Skunk Works Digest Friday, 17 March 1995 Volume 05 : Number 211a In this issue: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 3 of 9 Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 4 of 9 Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 5 of 9 Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 6 of 9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Corbin) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 08:00:18 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 3 of 9 * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:15 <<..Continued from previous message>> Feature no. 3: Claims of verifiable evidence The appearance of verifiable evidence is essential to make a hoax credible. I say "the appearance" because, oddly enough, actually producing physical specimens does not always contribute to the strength of a story in the eyes of believers, perhaps because it deflates some of the mystery. Nobody has yet produced any residue from the allegedly massive UFO crash at Roswell, yet it is probably the most heavily-researched single case in history and the most-often quoted story on television today, while other cases where physical evidence is available for laboratory analysis are receiving only cursory interest from the media and from UFO groups. Similarly, Robert Lazar has yet to produce samples of "Element 115" which he claims is vital to the propulsion of captured flying saucers he describes as sitting in a secret hangar at Nellis Air Force Base, but the absence of this evidence has only served to exacerbate interest towards the story in ufological circles, while more fruitful avenues of inquiry were left untouched. Similarly, the field of abduction research is replete with claims of terminated pregnancies for which no physiological evidence has been produced so far, yet the reality of the claims is not doubted among mainstream ufologists. In one current interpretation, this complete absence of physiological traces is even taken as further evidence that the Aliens are truly advanced technologically. In the present case, letters from Carlos Allende strongly and repeatedly suggested that evidence could be found in the form of ship logs, secret reports and witnesses testimonies, but it was always just beyond the reach of independent investigators. Feature no. 4: Dramatic sequelae The three elements mentioned above: a precise unusual claim, an interesting witness and the dangling of verifiable evidence are enough to establish a strong framework for a fake story but it would not cause the imagination of a wide public to catch on fire if it stopped there. Instead, it would remain as one of the many tales that get buried in the pages of tabloids and specialized publications. We want to know "what happened next?" And it is in this regard that the Philadelphia story shines, with tragic developments, strange twists and evidence of official meddling. First came the involvement of Morris Jessup, an auto parts salesman who had done graduate work in astronomy at the University of Michigan, but never completed his doctorate there. A dedicated and honest researcher, Jessup published a book entitled The Case for the UFO in 1955. On 13 January 1956 he received the first of over fifty letters from Carlos Allende, criticizing Jessup for speculating about Unified Field Theory and describing an interpretation of Einstein's physics resulting in the Navy experiment leading to the invisibility of the destroyer. Jessup was troubled but he could never get anything specific and dropped the matter. The only "proof" Allende could provide for his claims was a list of a few names of people who were with him aboard the Matson Lines Liberty ship, the S.S. Andrew Furuseth, but he recalled no exact dates. In the Spring of 1957, however, Jessup was officially contacted by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Washington, D.C. They were in possession of a paperback copy of his book, posted in Seminole, Texas, heavily annotated by three different writers using different color pens. The annotations implied that the annotators knew everything about UFOs, including their origin and the secret of their propulsion. Major Darrell Ritter had brought the annotated book to the attention of Captain Sidney Sherby and Commander George Hoover, who was Special Projects officer. These men in turn had called Jessup, who was amazed at the scientific-sounding terms the three writers were using to describe their knowledge, which reminded him of Allende's letters. He brought his earlier correspondence with the elusive witness to the Navy's attention. At the instigation of Hoover and Sherby, the Varo Manufacturing company of Garland Texas, a military contractor, privately reprinted the annotated text of Jessup's book, reportedly producing 127 copies which quickly became collectors' items. In the Sixties and Seventies this "Varo edition" played the same role for UFO buffs as the MJ-12 documents and the "Dulce papers" are now playing: it was supposed to contain the final truth about flying saucers and the government's secret knowledge of them. The Allende revelations became