Science or Science Fiction? The Philadelphia Experiment Explored
Navy’s Darkest Secret: The Legend of the Philadelphia Experiment
During the height of World War II in 1943, nations across the globe attempted to gain the upper hand wherever possible by utilizing more potent weapons, superior operational plans, and creative defense tactics. Wouldn’t be it very useful to somehow cloak the military so that they were invisible to the enemy? Camouflage was already a tried and tested method of hiding things or disguising their true nature. But what if it was possible to go a step further? How about making something like a ship invisible to the radar? This was the idea behind the Philadelphia experiment, carried out in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Pennsylvania US, in October 1943.
Ships invisible to radar are a massive thing, right? There are indeed stealth aircraft with very low radar profiles but if we get the radar machine and stick it in front of it, it’s obviously going to detect it.
A brand new US Navy Cannon Class destroyer called USS Eldridge was chosen for the task. Drawing on Albert Einstein’s research on Unified Field Theory, large electric generators were installed on the ship. The experiment carried out under the US Navy’s sponsorship was supposed to refract and bend light in such a way that would make the ship not only invisible to radar but to the naked eye as well.
What is the Philadelphia Experiment?
There have been tests earlier in the summer of 1943 but this one came with an added surprise. Once the generator kicked in the USS Eldridge was hidden in some sort of greenish mist or smoke then all of a sudden it blinked out, it seemed that the experiment was a success but even more happened than just managing to cloak the ship. Later on, witnesses on another ship that was sitting in the Norfolk in Virginia over 350km away described seeing the Eldridge appear before their eyes for several minutes before it vanished again. When it reappeared in Philadelphia a gruesome sight met the researcher’s eyes, indicating that the crew’s experimentation with momentary teleportation and invisibility had not gone well. Some went insane. Others developed mysterious illnesses. However, several individuals were claimed to have been fused with the ship; they were reportedly still alive but had their limbs sealed to the metal
1955 :
An anonymously wrapped copy of Morris K. Jessup’s book “The Case for the UFO” with the Happy Easter greeting was sent to the US Office of Naval Research in 1955. Three distinct hands extensively annotated the book, noting how accurate some of the information is. The identities of the other two were not stated, but they did refer to one another as “gypsies” and nickname one “Jemi”. The notes essentially resemble a back-and-forth dialogue between three non-human entities, which is really strange:| Are they really non-humans? No, because we have on earth humans and animals. Animals can’t write, humans can write, there’s nothing else. And if they were, why would they use strange capitalization in annotation, they came to Earth, they’re super smart aliens. Come on!
Carl M. Allen confession:
Jessup began getting letters in 1956 from a person signing themselves as Carlos Miguel Allende or Carl M. Allen. Allen admitted that he had seen the Philadelphia Experiment while aboard the SS Andrew Furuseth, another boat when Eldridge vanished from the navy yard. He also confirmed that various US Navy researchers were experimenting with Einstein’s Unified field theory but the experiments went awry with the Eldridge.
Allen: “The experiment was a complete success. The men were complete failures”.
DEBUNKING:
When it comes to these kinds of unexplained activities involving the military or government, it’s usually the case that the lack of physical or documented proof indicates more evidence that the authorities would prefer you not to know about.
a) THE ELDRIDGE: “eldritch: weird and sinister or ghostly”
It was commissioned in 1943, so it was ready to take part in this experiment. Ships have detailed logs about their whereabouts. Later, the Eldridge was confirmed nowhere near the Philadelphia Naval Yard or Norfolk Virginia in October 1943. Before Carl Allen’s letters to Morris Jessup in 1955, no one was discussing the experiment. Twelve years had passed, therefore it was conceivable that the US Navy had falsified the data to hide their activities. Thus, the information cannot be entirely verified by the records.
b) SS Andrew Furuseth (ship built in 1942): This was the witness to Eldridge’s disappearance and reappearance. So, what’s nebulous though is where Andrew Furuseth was when the experiment took place. It has been placed at the Philadelphia Shipyard, where the witness saw the Eldridge vanish in return, and in Norfolk, Virginia, where the witness saw it reappearing momentarily before it vanished again. The ship must be teleporting around itself in order for both claims to be true. According to logs Andrew Furuseth might have been in Norfolk Virginia at that time. But it was not in Philadelphia.
c) The Actual Experiment: So what really happened aboard the USS Eldridge that day? Edward Dudgeon was on the USS Engstrom which was apparently near the Eldridge when it was docked. He said the real-life Eldridge did have classified devices on board but they were for another type of invisibility and it was also carrying a degaussing system. He also claimed that the green mist at the time of experiment was started was the electrical storm.
Degaussing: “Degaussing system renders a ship invisible to mines but it does not make the ship invisible to the naked eye or transported a few hundred miles to a different dock in Virginia”
LAST BITS AND BOBS:
In 1996, the Office of Naval Research produced an information sheet about the Philadelphia Experiment detailing the story and its role within it at the end it states:
“ONR has never conducted any investigation on invisibility, either in 1942 or at any other time.” ONR scientists believe that such an experiment could be possible except in the realm of science fiction.”
“The USS Eldridge was transferred to Greece in 1951 and sold for scrap during the 1990s, but Allende’s hoax would live on in our effing nightmares forever.”
Happy Reading :)
