Skunk Works Digest Friday, 17 March 1995 Volume 05 : Number 212a In this issue: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 7 of 9 Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 8 of 9 Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Conclusion alt.michael.corbin.die.die.die cruise missle Re: alt.michael.corbin.die.die.die Re: Pluto ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael.Corbin@f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Corbin) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 08:00:47 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 7 of 9 * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:21 <<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>> "What was the procedure for shakedown ?" "All four ships went to Bermuda, which was a relay for the convoys to North Africa. There were several other destroyers there. They would send us out to train us to convoy. We also had a base in the Azores. The destroyers would go halfway and return to their respective base. The shakedown was scheduled for up to eight weeks but we only took five weeks to become proficient. We were there from the first week of July to the first week of August." "What was your exact assignment on board?" "I was electrician's mate third class petty officer. Our job was to make the ship speed up, slow down or reverse according to the bridge signals. Eight months later I was promoted to second class. Eventually we were sent to the Pacific. I served on that ship for a year and a half, from June 1943 to November 1944. Then I was sent to a special school at Camp Perry, Virginia." "Whatever happened to the Eldridge?" "We separated with her after shakedown. The DE 48 and the Eldridge stayed in the Atlantic, based in Bermuda until early 1944, then they went to the Pacific theater too. The DE 49, which was our sister ship, and the DE 50 headed through Panama mid- September 1943 and were in the Pacific theater thereafter. There was nothing unusual about the Eldridge. When we went ashore we met with her crew members in 44, we had parties, there was never any mention of anything unusual. Allende made up the whole thing." "What about the luminous phenomena he described?" "Those are typical of electric storms, which are very spectacular. St. Elmo's fire is quite common at sea. I remember coming back from Bermuda with a convoy and all the ships being engulfed in what looked like green fire. When it started to rain the green fire would disappear." "Did you hear of Einstein being involved with Navy experiments at the time?" "No. I believe that Einstein worked with the radar development group, but he wasn't involved in running actual tests. At least I never heard of it." "How were the classified devices actually installed ?" "After the Navy commissioned the ship and we were ready to go to sea, the National Bureau of Standards brought a master compass in a box that looked like a foot locker and we made several runs at sea in different directions to calibrate the ship's compass against the master. That's the mysterious "box" that various reports have mentioned. "Who was Allende? Did you ever meet him ?" I asked, showing Mr. Dudgeon the various letters I had received from the man. "I never did meet him. From his writings I don't think he was in the Navy. But he could well have been in Philadelphia at the time, serving in the merchant marine. He could also have been aboard a merchant ship we escorted back to the Philly-Norfolk area during a storm." "What about the claim that generators were placed into the hold?" "Aboard all diesel-electric and steam-electric destroyers there were two motors that turned a port or starboard screw. Each motor was run by a generator." "What was the procedure when the Navy de-Gaussed a ship?" "They sent the crew ashore and they wrapped the vessel in big cables, then they sent high voltages through these cables to scramble the ship's magnetic signature. This operation involved contract workers, and of course there were also merchant ships around, so civilian sailors could well have heard Navy personnel saying something like, "they're going to make us invisible," meaning undetectable by magnetic torpedoes, without actually saying it." "What about the smell of ozone?" "That's not unusual. When they were de-Gaussing you could smell the ozone that was created. You could smell it very strongly." "What security precautions were taken ?" "Our skipper warned us not to talk about the radar, the new sonar, the hedgehog, and the special screws. But you know how it is, information will always leak out. Another classified device we had was the "foxer", which we immersed in the sea off the fantail and dragged half a mile to a mile behind the destroyer. It gave off signals resembling the sound of a merchant vessel's screw. This attracted the German subs which fired acoustic-seeking torpedoes at it, giving away their position and wasting ammunition." "How long had all this secret equipment been available?" "About six to eight months, as far as I can tell. By the time we sailed out, submarine warfare had turned in our favor along the East Coast." "This doesn't tell us how the Eldridge disappeared into thin air, or what actually happened in the tavern in early August 1943." "That's the simplest part of the whole story," Mr. Dudgeon replied. "I was in that bar that evening, we had two or three beers, and I was one