, out of the thousands that sailed in the war, as the site of
invisibility experiments.
Frankly, some are tired of being asked about it.
\"We can't wait to put it to rest. We can't because it keeps coming
up,\" Davis said. \"I'm still asked about it now, mostly by younger
people.\"
\"I have a Pennsylvania auto license DE-173 [ the designation and
number of the Eldridge ] , and every once in a while somebody will
stop and ask me if it was really true,\" said Mike Perlstein, 72, of
Warminster.
\"I tell them I know nothing about it. I've seen the movie, and it's a
good movie, but there's no truth to it,\" Perlstein said.
The Navy said it had received so many inquiries through the years
about the Philadelphia Experiment -- the title of a 1984 movie, a 1993
sequel and two books -- that it prepared and sends out a fact sheet.
The Navy said the myth dated to 1955 with the publication of The Case
for UFO's by the late Morris K. Jessup. It said Jessup later received
letters from a Carlos Miguel Allende, who gave a New Kensington, Pa.,
address, and claimed he witnessed the ship becoming invisible from
another vessel. Allende also said the ship was \"teleported\" to and
from Norfolk, Va., in a few minutes with some terrible aftereffects
for crew members.
Questions about the experiment probably arose from \"quite routine\"
research at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard during the war, according
to the Navy fact sheet.
\"It was believed the foundation for the apocryphal stories arose from
degaussing [ demagnetizing ] experiments which have the effect of
making a ship undetectable or 'invisible' to magnetic mines,\" the Navy
said.
But the Navy said it had never conducted invisibility experiments,
either in 1943 or at any other time.
The legend says the ship became invisible on July 22, 1943, but ship
records and the veterans say it was not launched until July 25. The
second experiment, in which the Eldridge was sent to Norfolk and back
to Philadelphia, was supposed to have occurred on Oct. 28, 1943. The
ship's log says it was at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on that date, but did
spend two days in the Norfolk Navy Yard in November 1943.
The gray-haired men, some wearing baseball caps with \"USS Eldridge\"
printed on them, chuckled as they ribbed one another about the mental
problems the crew supposedly suffered from the experiments.
\"The only part of the book I think is true is the part about the crew
being a little crazy,\" said Ed Tempany, 75, of Carteret, N.J. He
referred to The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility by
William L. Moore in consultation with Charles Berlitz.
\"When I get home I'm going to apply for disability,\" Perrino said,
with a smile.
\"Beam me up, Scotty,\" said Tempany.
?1999 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.