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The Philadelphia Experiment thesis essentially claims that the United States Navy conducted an experiment in invisibility using the destroyer escort USS Eldridge (DE 173) sometime in 1943. Part I of this essay critiqued the principal expression of the thesis, William L. Moore?s and Charles Berlitz? The Philadelphia Experiment. In Part I, the thesis was found internally inconsistent: The authors were not consistent in their claims of whether there were one, two, or three experiments, and when and where these supposed experiment(s) happened. Part I also demonstrated that the methodology used in the Philadelphia Experiment was hopelessly flawed by relying on a ?validity by association? paradigm. The ?evidence? supporting the Philadelphia experiment thesis becomes more and more anonymous the closer one comes to the purported events of Eldridge?s supposed disappearance(s), and hence cannot be verified using the basic tools of historical inquiry.

This essay is the first part of a two-part critique of what is called the Philadelphia Experiment and will focus on the experiment as a possible episode in naval history. It asks a simple question: Did the Philadelphia Experiment take place? This essay applies an historical methodology to answer that question.