The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 15: The Philadelphia Experiment - The truth about invisibility, teleportation and time travel

Episode Date: June 26, 2022

The Philadelphia Experiment. It was October 1943. The day the US Navy mastered time travel, teleportation, and invisibility. Actually, they didn't master anything. The experiment had disastrous consequences for the crew of the USS Eldridge.   In the summer of 1943, two years after the US entered World War II, American destroyers were being decimated by the infamous German U-boat submarines and German mines were making combat... and commerce dangerous enterprises.   The United States Navy knew something had to be done.   A few months later, on October 28th, 1943, the USS Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer, was docked in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. And the Eldridge held some secrets.  It was a newly commissioned vessel that was equipped with several large generators as part of a top-secret mission to win the Battle of the Atlantic once and for all.  Rumor aboard the ship was that the generators were designed to power a new kind of magnetic field that would make the warship invisible to enemy radar and undetectable to enemy mines.   With the full crew on board, it was time to test the system. In broad daylight, and in plain sight of nearby ships, the switches were thrown on the powerful generators, which hummed to life.  What happened next was unexpected. And it would baffle scientists and fuel decades of speculation. Witnesses described a murky green fog that surrounded the entire hull of the ship; and then swallowed it whole.    When the fog faded away seconds later, the USS Eldridge... was gone. It wasn't just invisible to military radar. It was invisible to everyone. It was gone...  That is, until it mysteriously turned up in Norfolk, Virginia. That's a distance of about 250 miles.    And the strangest part? When it arrived in Norfolk – it was ten minutes earlier in the day than when it disappeared from Philadelphia.  The Eldridge then reappeared in Philadelphia twenty minutes later. Or, uh, ten minutes later? Because of the whole, uh, time travel thing? Hard to tell. Either way, it came back.    But something had gone terribly wrong.  According to reports, when the ship rematerialized, members of the Eldridge crew suffered from terrible burns and disorientation. And some of its crew had been fused into the metal walls at the molecular level. They were unable to move. Unable to free their skin from the metal that it clung to; and died in agony.    Other crew members went insane. And some of the crew? They disappeared altogether.   Let's find out why. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support

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Oh, I'm going to need my tinfoil hat. Oh, you certainly are. Let's find out why. Welcome to the Y-Files, where cool nerds like us laugh and learn. In the summer of 1943, two years after the U.S. entered World War II, American destroyers were being decimated by the infamous German U-boat submarines and German mines were making combat and commerce dangerous enterprises. So the U.S. Navy knew something had to be done. A few months later, on October 28th, 1943, the USS Eldridge, a cannon class destroyer, was docked in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and the Eldridge held some secrets. It was a newly commissioned vessel that was equipped with several large generators as part of a top secret mission to win the Battle of the Atlantic once and for all.

Now, rumor aboard the ship was that the generators were designed to power a new kind of magnetic field that would make the warship invisible to enemy radar and undetectable to enemy minds. So with the full crew aboard, it was time to test the system. And in broad daylight, in plain sight of nearby ships, the switches were thrown on the powerful generators which hummed to life. What happened next was unexpected, and it would baffle scientists and fuel decades of speculation. Witnesses described a murky green fog that surrounded the entire hull of the ship and then swallowed it whole. And then when the fog faded away seconds later, the Eldridge wasn't just invisible to

military radar. It was invisible to everyone. It was gone. Invisibility. That is until it mysteriously turned up in Norfolk, Virginia. That's a distance of about 250 miles. Teleportation. And the strangest part, when it arrived in Virginia, it was 10 minutes earlier in the day that when it disappeared from Philadelphia, time travel, then the Eldridge reappeared in Philadelphia 20 minutes later or 10 minutes later because of the whole time travel thing. It's hard to tell either way it came back. But something had gone terribly wrong.

Here it comes. According to reports, when the ship rematerialized, members of the Eldridge crew suffered from terrible burns and disorientation, and some of its crew had been fused into the metal walls at the molecular level. Unable to free their skin from the metal that it clung to, they died in agony. Other members of the crew just went insane, and some of the crew disappeared altogether. Whoa! You okay, bud? I feel kind of funny. insane and some of the crew disappeared altogether. You OK, bud? This should be easier now.