an obsession for Jessup. In connection with a car accident and marital difficulties, the murky disclosures that ONR seemed to take so seriously drove the disturbed researcher into even deeper emotional turmoil. On 20 April 1959 Jessup committed suicide. The proof that Carl Allen had impersonated all three annotators would not be available until 1980, when Goerman would publish the results of his interviews with the Allen family. Feature no. 5: High-tech believability In order to engage the continued involvement of interested parties with a technical orientation, a UFO hoax must be endowed with an aura of high- faluting scientific acumen. Thus Area 51 at Nellis AFB is said to be filled with anti-gravitational devices clearly beyond earth technology, using a trans-uranian element yet to be disclosed in the scientific press. The alien civilization on UMMO is said to possess even more remarkable knowledge. Boasting a base-twelve numerical system, the Ummites are comfortable with technological concepts that include self-repairing spacecraft and "universes interacting with their own images in the mirror of time" (Petit, 1991). In an astonishing letter of fifteen pages of closely-scribbled script, Allende wrote to me about similar concepts of advanced physics: Some day magnetodynamics will have so vastly expanded in scope that there will be, of necessity, the realization that it shall then have become not merely an infant discipline, as now, but an actual, TOTAL science... we shall, long hence, then have caught up with Dr. Einstein and his "FORCE- FIELD PHYSICS". Claiming to have made several important discoveries in physics, and drawing from such examples of large-scale effects as astronomers' observations of colliding galaxies in Bootes, Allende went on to write: The experimental object, once it had been subjected to repeated activations of the device emitting that large force-field and accompanying UV light, (...) did a most revealing thing: IT RETURNED TO ITS POINT OF ORIGIN. In doing so, it formed a super-dense force-field all around it (an envelope) and traversed a near 225 mile distance, INSTANTANEOUSLY. One of Allende's conjectures was that the universe, too, would some day contract and return to its point of origin, as the DE173 had done under his very eyes. And he claimed that once Einstein had read the Varo edition of Jessup's book and the revelations contained in the Allende letters his health was affected and he died shortly thereafter. Other writers have hinted at the presence of complex equipment on board the Eldridge. Thus a recent book claims that several large generators were placed in the hold, a forward turret was chopped off. Four transmitters were put on her deck, along with a special transmitter and an antenna (Steiger & Bielek, op.cit.). <> --- * Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428) -- Michael Corbin - via ParaNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG ====================================================================== Inquiries regarding ParaNet, or mail directed to Michael Corbin, should be sent to: mcorbin@paranet.org. Or you can phone voice at 303-429-2654/ Michael Corbin Director ParaNet Information Services ------------------------------ From: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Corbin) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 08:00:25 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 4 of 9 * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:16 <<<..Continued from previous message>>> Feature no. 6: Involvement of Visible Scientists The involvement of highly-visible scientists or personalities like Albert Einstein is a key feature of the hoaxing mechanism in ufology. Much is being made of the purported connection between Robert Lazar and Dr. Edward Teller at Nellis Air Force Base, for instance, although Dr. Teller has denied anything but casual acquaintance with the man. Promoters of the UMMO story have capitalized on the involvement of Dr. Jean-Pierre Petit, a French astrophysicist who has become a staunch supporter of the story (Petit, 1991). The Philadelphia Experiment promoters are not content with using the name of Albert Einstein and John Von Neumann for the same purpose. The Berlitz-Moore book drags in Dr. Townsend T. Brown, said to be an academic protege of a "Dr. Biefield" who is said to have conducted experiments in antigravity with him. As my correspondent Robert Hauser has pointed out, however, only two "Biefields" are cited in the American Who's Who in Science. One received a degree in chemistry from Denison in 1930, the other in physical chemistry in 1948, also at Denison. Dr. Brown attended Denison in 1924-25 and could not have been a "protege" of either man (Hauser, 1987). The list of great scientists allegedly involved in the Philadelphia Experiment does not stop there. John Von Neumann figures prominently in Bill Moore's claims. More recently, a man named Al Bielek has come out with sensational claims: he was one of the sailors involved in the experiment described by Allende. He added that the scientific principles involved had been pioneered by