das philadelphia experiment wahre begebenheit

What really happened during the Philadelphia Experiment?

Popularized by the 1984 film, a bizarre low-budget sequel, and a 2012 Syfy channel movie, tales of the Philadelphia Experiment involves covert U.S. Navy operations that led to time travel, teleportation, and mangled flesh.

According to urban legends, two separate and completely different Philadelphia Experiments took place. Both, however, involved the same vessel, the USS Eldridge. What happened in each of these alleged experiments, and what evidence is there to support the rumors?

Two separate sets of bizarre events make up the “Philadelphia Experiment.” Both revolve around a Navy Destroyer escort, the USS Eldridge, with the events taking place on two separate days in the summer and fall of 1943.

In the first experiment, an alleged method of electrical field manipulation allowed the USS Eldridge to be rendered invisible on July 22, 1943 in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The second rumored experiment was the teleportation and small-scale time travel (with the ship sent a few seconds in the past) of the USS Eldridge from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to Norfolk, Virginia, on October 28, 1943.

Horrible tales of mangled seamen and sailors stuck within the metal of the USS Eldridge often accompany this experiment, with the USS Eldrige reappearing seconds later in the waters around Philadelphia. Recitation of the events surrounding the second Philadelphia Experiment often include a cargo and troop transport vessel, the SS Andrew Furuseth. The lore of the second experiment claims those on board the Andew Furuseth viewed the USS Eldridge and it’s crew as they teleported into Norforlk momentarily before the ship returned to the waters of Philadelphia.

Prior to the mid-1950s, no rumors of bizarre activity surrounded any teleportation or invisibility experiments in North America during the 1940s, let alone in the area surrounding Philadelphia.

Carl Meredith Allen, using the alias Carlos Miguel Allende, sent a series of letters to astronomer and writer Morris K. Jessup. Jessup authored several early UFO books including the mildly successful The Case For The UFO . Allen claimed to be on the SS Andrew Furuseth during the second experiment, witnessing the USS Eldridge emerge in the waters of Norfolk and quickly disappear into thin air.

Carl Allen supplied no proof to verify what he claimed to witness on October 28, 1943. He did win the mind of Morris Jessup, who began to champion Allen’s view of the Philadelphia Experiment. Jessup, however, died four years after his first contact with Allen from an apparent suicide.

Moving a ship weighing several thousands tons leaves an inevitable paper trail. On the date of the Philadelphia “Invisibility” Experiment, July 22, 1943, the USS Eldridge had yet to be commissioned. The USS Eldridge spent the day of the alleged teleportation experiments, October 28, 1943, safely within a New York harbor, waiting to escort a naval convoy to Casablanca. The SS Andrew Norfolk spent October 28, 1943, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Mediterranean port city of Oran, further discrediting Carl Allen’s comments.

And in the early 1940s, the Navy did conduct experiments to make naval vessels “invisible” in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyards, but in a different manner and with a completely different set of desired results.

In these experiments, researchers ran an electric current through hundreds of meters of electrical cable around the hull of a ship to see if they could make the ships “invisible” to underwater and surface mines. Germany deployed magnetic mines in naval theatres — mines that would latch on to the metal hull of ships as they came near. In theory, this system would make the ships invisible to the magnetic properties of the mines.

Sixty years later, we are left without a shred of credible evidence for the Philadelphia Experiment(s), yet rumors persist. If you are still unconvinced, think of the situation from a different viewpoint. No incident, regardless of the horrific nature, would stall development of teleportation technology if the military believed it feasible. Such a resource would be an invaluable front line weapon in war and the backbone of many commercial industries, yet decades later, teleportation is still caged within the realm of science fiction.

In 1951, the United States transferred the Eldrige to the country of Greece. Greece christened the ship the HS Leon, using the vessel for joint U.S. operations during the Cold War. The USS Eldridge met an unceremonious end, with the decommissioned ship sold to a Grecian firm as scrap after five decades of service.

In 1999, fifteen members of the USS Eldridge crew held a reunion in Atlantic City, with the veterans bemoaning the decades of questioning surrounding the vessel they served on.

Top image from the 1984 movie Philadelphia Experiment. Images courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration , Bantam Books, and 20th Century Fox.

Daily Newsletter

Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily.

News from the future, delivered to your present.

Please select your desired newsletters and submit your email to upgrade your inbox.

• Cyber Monday
• Best Free VPN
• Best Cheap VPN
• NordVPN Review
• ExpressVPN Review
• ProtonVPN Review
• Surfshark Review
• Super Bowl 2025
• US Open 2024
• Best Cloud Storage
• Best Web Hosting
• About Gizmodo
• Best of 2024
• How to Tip Gizmodo

REAL ‘PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT’ SHROUDED IN MYSTERY

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)

Daily e-Edition

Evening e-Edition

• Entertainment
• Photos and Videos

According to legend surrounding “The Philadelphia Experiment,” in 1943 a Naval battleship and its crew was “teleported” from the Philadelphia Navy Yard to Norfolk, Va., and back.

