Beginning: "The Philadelphia Experiment. Background".
Part two: "The Philadelphia Experiment. Magnetrons On".
So what was that? To begin with, it is worth giving the official version of the US Navy. Everything is very simple here - there was nothing, period. All claims about the experiment are false and are only suitable for science fiction. The fleet did not make more complete official statements.
In March 1999, in Atlantic City, a meeting of 15 Eldridge crew members took place, who unanimously argued that there was no experiment. On the pages of the ship's logbook in 1943, there is no mention of her stay in Philadelphia - the ship, from the moment she entered service on August 27, 1943, was engaged in convoying cargo to Europe.
Now let's look at the unofficial, but most common version.
In 1955, the book "Proofs of UFOs" by the American astrophysicist Morris Jessup was published (however, some sources claim that he was not a professional scientist, but an amateur astronomer). In 1956, the author of the book received a letter from a certain Carlos Allende.
In it, Allende said that in 1943 he served on the destroyer Andrew Fureset, from which he controlled the progress of the experiment. The man claimed to have seen a greenish fog, heard the hum of a force field, then the ship, he said, disappeared. Allende said that he was personally acquainted with many eyewitnesses to the event.
A correspondence began between Jessup and Allende, in which, in particular, the further fate of some of the participants in the experiment was discussed. Among the sailors returning from the voyage, cases of spontaneous combustion were allegedly noted, some of the crew members seemed to "freeze", falling out of the real course of time. One of the sailors, in front of his wife and child, passed through the wall and disappeared.
Promotional video:
The result of the correspondence was that Jessup began to collect information about what happened on October 28, 1943 in the Philadelphia raid. He managed to accumulate a wealth of material on this issue.
Following his search, Jessup stated the following:
"… The experiment is very interesting, but terribly dangerous. It influences too much the people involved. The experiment used magnetic generators, the so-called" demagnetizers ", which worked at resonant frequencies and created a monstrous field around the ship. In practice, this gave a temporary withdrawal from our dimension and could mean a spatial breakthrough, if only it was possible to keep the process under control!"
The rest is quite consistent with the conspiracy theory - in 1959, Jessup was found in a car, suffocated from exhaust gases. It is possible that he learned too much and was eliminated by the special services.
An alternative version - suicide after the departure of his wife - also has the right to life.
In 1979, ufologists William Moore and Charles Berlitz presented the book "The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility" to the readers' judgment, after which a new wave of interest arose in the events of 1943. New witnesses appeared, interviews were given - but no real facts were given.
Instead of an afterword
Now I want to formulate my version.
Firstly, I have no doubt about conducting experiments on demagnetizing ships. Such demagnetization has already been successfully carried out in England, although it was a rather complicated process.
Second, the US military was probably trying to experiment with radar invisibility. This technology would drastically reduce the number of combat losses.
Thirdly, even if it was possible to achieve success, no one will boast of this result. Of course, all information should be classified as "top secret" (especially if there really were human casualties). And apparently it will not be removed soon.
As for the Eldridge's journey from Philadelphia to Norfolk. Suppose that the ship was actually seen on October 28 in the Norfolk roadstead. But teleportation is completely optional here - the distance from Philadelphia to Norfolk is 320 kilometers, a destroyer, especially a new one, is capable of passing in 10 hours and not at cruising speed. At the time, the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal was officially closed for navigation, but warships were using it due to the threat from German submarines cruising off the coast of the United States.
Well, about "Eldridge" - after October 28, 1943, the ship continued to escort convoys, during the years of World War II the destroyer was awarded 5 medals. After the war, he was withdrawn into the reserve and sold to Greece. In 1951 it was included in the Greek Navy under the name HNS Leon D-54. Sold for scrap in 1999. It is unlikely that his service could continue with people who became part of the ship's structure.
Still, questions remain …