Nicolas Tesla, Dean John Hutchinson of the University of Chicago and an Austrian, Dr. Emil Kurtenauer. Bielek did not consciously remember this for a long time, he says in his lectures and interviews, because he was brainwashed into forgetting his part in the secret project, but he says he rediscovered it as his memory gradually returned after he saw the movie in 1988. Feature no. 7: Official secrecy There is an undeniable thrill associated with the discovery of things that are kept from us by authority figures: parents, movie stars, the military, big corporations or governments. Investigative journalists, who were raised to the status of culture heroes in the Seventies after the revelations of Watergate, have served as models for eager researchers in the UFO field where the lies emanating from the military establishment are especially obvious. Requests patiently filed under the Freedom of Information Act have led to interesting findings in many cases. A good hoax can use this situation to great advantage by dragging official agencies into this scheme. The authors of the UMMO fabrication went so far as to involve the Madrid station of the CIA in their plot. They wrote to the Agency, claiming they could teach its analysts how to recognize Aliens walking among us on the earth. This gave both a sense of importance and danger to their activity and it provided believers with an almost irresistible thrill. A correspondent of mine who used to work at the explosives research office of the Naval Sea Systems Command saw a classified file which contained correspondence from the Navy to Albert Einstein regarding his work for them during World War Two. When the head of the office tried to get the contents of the folder declassified so he could write an article for the inhouse Navy magazine, his request was denied. Such facts lend credibility to hoaxes claiming that the government "knows more than it is telling", which is certainly true, and that it must have the answer to the UFO problem, which is an unwarranted conclusion. By using evidence of government secrecy as a springboard, the hoaxer can "fill in the blanks" in a sequence of events which involve classified situations, and any far-fetched story can be made believable. The involvement of ONR in the Jessup story endowed Allende's claims with a veneer of official interest that suggested deeper, darker motives among top-level military researchers. Feature no. 8: Relevance to a general audience Many true activities of the paranormal field are so complex and so intricate that they fail to capture the imagination of the public. The interested layman has very little opportunity to become personally involved in such research. The PK experiments conducted at Princeton University, for instance, demand a keen understanding of statistics, not to mention physical theory, for even a rudimentary grasp of the work being conducted. Similarly, remote viewing experiments involve complex controls that are rarely mentioned when the press alludes to what it calls "psychic feats". On the contrary, when Carlos Allende claimed that he had witnessed the disappearance of a large vessel he could be readily understood by a vast audience. His revelations involved a situation anyone could clearly visualize: one instant the destroyer was in the harbor in Philadelphia, the next instant it wasn't there any more. Sailors were caught in an incredibly powerful "force field". Some became ill, others became crazy. This was the kind of tale to which teen-agers, science-fiction buffs, military personnel and even the "average Joe" drinking beer at the corner saloon could easily relate. Even more importantly, this was the kind of story that would lend itself to adaptation and convenient filming by camera crews, a tale that was both intriguing, dramatic and visual, as opposed to most scientific endeavors which are either boring, complicated or too abstract for a general audience. Feature no. 9: Validation by credible researchers Many eager UFO researchers became involved in the Philadelphia story after Jessup's death. Ivan T. Sanderson, a well-known naturalist, author and researcher of the paranormal, had always been interested in the case through his friendship with Jessup. His correspondence with other authors contributed to keep the story alive. Such researchers as Stanton Friedman and Gray Barker commented on the case. The latter even suggested that Morris Jessup had been assassinated, and his death disguised as a suicide. UFO writer Jerome Clark, now a vice-president of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) penned one of the articles in a collection entitled The Allende Letters (Steiger, 1968). He argued that "we can no longer ignore the strong possibility that UFO entities are regularly passing in our midst, often in forms that are invisible to the human eye" and he mentioned the Allende letters in support of his theory. Noting that "the peculiar interest of the Navy in his letters and the later Varo document indicate an element of truth in his writing", Clark speculated that "the creation of an invisibility ray is within the grasp of