On a gloomy October morning in 1943, the destroyer Eldridge, hull number DE 173, was stationed in the protected area of the Philadelphia naval base. Specialists from the Department of Naval Research of the US Navy decided to use it for the secret experiment "Rainbow".
Based on the Unified Field Theory, developed by Albert Einstein, they created an electromagnetic system capable of making a ship invisible.
After turning the switch, the air around the ship began to darken. A greenish mist floated from the water. A few minutes later the Eldridge disappeared from sight, although the water could still see the depression from its hull.
When the Eldridge disappeared in Philadelphia, many people saw her sudden appearance at the port of another base, Norfolk. A few minutes later, the "ghost" began to melt, and immediately the ship "appeared" in Philadelphia.
But the worst thing is that the experiment had dire consequences for the ship's crew. Most of the sailors died, and those who survived were immediately decommissioned from the army and spent the rest of their lives in some kind of closed clinic for the insane. This forced the US military to abandon risky research.
Such is this incredible legend, which can be found in almost any book on anomalism, among the standard set of miracles.
Promotional video:
Mysterious letters
The first rumors about the experiment in Philadelphia appeared only in 1955, when the book of the ufologist Morris K. Jessup "Arguments in favor of UFOs" was published. The destroyer Eldridge was not mentioned in it, but it was after the publication that Jessup received several unusual messages in the mail.
The letters were written with multi-colored pencils and ink in a very strange style. In the middle of a sentence, words were suddenly written in capital letters, there were many spelling and lexical errors, and punctuation marks seemed to be scattered at random. Whole sentences have been underlined. This kind of creativity is a formidable symptom of a “broken roof” *.
The author, who introduced himself as Carlos Miguel Allende, indicated that he was interested in the sections of the book that talked about levitation, and for the first time in history, a story about a destroyer was born:
“… As a result the ship was enveloped by a certain field resembling an ellipsoid in shape. Everything, objects and people that fell into the field, had blurred outlines … Half of the crew of that ship are now insane …"
Further, "Senor Allende" talks about the "miracles" that subsequently happened to the surviving sailors:
“One passed through the wall of his own apartment and disappeared in front of his wife and child and two guests. Two other officers flashed like matches and burned down …"
And in the last message, the author admitted that he served during the war on another ship - "Andrew Furesset" and personally watched from its board how the "Eldridge" disappeared, and then reappeared in the same place.
Jessup's first reaction was to brush off the strange, delusional messages. However, he soon learned that the Office of Naval Research at the Pentagon had received in the mail a copy of his book, The UFO Case, written in the same style. And instead of throwing it in the trash, the military republished the book with all the notes in a limited edition.
Mister Allende's Mystery
On the evening of April 20, 1959, Morris Jessup was found in a coma while driving a car. He took a huge dose of sleeping pills, washed down with alcohol. On top of that, he stuck a hose from the exhaust pipe into the half-open window. On the way to the hospital, Jessup passed away.
Neither the police nor relatives doubted that it was a suicide, especially since he wrote two farewell letters to relatives and friends. Jessup was severely depressed due to numerous failures - he got into a car accident, his wife filed for divorce, books were not sold …
But in the UFO community, there was talk that he "came too close to the truth", "he was removed." Rumors around the "experiment" immediately perked up noticeably.
The famous researcher of anomalous phenomena Charles Berlitz, the author of more than once exposed "masterpieces" about the Bermuda Triangle, and his co-author William Moore took up the case.
From the envelopes with return addresses, the co-authors easily found the "elusive Mr. Allende." But his name was not revealed to the general public.
When they met, he added many colorful details to the description of the experiment, but admitted that he "slightly exaggerated" the story of the dire consequences for the team. He was allegedly afraid that the research results would fall into the wrong hands and this would have dire consequences.
And in 1979 Berlitz and Moore's bestseller, The Philadelphia Experiment, came out. It tells the classic story of the disappearance of the destroyer Eldridge.
Ufologists follow the trail
In the early 90s, the famous letters came to the skeptic researcher Robert Goerman. And he also went in search of their author. Allende turned out to be 100% American, born in 1925 in Pennsylvania. It turned out that under his real name - Karl M. Allen - he has long been known in the UFO community.
“Allen has been writing to me and other researchers over the years,” says ufologist Lauren Coleman. - He suffered from a mental disorder and often moved from motel to motel. Allen's family showed Robert Goerman letters in which he confesses that he invented the whole story about the destroyer from beginning to end and sent Jessup's book, written by him personally, to the military."
Page from the Eldridge's logbook. On the day of the "Philadelphia Experiment" the ship was at anchor … in New York.
Allen drew some information for his history from the experience of serving on the ship "Andrew Fureset". It must be admitted that the invention was successful.
Could the Eldridge and Andrew Fureset in 1943 stand together in port? When ufologists asked for their logbooks, it turned out that in 1943 the Eldridge did not enter Philadelphia!
The Eldridge left the stocks at the New York docks and was accepted by the Navy on August 27, 1943. Throughout the fall and December, the destroyer accompanied convoys to the US capital, did not even come close to Philadelphia. During this time, "Andrew Furesset", assigned to the port of Norfolk, also took part in Atlantic convoys and never entered Philadelphia!
