ship – OK, Fine.

In 1984, there was a relatively unpopular “B-movie” called The Philadelphia Experiment that was (very) loosely based on rumors about a scientific experiment in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

In October 1955, a man named Morris Jessup received a series of strange letters from a man named Carl M. Allen. Jessup was a 55 year-old astronomer and adventurer who had come out with a book called The Case for the UFO.

Shortly after the paperback version of the book came out, the letters from Carl Allen arrived. They were rambling, strangely worded and written with several different colors.

Allen had directly responded to Jessup’s call for research on the “Unified Field Theory,” or “UFT.”

In his second letter, Allen wrote about an experiment the U.S. Navy had tried in 1943. He said that the Navy had tried to render a ship invisible by applying Einstein’s Unified Field Theory (UFT). He claimed that the ship, the U.S.S. Eldridge, had indeed disappeared, but at a terrible price to the crew.

Allen, who also went by the name Carlos M. Allende, claimed to have observed the Eldridge experiment while on the ship Andrew Furuseth, which was nearby at the time. He named other crew members with whom he served aboard the Andrew Furuseth, and claimed to know the fate of some of the crew members of the Eldridge after the experiment. He also said he had read about more of the incident in a Philadelphia newspaper.

Allen wrote:

“The ‘result’ was complete invisibility of a ship. Destroyer type, and all of its crew, While at Sea (October. 1943) The Field Was effective in an oblate spheroidal shape, extending one hundred yards (More or Less, due to the Lunar position & Latitude) out from each beam of the ship. Any Person Within that sphere became vague in form BUT He too observed those Persons aboard that ship as though they too were of the same state, yet were walking upon nothing. Any person without that sphere could see Nothing save the clearly Defined shape of the Ships Hull in the Water, PROVIDING of course, that the person was just close enough to see yet, barely outside the field.

“Why tell you Now? Very Simple; If You choose to go Mad then you would reveal this information. Half of the officers & crew of that Ship are at Present, Mad as Hatters. A few, are even Yet confined to certain areas where they May receive trained Scientific aid when they either, ‘Go Blank’ or ‘Go Blank’ & Get Stuck.’… The Man thusly stricken can Not Move of his own volition unless two or More of those who are within the field go & touch him, quickly, else he ‘Freezes.'”

It was claimed that many of the crew members of the ship were injured – physically and mentally – during the experiment.

According to Allen, Einstein had developed the theory and had kept it secret, but had talked about it with the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. Sources claim the Unified Field Theory describes a way to use electromagnetic energy with gravity to “bend light” around an object, rendering it invisible.

Other sources attribute the Unified Field Theory to scientist Nikola Tesla.

Unified field theory is supposed to be highly theoretical, and supposedly there is no absolute evidence that it is possible to unify gravity with the other forces. However, history has shown that other forces could be combined, and many physicists are willing to devote their lives,careers, and reputations to the attempt to show that gravity, too, can be expressed quantum mechanically. The consequences of this cannot be fully known until a viable theory is proven by experimental evidence.

The Eldridge did exist. It was a Cannon-class “destroyer escort,” and was named for Lieutenant Commander John Edridge, Jr., a hero of the invasion of the Solomon Islands. Its keel was laid down in Newark, New Jersey, by the Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company.

The Navy claims that the U.S.S. Eldridge took part in an experiment that involved wrapping wire around the hull of the destroyer in an attempt to cancel out the magnetic fields from the metal on the ship. This is known as degaussing and would render the ship “invisible” to underwater magnetic mines that rely on proximity sensors to trigger the detonation.

On January 15th, 1951, the Eldridge was apparently transferred to Greece under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program and the ship was renamed the HS Leon. It was decommissioned on November 5th, 1992, and on November 11th, 1999, it was sold as scrap to the firm V&J Scrapmetal Trading Ltd.

Clearly, the Eldridge was a real ship that took part in an experiment, but the whole story may never be known.

Tag: ship

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