terrestrial science. Then what about extra-terrestrial science ?" As late as June 1993 a group of sophisticated parapsychologists in the San Francisco Bay Area sponsored a lecture by J. Randolph Winters in which the Philadelphia Experiment was prominently mentioned. Reporting on the speaker's presentation, their newsletter disclosed that "he began to range into equally mind-stretching areas: the role of reptilean aliens, time travel, and government coverup in the famous Philadelphia Experiment anti-radar invisibility project during World War II, where a U.S. naval ship disappeared, teleported, and returned" (Klimo, 1993). Even Carlos Allende would be at a loss to recognize his own fabrications in what has become a hodge-podge of reptilean invaders and faulty radar tests that lead to unforeseen invisibility and actual teleportation, surely one of the most spectacular examples of miscalculation in the history of physics. Feature no. 10: Media amplification Most important technical developments take place in secret and are kept from inquisitive reporters. Computer companies rarely talk about the features of future products until they are very close to releasing them, if only to avoid tripping the sales of their existing line or compromising patent applications. Central banks use the strictest precautions before changing lending rates, and many prominent individuals pay hefty retainers to public relations firms to keep their name and their affairs out of the newspapers rather than promoting their activities, simply because confidence and trust are more important elements in business than publicity or ego gratification. Once the deal is signed, routine public disclosure generally follows. Not so with most UFO stories. Researchers hardly take the time to gather a few basic facts as they rush before the cameras with their breathless tale: presumably the information is so vital that the world must be told about it immediately. Oddly enough, however, those elements of the story that would enable a bona fides scientist to check its validity are generally withheld. Independent researchers are left with sensational claims they are not in a position to validate. Such is the case with the Billy Meier photographs in Switzerland (where negatives have never been available although thousands of UFO pictures have reportedly been taken) and the equally sensational Linda Napolitano abduction in New York, which prominent ufologists have labelled "the case of the century". The proper term for such handling of information is "dangling": the story is immediately presented before our eyes, but we are not permitted to cross- examine the witnesses or to test the truthfulness of the assertions. The American public has even seen alleged Intelligence officers appear on television behind a suitably private screen, their voices carefully disguised, to reveal such shocking secrets as the reality of the MJ-12 documents or the physiology of the Aliens. Few people seemed to notice (or indeed, to care) that identification of the informants in question would be child play for any Intelligence agency employing them. The obvious conclusion -- that the case was another hoax -- was never drawn. The Philadelphia Experiment was similarly amplified through a book and a movie long before the facts could be checked out, and at a time when Carlos Allende still claimed that full disclosure of his experience would put him in terrible danger. <> --- * Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428) -- Michael Corbin - via ParaNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG ====================================================================== Inquiries regarding ParaNet, or mail directed to Michael Corbin, should be sent to: mcorbin@paranet.org. Or you can phone voice at 303-429-2654/ Michael Corbin Director ParaNet Information Services ------------------------------ From: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Corbin) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 08:00:33 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 5 of 9 * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:18 <<<<..Continued from previous message>>>> (Please Note: The following Chronology is formatted incorrectly. My apologies, however the original text came in WRITE format and it got re- formatted in the text conversion. Michael Corbin) Aug-43? 13-Jan-56 Spring-57 20-Apr-59 1969 1979 Oct-1980 1983 1984 1990 Nov-1992 Philadelphia Allende writes ONR-Varo Jessup's Allende Berlitz Goearman Allende Raffill Steiger- Dudgeon Navy "test" to Jessup involved suicide at APRO Moore article in Boulder movie Bielek testifies ! ! ! ! ! book ! ! ! book ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! --X--------< >---------------------------------------< >- ------------< >---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ ! ! ! ! ! 