So when the news broke that a naval ship had mastered invisibility with grisly results, many believed it. And this was an age of war fueled paranoia. Americans felt that true evil was out there, so it wasn't difficult to get people speculating about the impossible. This was fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Remember, Roswell is only a few years away. So the unexplainable, the unidentifiable, the unbelievable now seemed achievable. It's unsurprising that some Americans clung to the idea of a vanishing warship. But did it really happen? While the USS Eldridge did exist at the time, it wasn't in Philadelphia that day or Virginia,

for that matter. According to the ship's logs, it was actually in New York. But this isn't to say that the Philadelphia experiment has zero credibility. There's actually something to this. We know for a fact that in October 1943 in Philadelphia, the government was up to something. Hecklefish is back, baby. In the 1940s, the U.S. Navy was indeed conducting experiments aimed at mastering invisibility. And some of these experiments happened at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

But it wasn't actual invisibility they were working on. The plan was to make U.S. ships invisible to underwater German mines. At the time, Germans used the gauss as the unit of strength of the magnetic field in their mines triggers. Various processes used to counter the mines was called degaussing. The original method of degaussing was to install electromagnetic coils onto ships, but installing this equipment was expensive and difficult, so the Navy developed an alternative method called wiping, where a large electrical cable was dragged along the side of a ship with a pulse of about 2,000 amps.

And wiping altered or muted a ship's magnetic field, which allowed it to avoid detection by mines. But degousing wasn't permanent. As a ship travels through the Earth's magnetic field, it will slowly pick up that field, counteracting the effects of the gassing. So ships had to be gassed on a schedule, kind of like getting your oil changed, but way cooler. Using these various techniques, Allied ships were pretty well protected until 1943. But Germany was catching on.

So new techniques were pursued to try to stay one step ahead. Oh, there's no official explanation from the Navy, of course, it appears that these new techniques were being developed in Philadelphia at the time. Still, as far as we know, they were not experimenting with time travel. What did you say? The government was not experimenting with time travel. Yes. Why? Montauk Project, Camp Hero doesn't ring a bell.

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Discover heart-pounding thrillers on Audible. So, how did the Philadelphia experiment legend get started in the first place? Well, it all began in 1955, when a man named Morris Jessup received a mysterious letter in the mail. Jessup, who had a master's in astronomy, had recently published a book called The Case for the UFO, where he discussed unidentified flying objects and the exotic means of propulsion that they might use. The book caused quite a stir. After all, it was written by an actual scientist who seemed to believe in aliens, or at least he didn't want Americans to close their minds to the idea altogether. And UFO fanatics love this book. It's on my Kindle.

I figured. For them, it was proof that this idea of aliens was worth exploring. It gave this group of believers credibility, and they were ecstatic. The fan mail started pouring in. People wrote letters of strange sightings, of new theories, of big ideas. Eventually, someone named Carlos Allende penned a letter of his own, and this letter would start a cascade of rumors, theories and speculation that still fascinate believers in secret technologies and government cover ups.

In his letter, Allende claimed that he was standing on a merchant ship in October of nineteen forty three. USS Eldridge was docked nearby. Allende watched as the ship vanished into a murky green cloud. He told Jessup that it then showed up in Virginia 10 minutes earlier in time before returning back to Philadelphia.

Its crew fused to the steel bulkheads. "'Those who weren't killed,' he wrote, "'were mad as hatters.'" Naughty. Allende also wrote that he knew the science behind how the incident occurred. "'The US Navy,' he explained,, had realized Einstein's unified field theory in which electromagnetism and gravity merge into a single field.

So could I end they be trusted? Well, probably not. I end day, as it turned out, was using a pseudonym, though it's not clear why. His real name was Carl Allen, and he was fascinated with UFOs, aliens and Jessup's work. He became a stan who wrote Jessup about 50 letters. Allen had indeed been stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard at the time of the alleged incident. But if the Eldridge wasn't even there, what was he talking about?

