What is the Philadelphia Experiment?
The Philadelphia Experiment is an urban legend that in 1943, during World War II, the U.S. Navy carried out a secret experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Pennsylvania to make the destroyer USS Eldridge invisible to enemy radar and the human eye. It is often said to have taken place on October 28, 1943.
The experiment as told
According to the story, when a powerful electromagnetic field was generated, the Eldridge was wrapped in a greenish fog and vanished, appeared for a moment at the port of Norfolk, Virginia, hundreds of kilometers away, and then returned to Philadelphia. Terrible things happened to the crew: some were said to have become embedded in the ship’s steel walls, some went mad, and some began to vanish and reappear suddenly.
Where the story came from
The story spread after letters sent in 1955–56 to Morris K. Jessup, a writer of UFO books, by a person calling himself “Carlos Allende.” The writer of the letters claimed to have witnessed the experiment. The story was later taken up in books and magazines, and in 1984 it was made into a film, becoming widely known.
The Navy’s explanation
The U.S. Navy has explained that no such experiment was conducted. According to records of the time, the Eldridge was not in Philadelphia during that period. However, the Navy was then researching “degaussing,” canceling the magnetism of a ship’s steel to protect it from magnetic mines. It has been suggested that this research to make ships “invisible to mines” may have turned into the story of an experiment to make a ship “invisible to the eye.” Another famous story of ships and people vanishing without a trace is the Bermuda Triangle.