of the two sailors who are said to have disappeared mysteriously. The other fellow was named Dave. I don't remember his last name, but he served on the DE 49. The fight started when some of the sailors bragged about the secret equipment and were told to keep their mouths shut. Two of us were minors. I told you I cheated on my enlistment papers. The waitresses scooted us out the back door as soon as trouble began and later denied knowing anything about us. We were leaving at two in the morning. The Eldridge had already left at 11 p.m. Someone looking at the harbor that night might have noticed that the Eldridge wasn't there any more and it did appear in Norfolk. It was back in Philadelphia harbor the next morning, which seems like an impossible feat: if you look at the map you'll see that merchant ships would have taken two days to make the trip. They would have required pilots to go around the submarine nets, the mines and so on at the harbor entrances to the Atlantic. But the Navy used a special inland channel, the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, that bypassed all that. We made the trip in about six hours." "Why did the ships have to go to Norfolk ?" "Norfolk is where we loaded the explosives. Those docks you see on the aerial photographs are designed for ammunition. The Navy loaded ships twenty-four hours a day. They could load a destroyer in four hours or less. I know that's where the Eldridge went, and she wasn't invisible, because we passed her as she was on the way back from Virginia, in Chesapeake Bay." "In other words, the process was: out of drydock, down the canal, loading ammunition in Norfolk, back to Philadelphia, out to sea to set the compasses and test radar and sonar gear ?" "Exactly. The Eldridge never disappeared. All four ships went to Bermuda in July 43 and came back together in early August. During that time we were also caught in a storm that created a display of green fire accompanied by a smell of ozone. The glow abated when it started raining." <> --- * 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 08:00:54 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Part 8 of 9 * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:22 <<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>> The Montauk Project Today most students of ufology (including such early proponents of the Allende letters as Jerome Clark) are in agreement that the Philadelphia Experiment hoax, which rested on very flimsy data to begin with, should have died a long time ago. It did not even involve any clear indications that might be directly relevant to ufology, since none of the witnesses described unusual objects in the sky or unusual beings. The case should have died a peaceful death in the Sixties. Yet it has survived and thrived in a peculiar niche of the paranormal to this day. After a UFO lecture, or during a talk show, it is a common experience to have a member of the audience eagerly raise the question, "what about the Philadelphia Experiment?" And the whole "mystery" is now rebounding in a new form through the Montauk project, an alleged time-travel experiment. Here again there is a secret setting (an Air Force Base in New York rather than a Navy base in Pennsylvania), a book, alleged witnesses, and a videotape. There is even a workshop on "Time Travel and the Alien Presence -- a report on the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project by Al Bielek, Preston Nichols and Duncan Cameron" for $150 in tuition, plus meals and shared lodging at $100, or $70 for camping. In the catalog of forthcoming events of the Rim Institute for 1993 one can read an advertisement which claims: The Montauk project has been called one of America's greatest modern mysteries. The story began with the pioneering work of Wilhelm Reich and Nikola Tesla, took form in government-sponsored weather control experiments in the early 1940s, and crystallized in the ill-fated Philadelphia Experiment on invisibility during World War Two. The Philadelphia Experiment was closed, but long-term research continued. The Montauk project, running through the seventies and early eighties at New York's Montauk Air Force Base, was an attempt to explore, chart and ultimately manipulate the flow of Time. The key witness for these new revelations is Preston Nichols, who "regained the blanked memories of his role as chief technician for the project only after years of struggle." Alfred Bielek, co-author of the Philadelphia Experiment (in the book by Brad Steiger) claims to be one of two sailors who "fell through time" from the 1940s to 1983 and who later served as a consultant at Montauk. Duncan Cameron, "the foremost psychic employed by the Project", also fell through. In a very convoluted story, Al Bielek claims to have been born as Edward Cameron, who was Duncan Cameron's brother. Then alien technology was used by secret government agencies to erase him from his own time track and to give him the body and background of Alfred Bielek, born in 1927. Advertising the seminar run by Bielek and his fellow time- travellers the Rim Institute brochure concludes: "their story, whether accepted or not, is guarranteed (sic) to stretch the limits of your reality." That last statement, at least, has the ring of truth. Countermeasures What can the individual scientist do when trying to introduce rational research into a field where stories like