“The bottom line is ‘Who’s going to buy that a ship disappeared?’ I don’t buy that, except I think I know how it got started,” said William L. Moore, who with Charles Berlitz (author of “The Bermuda Triangle”), wrote “The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility,” from which the movie’s title is taken.

Moore explained that a legitimate concern during World War II was protecting United States’ shipments of war materials:

“The big fear was that the Germans were going to develop a weapon for which we would have no defense. That weapon was a radar-guided torpedo.”

Albert Einstein, among others, was consulted for the top secret “radar invisibility” project. Moore emphasized that the experiment did not attempt “optic invisibility.”

At the Navy Yard, personnel were stationed on a noncommissioned ship, the USS Eldridge, which was 95 percent complete. Cables from a power plant on shore transmitted a broad band of low-frequency energy which made the ship “disappear” from the radar scope, said Moore.

“Someone came up with using a ship as a massive antenna and energizing the ship with low-frequency waves and using that to transmit a tremendous pulse that would either blow out the radar or confuse it,” explained Moore. “And it worked. It worked beautifully.”

But, Moore said, the idea proved impractical because of the power required and its effect on the sailors. The project was apparently dropped because the Germans didn’t develop a radar-guided torpedo and World War II was near an end.

“The very low frequency affected the minds, the central nervous systems of the people who were too close to it – similar to the effect of the psychedelic drug LSD – and short-circuited the brain,” according to Moore.

“The effect on each individual was different, which accounts for all these different stories. Vertigo, nausea, dizziness, all the way up to virtual hallucinations. Some men passed out. Other men – their optic nerve was affected, similar to a flashbulb going off in their face.”

Moore said he located two people who were on the ship and four people who knew people who were on the ship. There was no crew roster. The people on the ship were not told about the experiment. “When this effect hit them, they were never told what had happened. Some of them were hospitalized. Two of them jumped overboard and drowned, they were so disoriented.

“The families were simply told they died during the course of an activity. They were never told why. Why that was I don’t know.”

Following publication of Moore’s book, a Navy veteran who was part of the experiment contacted him. The man told Moore:

“I was on the ship. They told me to throw certain switches and I did. Something hit me like a football tackle and I was flat on the deck. And suddenly I was in Norfolk. And the next thing I knew they were carrying me off the ship back in Philadelphia on a stretcher and I was six months in the hospital.

“It was the same spot I was at two weeks earlier. That’s how I recognized it.”

Moore said that the man had experienced “an obviously induced flashback.

“That’s how the story got started,” said Moore. “It was that story which inspired the film – which is strictly fiction.”

The Navy didn’t originate the experiment, Moore said. Records of the experiment, kept by the National Defense Research Committee, headed by Vannevar Bush, were transferred to the military division of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., according to Moore. He said there are rows and rows of unindexed files, which he found impossible to go through.

Spokesmen for the Navy have consistently said that an experiment in which a ship would be “teleported” could not have been possible except in the realm of science fiction.

Vincent Gaddis’ 1965 book “Invisible Horizons,” which mentions the experiment, initially attracted the interest of Moore.

Moore is a founder of the Fair-Witness Project, a non-profit group to investigate UFO sightings, psychic phenomenon – a kind of “Ghostbusters.”

Moore wrote another book with Berlitz, “The Roswell Incident,” about a UFO “flying disc” which allegedly crashed in 1947 in New Mexico. Moore said that there was wreckage and an official Air Force press release confirming the incident which was later retracted.

Moore plans to publish a paper on “The Philadelphia Experiment” but is not planning a followup book. An updated edition is available as a Fawcett- Crest Ballantine paperback.

A nationwide search for survivors of “The Philadelphia Experiment” is under way. USS Eldridge crewmen D.J. “Don” Myers, Harry Enton, Charles W. Dwyer and a crew member known only as “Walker” are being sought.

Anyone with information about the whereabouts of these men is urged to contact Philip Little of West Coast Detectives, North Hollywood, Calif., (818-980-7393).

More in News

National News | Judge rules Arkansas law allowing criminal charges against librarians is unconstitutional

National News | Bill Clinton is hospitalized with a fever but in good spirits, spokesperson says

National Politics | A history of the Panama Canal — and why Trump can’t take it back on his own

SUBSCRIBER ONLY

Pandas an an and ke ke celebrate their 1st christmas in hong kong.

• Cast & crew

The True Story of the Philadelphia Experiment

• Episode aired 2002

A dangerous experiment with time and space. A mystery more live than ever. A dangerous experiment with time and space. A mystery more live than ever. A dangerous experiment with time and space. A mystery more live than ever.

• Craig Constantine
• David Ackroyd
• Andrew Hochheimer
• Robert Goerman

Top cast 13

• (archive footage)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

User reviews

• 2002 (United States)
• United States
• A+E Networks
• History Channel
• Weller/Grossman Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Runtime 45 minutes
• Black and White

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.