His captain, US Dodge, categorically denied all his life that he or his crewmembers saw anything unusual, and even more so took part in the experiments. Although Eldridge and Andrew Fureset went to Norfolk in 1943, they never met, as they were there on different days!
Some supporters of the legend claim that the experiment with invisibility was carried out on August 12 or 15 on a still unfinished ship, which was towed to Philadelphia. But the documents clearly show that until August 27, the Eldridge could not leave the docks.
Some books write that the fatal experiment was called "Rainbow". But now it is no longer a secret that during the war the name "Rainbow" had the headquarters plans of possible military actions against the countries of the "Rome - Berlin - Tokyo axis".
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US military immediately began operations under the Rainbow V plan. The rules do not allow having two identical code names, so there could be no other "Rainbow".
Librarian Lawrence Kouchet, author of the books "The Bermuda Triangle Solution" and "The Disappearance of the 19th Squadron", found out the reason for the increased attention of the military to Jessup's book marked "Allende"
It turned out that Captain George Hoover was fond of UFOs, trying to apply the knowledge gained by ufologists to promising engines and experimental aircraft. Having received a book filled with writing in his hands, he thought that "there may be something here."
Hoover's enthusiasm for UFOs was shared by many of his colleagues. One of them, J. Smith, decided to reproduce the book, but did not expect that its copies would go around and cause a sensation.
Tesla and Einstein: a bad choice
Supporters of the legend of the "Philadelphia experiment" claim that two of the greatest physicists who then lived in America, Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, worked on it. But this turned out to be untrue.
The declassified FBI dossier on Einstein proves that the US authorities did not trust the scientist either during the war or after it, considering him unreliable.
By the beginning of the XXI century, 15 of the destroyer crew survived. They unanimously refute the legend.
"Because of his radical views, Professor Einstein cannot be considered suitable for use in secret work, because … it seems unlikely that such a person would become a completely reliable American citizen in such a short time," said FBI Director Edgar Hoover in response to a request for the possibility of attracting a famous physicist to work on the atomic bomb.
He was right: Einstein openly sympathized with the Communists, communicated with people, among whom were Soviet agents. Due to the mistrust of the authorities, Einstein was assigned only minor tasks that could not seriously affect the course of the war.
From 1943 to 1944 he worked for the US Navy Artillery Directorate on the subject of High Power Explosives. His work had nothing to do with electromagnetism, much less invisibility.
The attempt to link the "Philadelphia experiment" with the name of Nikola Tesla was even more unsuccessful. The Serbian genius died before the destroyer Eldridge was launched on January 7, 1943.
Magic tricks and real experiences
According to the Department of Naval Research of the Navy, the basis of the legend invented by Carl Allen was the process of making the ship "invisible" to mines with a magnetic detonator. The process was called degaussization (from "gauss" - the unit of magnetic induction).
To protect against mines, the steel vessel was equipped with a "belt" surrounding the hull. When current was applied, it became a powerful electromagnet. Degaussization offered two possibilities: multiplying the magnetic field so that mines would explode in the distance without causing harm, or neutralizing the ship's magnetic field so that even the most sensitive mine would not "notice" it. The choice fell on the second option, which required careful measurements of the magnetic field of each ship.
Since the procedure for degaussing and measuring the ship's own magnetic field was at first secret, a variety of rumors circulated among the crews of the ships. The sailors saw that because of incomprehensible cables, compasses and even watches "went crazy", and believed that this could make them impotent.
It seems that Allen saw exactly this procedure somewhere: stretched cables and incomprehensible equipment could impress anyone. But how did he come up with the idea that the experiment made the ship invisible, making it disappear? This piece of the puzzle was discovered by ufologist John Keel:
“During World War II, the spectacle specialist Joseph Danninger suggested to the US Navy to make their ships invisible. Dunninger may have been referring to disguise, but at the time his proposal was widely publicized. It is very possible that Allen saw these articles and invented his own story based on them."
* Very similar to the truth. The letters with the most crazy ideas that come to our editorial office sometimes look exactly the same. - Department of Science "KP".
What really happened?
In 1999, for the first time since the end of the war, sailors from the destroyer Eldridge gathered in Atlantic City. The meeting was widely covered in the United States, but somehow went unnoticed in Russia. There were only fifteen of them left, including the captain of the ship, 84-year-old Bill van Allen. Of course, at the meeting, talk surfaced about an "experiment" which they denied.
It is possible that the experiments at the base in Philadelphia were really carried out, only they had nothing to do with teleportation. In those years, engineers were actively exploring the possibility of "demagnetizing", reducing the magnetic field of the ship in order to make it immune to magnetic sea mines, which were a huge danger.
For this, the side of the ship was wrapped with electric wires, a current was applied to them - to an uninitiated person this, of course, could seem very strange.
However, there is another version about which it is not accepted to spread. After all, do not forget that in the 1950s, the United States and the USSR were embroiled in an arms race. And the Philadelphia experiment could be an attempt to misinform the Soviet leadership …