1956: 1967 1968 Sep-89 1991 55 letters Allende J.Clark article Al Bielek Montauk from Allende letters to "Allende letters" by claims to be experiment to Jessup J.Vallee Steiger-Whritenour a witness publicized The motivation of the media in amplifying such stories has little to do with the duty to keep the public informed of important scientific developments. It is simply driven by the need to increase ratings by presenting a constantly-renewed stream of colorful, controversial characters to a capricious audience. In promoting the story the media will not hesitate to distort it to fit the requirements of a dramatic script or a suitably impressive camera angle. Thus, as pointed out to me by some of my readers, some popular shows were not content with making the Eldridge invisible, but made it vanish physically. Presumably such a sudden disappearance would have created an emergency as 1,900 tons of water rushed to fill the void, resulting in large waves that would have swept through the entire Navy yard. This unavoidable consequence of the "experiment" is not discussed anywhere. Media amplification has two effects: dissemination to a wide public and creation of a permanent record. In the words of Curtis MacDougall "in book form (a hoax) is admitted to libraries, where it remains unaltered to trap the unsophisticated regardless of how many other books are written to debunk it" (MacDougall, 1958). The same can be said for videotape and computer mail, which are fast becoming the media of choice for the spreading of spurious, untraceable rumors. Feature no. 11: Relevance to Believers Giving believers something to do is very important to the success of a hoax, because we tend to attach more credence to an event which represents our personal investment in time, energy and money. "How can I get involved?" is a question often heard from would-be paranormal investigators. The obvious answer is to get a degree in science and to be prepared for long and possibly tedious analyses, the study of transcripts and the compilation of statistics. This is not the answer most UFO enthusiasts are seeking: they want action, the thrill of the chase and the opportunity to uncover sensational answers quickly. That motivation has driven hundreds of sightseers to visit locations like Gulf Breeze or Nellis Air Force base for a chance to see strange lights in the sky, while very few people have done the basic research work necessary to find out what the lights in question were. Interest in a UFO story dies quickly unless it acquires a constituency. A good hoax has to lead to specific tasks or missions in which the believers can invest mental energy, physical activity and leisure time. In some contactee cases, like the "Pleiades" hoax, there is a cult one can actually join. Without going that far, a good fabricator can create excitement by spreading around some artifacts (photographs, letters, official-looking documents, tape recordings, bits of physical objects) all of which demand time, skill and effort for analysis. In that regard the UMMO hoax is a work of genius, since it generated all of the above, from bizarre metallic cylinders to actual landing traces, photographs and thousands of pages of scientific-sounding documents. Many of the believers continue to analyze this mass of "evidence", travelling endlessly to meetings, interviewing and investigating each other, and visiting the locations mentioned in the documents in the hope of finding validation. The Philadelphia Experiment succeeds almost as well in this regard. There are many records that can be checked and elusive witnesses to be tracked down. There are scientific-sounding claims to be verified and official archives of the U.S. Navy and the Merchant Marine that need to be consulted to find the whereabouts of the various ships mentioned by Carlos Allende. Additional witnesses could be sought, wild speculation seemed warranted. Hundreds of researchers became involved, contacting the National Archives and other government offices for lists of names and other items that would permit them to reconstruct the official history of the Eldridge. Much new information was obtained in the process. Others chased down copies of the Varo edition, analyzed its contents, and argued for and against the extraterrestrial origin of the writers. Still others attempted to catch Carlos Allende, with no success. The Philadelphia Experiment became a veritable cottage industry. Feature no. 12: Adequate socio-economic framework As an "underdog" on the run, Carlos Allende had a degree of believability he would not have enjoyed if he had been, say, a drugstore owner in Toledo or a manager of a Safeway store in Tucson. In the late fifties and especially in the sixties the American public was beginning to realize that sailors and other military personnel had occasionally been used as unsuspecting subjects in a variety of experimental situations ranging from epidemiology and bacteriological modeling to deliberate exposure to nuclear radiation to mind control. The Vietnam war, with its extensive use of defoliating agents, napalm and other chemicals, brought this into focus. As an alleged victim of a secret Navy experiment, Allende could count on the sympathy of his audience. A man claiming to have barely survived where others perished is assured to have at least the benefit of the doubt before any audience. The involvement of