Allen's letter was downright bizarre and not just because of what he claimed to witness. His writing was rambling and strange, almost nonsensical. Like some of your videos. I end a a.k.a. Allen wrote that most of the men had not survived. He said one sailor walked through his quarters wall in full sight of his family and then just disappeared. Other crew members also vanished. He said two burst into flames and burned for 18 days.

His account was chilling, but also a little hard to follow. But still, Jessup decided to give the man a chance. So he wrote back to Allen and asked for proof. When his next letter consisted of more crazy ramblings, Jessup just ignored it. But a year later, two officers from the newly formed Office of Navy Research, also known as the ONR, showed up at Jessup's doorstep.

Many black. They might have been. The ONR is the part of the Navy in charge of scientific research and special projects. A visit from them is not going to be good news. A copy of Jessup's book, The Case of the UFO, had been mailed to them and it looked suspicious. It had annotations from three people who called themselves the Gypsies. And the Gypsies wrote about the Philadelphia experiment and even claimed that aliens had made the ship vanish that day. You didn't. Jessup recognized Allen's handwriting right away. He used different color ink and tried to fake the handwriting of three fictional people,

even claiming one was an alien. And Alan later admitted that he did this. Still, the fact the ONR took these annotations seriously was a red flag to some conspiracists. I mean, if the Philadelphia experiment never happened, why would the ONR care about this book at all? Well, remember how the US Navy was conducting invisibility tests that year? It's likely Allen's accounts were suspiciously similar to real events. I guess the lesson is, if you have theories about secret government experiments, that's not to publicize them. Do you feel that? Would you put your hat on, please?

I'm begging you. Oh, three. Well, Alan continued to try to prove what he witnessed was real. Morris Jessup was facing a different problem. His career as a writer was faltering after the stunning popularity of his first book. Jessup wrote a second, but this one did not fly off the shelves. He tried one more time, but his third book was such a failure that his publishers dropped him altogether. So Jessup was desperate to reclaim some of that fame, and he saw an opportunity in the Philadelphia Experiment. He began assembling research of Allen's claims and collected any information and possible proof that he could find, and it became an obsession for him. Then in 1958, he gave his research to a friend, Ivan Sanderson, and he spoke ominously, begging Sanderson to keep the research safe, quote, just in case something happens to me.

Oh, did something happen to him? Well, on April 19th, 1959, Jessup called his friend Manson Valentine, which is a pretty cool name. Anyway, he told Valentine that he'd made a breakthrough in his findings and he wanted to meet with him the next day so he could share the news in person. And he never showed up. Jessup was found dead in his car that day, April 20th, the result of carbon monoxide poisoning. Yep. There was a hose lodged into the exhaust pipe that filled the car with toxic gas and washcloths were pressed into the windows to keep any fumes from leaving the car. The official said he took his own life.

No autopsy was ever performed. Of course, not Jessup's death was definitely clouded in mystery. Had he come too close to finding something? Did someone need to get rid of him? I mean, there are a lot of theories about what happened to Jessup, and I'll link to some of those below. Jessup had been depressed in the years and months leading up to his death. His books weren't selling. His wife left him. He'd been in a serious car accident that left him with chronic pain, so it's possible he died by his own hand.

Still, it's unlikely that a military ship really vanished into a mysterious green fog, as fun as it is to speculate. So then the real mystery is about us. What does the Philadelphia experiment say about our willingness to believe in what we can't explain? Our need for something mysterious, for conspiracies to exist? It seems that the unknown will always have some kind of power over humanity. And as in the cases of Carl Allen, Morris Jessup, and countless others, the quest for answers might drive us to madness or worse. Would you please put your hat on so we can wrap this thing up?

Thanks for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. That's Hecklefish. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun today, kindly give this video a thumbs up. If not, go ahead and hit the thumbs down button twice. Until next time, be safe, be kind and know that you are appreciated. Bye.