the Philadelphia Experiment clutter the literature, and where exposure of such hoaxes is not welcome? An initial skeptical attitude is healthy, but keeping an open mind is essential. After all, many such stories do have a basis in fact, even if tenuous. As we have seen, the events surrounding the Eldridge were highly technical, highly secret, involved life-and-death decisions, and could logically trigger the imagination and the amazement of outsiders who gained partial acquaintance with them. Beyond the basic need for an open mind and a rational attitude I can offer six tentative guidelines that I have found useful in my own approach to such stories. (i) Disregard self-described experts. Many of the pundits of ufology keep their notoriety alive by pandering to each other and to a small coterie of a few hundred readers of their magazines, forming a tiny "hard core". There are very few scientifically-trained individuals within this group where mutual admiration is the rule, and the sociology of the field is such that reinforcement of the dominant extraterrestrial hypothesis is more highly rewarded than exposing hoaxes, bringing novel knowledge or highlighting contradictions. (ii) Disregard the media. Television reports of UFO events (in shows like Sightings, Hard Copy, Geraldo, Unsolved Mysteries) are geared to ratings, not to knowledge. They select apparent enigmas and they downplay mundane explanations to generate a sense of wonder in their viewers. The data they present is so heavily biased as to be unusable, even when they deal with real events. (iii) Look for logical flaws. They are often flagged by the perilous and loaded term therefore. Most of the mistakes that have been made in ufology over the last fifty years have resulted from a simple fallacy based on the misuse of that simple word. Examples are many: something crashed at Roswell (true) and was obviously covered up by the U.S. Air Force (true) therefore it must have been a flying saucer (false deduction). UFOs do not match what we expect terrestrial devices to do (true), therefore they must be from outer space (false deduction). And in the present case, a destroyer left its place in the harbor under highly secretive circumstances (true) and moved to another location in an "impossible" time (true given the witnesses' limited knowledge of the facts) therefore it must have been subjected to artificial invisibility, dematerialization or time travel (false deduction) The list of such basic logical flaws is endless. (iv) Identify and remove irrelevant drama. The remarkable feature of the present hoax is that the principal actor, Carl Allen, was only peripherally involved in the events he sensationalized and had no direct knowledge of the equipment he described. Yet he managed to create the entire myth almost singlehandedly. He originated the drama of Jessup's involvement, the ONR study and the excitement of his own elusiveness. Einstein's death had no connection to the Allende letters. None of these "facts" had anything to do with the actual events in Philadelphia. In the same vein, Bill Moore amplified the spurious dramatization through his allegation that the "tavern brawl" clipping had mysteriously arrived in his mailbox and was "securely kept in a safe deposit box", irrelevant details which had nothing to do with the phenomenon under study. An undated clipping obtained through a strange conduit and kept in a secure place is no more reliable or important than the same clipping merely tacked to a wall, yet the mind is often fooled by such indicators of incipient mystery. (v) Discover and test independent sources of information. Are there witnesses? Hundreds of people work around harbors. Surely some of them remember the events. Historical records do exist and provide a framework for later research. (vi) Disregard any claims of secrecy. Some of the facts surrounding the subject of UFOs are classified, if only because the objects represent spurious signals that trigger classified sensors. There may well be a massive coverup of relevant data, as ufologists claim. But most of the secrecy around stories like the present one exists only in the minds of those who seek to enhance the thrill of the chase or live their own romantic myth as intrepid investigators of the unknown. If one runs into actual security barriers there is always time to assess their nature and purpose. There certainly was genuine secrecy in Philadelphia because of the devices installed on the destroyer, as there is today at Area 51 of Nellis Air Force Base, where it is not difficult to guess at the general nature of the answers even if specific technical details remain obscure. In the present case, Vice-Admiral William D. Houser, former deputy chief of Naval Operations, has confirmed to us the procedure for shakedown and loading of the ships as well as the use of the canal as described by Mr. Dudgeon. In conversations with the author, he cautioned that none of the electronic systems on the destroyers at that time were high-tech devices; the Navy was trying anything that could provide an advantage over the German submarines. The reason for all the secrecy was simply that the U.S. military didn't want the enemy to know what they were trying, not that any of the devices were beyond the state of the art. The investigation of genuine UFO events follows an altogether different pattern. In the author's experience the