Morris Jessup, another underdog, a marginal but clearly honest and dedicated researcher in a difficult field, added believability to the situation. At a time when large defense budgets were being questioned by an increasing segment of the citizenry, it was appropriate to demand to know how the Pentagon was spending taxpayers' money. The peak of interest in the Philadelphia Experiment occurred during the "Great Society" era when social programs came into prominenece. At the same time the Black Budget went through a period of huge inflation to support the heavily-classified surveillance satellite program. There was a general feeling that money was going somewhere in large amounts and that Washington was lying about its destination. From that realization to the thought that Allende was right about a radical, secret departure in physics, the distance was not very great. These conditions are once again met today, with huge, undocumented amounts of money going into the development and covert testing of novel weapons such as non-lethal platforms and low-observable systems while overt, official Washington talk is of reduced deficits, tight availability of cash, better social programs and lower Defense expenses. This very paradox appears to create an ideal framework and an atmosphere of credibility for new hoaxes on the model of the Philadelphia Experiment. <> --- * Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428) -- Michael Corbin - via ParaNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG ====================================================================== Inquiries regarding ParaNet, or mail directed to Michael Corbin, should be sent to: mcorbin@paranet.org. Or you can phone voice at 303-429-2654/ Michael Corbin Director ParaNet Information Services ------------------------------ From: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Corbin) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 08:00:39 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 6 of 9 * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:20 <<<<<..Continued in next message>>>>> Feature no.13: Hints of secret contact In ufological lore, the stories that capture the imagination of the widest audience are not limited to the documentation of a single phenomenon, no matter how remarkable. Rather, they hint at a larger backdrop that manifests through mysterious phone calls, visits by "men-in-black", unmarked helicopters and strange cars following the witnesses. Another manifestation of the same backdrop comes through the mail as anonymous letters or packages. We have already seen this efficient method in use in the UMMO hoax. Sometimes the information appears in the researcher's mailbox, like an undeveloped film in an unmarked canister that is said to have launched Bill Moore and his friend Jaime Shandera on the track of the Majestic Twelve group, another fabrication that has fascinated American ufology for several years. It is in similar fashion that the "evidence" which is said to corroborate the Philadelphia Experiment arrived in Bill Moore's mailbox. "It is finally possible to announce what appears to be a breakthrough in this all-important area of the mystery," wrote Moore in the book he co-authored with Berlitz, adding: "In a secure safety deposit box there exists a photocopy of a newspaper clipping which was received from an anonymous source." (Berlitz & Moore, 1979) The clipping, undated and without identification as to the newspaper of origin, is entitled Strange Circumstances Surround Tavern Brawl. It seems that a fight erupted in a Philadelphia bar in 1943, the Navy Shore patrol called the police for help, and officers found the place empty of customers: According to a pair of very nervous waitresses, the Shore Patrol had arrived first and cleared the place out -- but not before two of the sailors involved allegedly did a disappearing act. "They just sort of vanished into thin air... right there" reported one of the frightened hostesses, "and I ain't been drinking either!" Damage to the tavern was estimated to be about six hundred dollars. By tying a larger, unverifiable mystery (a destroyer that became invisible) to a small, strange incident that can be verified but comes to us through an anonymous source, the unsuspecting reader gains the impression that the entire story has now been validated. Why was the clipping sent anonymously to Bill Moore? Could it be that any association with this episode is so terribly dangerous that the sender would be likely to face assassination if he revealed his identity? If this is true, then those in the know must remain in the shadows, helping brave investigators by putting hints and bits of evidence in their path. I am indebted to Mr.William Banks for pointing out to me that here again, the parallel with the whole saga of MJ-12, the alleged Roswell "UFO crash" and the Linda Napolitano abduction claim is compelling enough to deserve further investigation. Tracking down and exposing such spurious embellishments to the original hoax can take a very long time. It involves luck as well as perseverance. And luck was on our side