most fruitful cases often occur in open country, there is no security perimeter to be defeated, and the actual site, although remote, is generally accessible and the witnesses can be located without heroic episodes. <> --- * 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 08:01:00 mdt Subject: Anatomy of a Hoax - Vallee - Conclusion * Forwarded from "ParaNet UFO Echo" * Originally by Michael Corbin * Originally to All * Originally dated 7 Mar 1995, 9:23 <<<<<<<<..Continued from previous message>>>>>>>> Conclusions Few tasks are as important in the field of paranormal investigation as the detection and elimination of hoaxes. An area of research that does not police itself is eventually policed by others with utterly devastating consequences, as recent examples of fraud in academic research have shown. Popular ufology, which thrives on rumors, poorly-investigated reports, shoddy scholarship and outright fraud to the detriment of those genuine facts that are potentially relevant to science, provides a long history of colorful hoaxes that have come to define the field in the mind of the general public and have tainted it with a negative image in the view of scientists and educated laymen. The problem with hoaxes is that they are charming, tantalizing, entertaining, and often correspond to what we would like to be true, as opposed to what is actually true. We have seen that the Philadelphia Experiment had all of these characteristics. This hoax, which should have died a long time ago under the combined efforts of several researchers, is an example of a story that simply refuses to die. It is surrounded with such an aura of mystery that it continues to be successfully exploited. Like some of those exhausted gold mines in the hills of Colorado which were drained of every ounce of metal in the nineteenth century, yet revive periodically in the offering circulars of unscrupulous underwriters as penny-stock mining companies with new fancy names, certain UFO stories always find gullible new investors. Even in 1993 the tale of the disappearance of the DE173 has lost none of its peculiar charm. Hoaxes have been defined as "deliberately concocted untruths made to masquerade as fact" (MacDougall 1958). In a recent theoretical article on hoaxes, Marcello Truzzi notes that "there has been little deductive effort in social science specifically to describe or explain hoaxes." (Truzzi, 1993). He points out that according to Curtis MacDougall a hoax's success is the result of two sets of psychological forces acting within the victim: under the rubric "why we don't disbelieve" MacDougall lists ignorance, superstition, suggestion, prestige. Under "incentives to believe" he lists financial gain, vanity, chauvinism, prejudice, pet theories, the thirst for thrills, and cultural climate. We have seen that such factors were indeed at work in the infrastructure of the present story. MacDougall also remarked: "When a hoax achieves the longevity to qualify for classification as either myth or legend, hope of stopping it almost may be abandoned." After fifty years we may well have reached that point in the matter of the Philadelphia Experiment. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Mr. Edward Dudgeon for his invaluable help in clarifying the happenings in Philadelphia. The willingness of VAdm. William D. Houser to review the manuscript of this article is deeply appreciated. Among numerous correspondents who have also supplied precious assistance in tracking down various parts of the story we must acknowledge William Banks, Gary Edwards, Allen Hovey, M. Troy, Heidi Streetman, David Edwards, Marshall Philyaw and Keith Sjosten. References Allende, Carlos (1967): Letters to the author, personal communication. Berlitz, Charles and Moore, William L. (1979): The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility. New York: Grosset & Dunlap 1979. Clark, Jerome (1968) The Invisible Visitors from Outer Space, in Steiger, Brad and Whritenour, Joan (1968): The Allende Letters. New York: Award Special, n.d., pp. XX-XX) Cohn, Norman (1967): Histoire d'un Mythe: La "Conspiration" Juive et les Protocoles des Sages de Sion. Paris: Gallimard. French translation by Leon Poliakov of Warrant for Genocide. Dudgeon, Edward (1992): Letter of 29 November 1992. Private communication to the author. Ecker, Don (1992): Hatonn's World: a neo-Nazi E.T.? UFO Magazine Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.30-31, July-August. Festinger, Leon, Riecker, H.W. and Schachter, S. (1956): When Prophecy Fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. University of Minnesota Press. Goerman, Robert A. (1980): Alias Carlos Allende. FATE Magazine 33, No. 10, October. Hauser, Robert (1987): letter to the author, 27 March. Klimo, Jon (1993): UFOs: Billy Meier and the Pleiadian Contact. IRIDIS Vol. 31 No. 10, p. 2, June. Berkeley: California Society for Psychical Study. MacDougall, Curtis D. (1958): Hoaxes. New York: Dover. (First published in 1940) Mailer, Norman (1991): Harlot's Ghost. New York: Random House. Petit, Jean-Pierre (1991): Enqute sur des Extraterrestres qui sont dj parmi nous: Le Myst re des Ummites. Paris: Albin Michel. Pothier, Joseph (1993): The Philadelphia Experiment Revisited. Electric Spacecraft Journal Jul/Aug/Sep. 92, issue 7, published 28 January 1993, pp.15-25. Asheville, NC: Electric Spacecraft Journal. Raytheon Corporation (1980): A new electronic shield gives invisible protection to the Fleet. Full-page advertisement published in Barron's, October 6, p. 3. Rim Institute (1993): Catalog of Events, pp.14-15. Phoenix, Arizona: The Rim Institute. Steiger, Brad and Sherry, and Bielek, Alfred (1990): The Philadelphia Experiment and other UFO Conspiracies. New Brunswick, NJ: Inner Light Publications. Truzzi, Marcello (1993): The Sociology and Psychology of Hoaxes. In Gordon Stein, Encyclopedia of Hoaxes. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, pp.291-297. Vallee, Jacques F. (1991): Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception. New York: Ballantine. Velasco, Jean-Jacques (1990): Report on the analysis of anomalous physical traces: the 1981 Trans-en -Provence UFO case. JSE 4,1, pp. 27-48. END PARANET FILENAME: HOAX.TXT --- * 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: dougt@u011.oh.vp.com (Doug Tiffany) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 11:41:54 EST Subject: alt.michael.corbin.die.die.die Is there any way the list owner can remove MichaelCorbin@f42 from the list? -- Douglas J. Tiffany (dougt@u011.oh.vp.com) ------------------------------ From: (CMS, SCOTT, MAF, 637) Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 9:02:42 PST Subject: cruise missle i believe the name is crowbar not pluto have a good day scott ------------------------------ From: BaDge Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 12:15:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: alt.michael.corbin.die.die.die On Fri, 17 Mar 1995, Doug Tiffany wrote: >Is there any way the list owner can remove MichaelCorbin@f42 from the list? Doug, I agree. This is not on topic. Sheesh, even though I like and respect Mike Corbin, and I like UFO talk, IMO, it is not suitable for this list. Perhaps a nice note to Mike, requesting he post the topic and let users email for the contents? regards, BaDge ------------------------------ From: keller@eos.ncsu.edu Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 15:08:05 EST Subject: Re: Pluto >At 09:50 3/16/95, GM-13 Stephen Hoar wrote: >>What can you tell me about project 'Pluto". I understand it was to be >>a 1950's nuclear powered cruise missile. From what little I've heard >>about it I understand it was never flown for two main reasons: the >>reactor was unshielded thereby contaminating the exhaust and >>surrounding environment, and secondly, being nuclear powered, it could >>fly on indefinitely... What can you tell me? >Nice article on that subject in Air & Space, circa June '93. Check it out. Actually, it was the April/May 1990 issue [1]. This came up about a year or so ago. At that time I was sufficiently interested in this topic to visit a library to find & read the article, which I now have a copy of in front of me. It's a very interesting essay on what may have been the most diabolical weapon ever conceived in the US during the Cold War. Project Pluto was the codename of the program to develop the nuclear reactor for the Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile (SLAM), which although everyone calls it a cruise missile, it was basically an unmanned, nuclear ramjet powered bomber. The concept for the "locomotive sized" SLAM was for it to penetrate at supersonic speeds at near treetop level to drop nuclear weapons (of which it was to have carried several) on its designated targets. According to the A & S article, the designers estimated that just the shock wave from this weapon passing overhead might be lethal to those on the groundtrack. There was also a fallout problem because the propulsive air passed directly through the nuclear reactor core powering it, picking fission fragments along the way. Lastly, the reactor was, indeed, unshielded so it would also directly irradiate anything on the groundtrack. The article makes no specific reference to the missile's endurance, but does indicate that one of the operational concepts was to have these missiles loiter over the ocean until ordered to attack. From what I know of nuclear rocket engines, the endurance would probably be long, but not indefinite. Nuclear Rocket engine core's lifetimes are generally limited by hydrogen erosion. SLAM's engine would probably be limited by corrosion/erosion of the core by air, which is rather more corrosive than H2, particularly at high temeratures. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was selected in 1957 to develop the nuclear reactor, Marquardt Aircraft got the contract to develop the rest of the ramjet and Chance-Vought the airframe. Several prototype reactors were built and tested, eventually culminating in a full-power test in 1964 in which a reactor was run at its full power rating of about 500 megawatts for five minutes, and, according to the article, "producing the equivalent of over 35,000 lbs of thrust." The program was cancelled on July 1, 1964, partly due to the success of other strategic programs, notably ballistic missiles, including Atlas and Titan, and due to concerns about the environmental impact of flight testing the missile. A total of $260 milliion was spent on the project by the time of its cancellation, alot of money in those days. Reference: [1] G. Herken, "The Flying Crowbar," Air & Space Smithsonian, April/May 1990, pp. 28-34. Paul Keller keller@eos.ncsu.edu ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #212a **********************************