when I was able to meet with one of the sailors who were in that tavern in the Fall of 1943, and who told me the whole story. What actually happened in Philadelphia In an earlier assessment of the Philadelphia Experiment data, the author offered the tentative conclusion that the story was, in part, based on fact: the Navy may have been involved in technically-advanced, classified tests in the Fall of 1943 (Vallee, 1991). These developments could have been misunderstood or deliberately romanticized by people like Allende, just as today we find tests of advanced flying platforms at Nellis Air Force Base being misinterpreted by believers. Furthermore I hypothesized that the experiments had to do with a radar countermeasures test. Indeed a Raytheon advertisement published thirteen years ago suggested that the corresponding technology was now out in the open (Raytheon, 1980). This hypothesis, however, failed to explain a few of the facts that highlighted the story. In particular it did not account for the observed disappearance of the destroyer from the harbor, for the mysterious devices brought on board under extreme security precautions, or for the alleged disappearance of two sailors from a nearby tavern. I called out to any one of my readers who might have additional information. That is how I came to correspond, and later to meet face to face, with Mr. Edward Dudgeon. "I am a sixty-seven year old retired executive. I was in the Navy from 1942 through 1945," began Mr. Dudgeon's letter (Dudgeon, 1992) explaining his purpose in contacting me. He confirmed that the idea of an actual, secret technical development was correct, but he said I was wrong about a radar test. The truth, as he patiently wrote to me, was simpler. I was on a destroyer that was there at the same time as the Eldridge DE 173... I can explain all of the strange happenings as we had the same secret equipment on our ship. We were also with two other DEs and the Eldridge on shakedown in Bermuda and return to Philadelphia. My correspondent suggested a meeting, adding "I am not looking for any compensation for this or media exposure. I just want someone to know what I know before it is too late." A few weeks later I met with Mr. Dudgeon, who produced his identification and his discharge papers from the U.S. Navy. Over the next two hours he gave me the details of his story and answered my questions. "You must realize that in forty three, the Germans had been sinking our ships as fast as they came out of the harbors into the Atlantic, which they called "the Graveyard". I was just a kid then. In fact I falsified my birth certificate in order to join the Navy in 1942. I was only sixteen at the time, turning seventeen in December of 1942." "What was your training ?" I asked him. "I studied electronics at Iowa State. The Navy sent me to electronics school after boot camp. I graduated with the title of "electrician's mate third class" in February of 43, and then I went aboard ship in June 1943." "Can you give me the name of the vessel?" "Oh yes, the DE 50, U.S.S. Engstrom. It was a diesel electric ship, as opposed to the DE 173, the Eldridge, which was steam electric. These ships were run by the electricians. Our ship was put in drydock so they could install high-torque screws." "Why the special equipment?" "The new screws made a sound of a different pitch, which made it harder for the submarines to hear us. They also installed a new sonar for underwater detection, and a device we called a "hedgehog" which was mounted in front of the forward gun mount on the bow. It fired depth charges in banks of twenty- four to thirty in a pattern, and could cover 180 degrees as far as about a mile away. That was one of the secrets. Your book Revelations was wrong about making the ship invisible to radar: the Germans hadn't deployed radar at the time. We were trying to make our ships invisible to magnetic torpedoes, by de-Gaussing them. We had regular radar and also a "micro-radar" of lower frequency. They could detect submarines as soon as they raised their periscopes or came up for air. We could pick them up in the dark or in fog as far as one or two miles away. That's when the Germans began to lose their U-boats." "How does this relate to the Eldridge?" I asked Mr.Dudgeon. "The Eldridge and the Engstrom were in the harbor together," he answered. "In fact four ships were outfitted at the same time: the 48, 49, 50 and the Eldridge, in June and July of 1943. The Navy used to de-Gauss all the ships in drydock, even the merchant ships, otherwise the vessels acted as bar magnets which attracted the magnetic torpedoes." <> --- * Origin: ParaNet -- Leading UFO Research Network (1:104/428) -- Michael Corbin - via ParaNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG ====================================================================== Inquiries regarding ParaNet, or mail directed to Michael Corbin, should be sent to: mcorbin@paranet.org. Or you can phone voice at 303-429-2654/ Michael Corbin Director ParaNet Information Services ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #211a **********************************