Discover the captivating story of the royal beauty
It's one of the great unanswered questions: is there life beyond Earth? And if there is, can we assume it's benign, intelligent life? Furthermore, is there any link between extraterrestrial goings-on and an event that supposedly took place in 1943? It was an incident so bizarre that it has generated numerous conspiracy theories ever since.
On October 1, 1943, American armed forces had begun to liberate Italy in the fight against fascism in Europe. But later that month, US government officials would be preoccupied with a situation far closer to home.
At the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Pennsylvania, the USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort, was about to enter the history books as the vessel allegedly made to disappear in what became known as the "Philadelphia Experiment." Image: US Navy
Believing it was Jessup who'd sent them a copy of his own book, the ONR invited him to Arlington where he was shown the annotated version. A confused Jessup recognized the handwriting as that belonging to the mysterious Allende.
On October 28, the destroyer and its crew are said to have suddenly vanished into thin air. Witnesses later spoke of a weird green-blue glow emanating from her hull just before her disappearance.
According to those on the ground, the USS Eldridge was then seen in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, 482 km (300 mi) away, before disappearing again and reappearing back in Philadelphia. Image: US Navy
What had just happened? Merchant mariner Carl Allen (1925–1994) is one of those who claimed to have witnessed the paranormal episode, and recounted the event 12 years later. In his words, he was standing on the deck of the liberty ship SS Andrew Furuseth when the Eldridge went AWOL.
The story, compiled according to Allen's account in classified military documents, tells of the vessel being lost from view for several minutes. When it reappeared, its crew was supposed to have suffered various side effects, including insanity that put some into mental institutions. Alarmingly, others were said to have been fused together with the ship; still alive, but with limbs sealed to the metal.
Allen's belief was reinforced by the fact that Albert Einstein (1879–1955) had already attempted to unify his general theory of relativity with electromagnetism. In other words, combining gravity and electromagnetism and harnessing the power of both within some kind of device that could help explain the sudden disappearance of the USS Eldridge.
Einstein called his fascinating but unproven research unified field theory (pictured here explained in a letter sent by the celebrated physicist to his mathematician colleague, Ernst G. Straus).
Allen believed that what he'd witnessed was an experiment by the US Navy to make warships invisible to radar and thus able to command the oceans against the Axis powers.
In early 1956, Allen, using the pseudonym Carlos Miguel Allende, sent a series of letters to Morris K. Jessup, author of the book 'The Case for the UFO.' In one of these, Allende warned Jessup not to investigate the levitation of unidentified flying objects, pointing out the consequences of the near-disastrous Philadelphia Experiment. At the same time, Allende also mailed another copy of Jessop's book to the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The ONR, its suspicions sparked by Allende's revelations, began investigating the Philadelphia Experiment. Meanwhile, Jessup, none the wiser as to the real identity of Allende, became obsessed with the experiment and its possible links to alien lifeforms. But on April 30, 1959, Morris K. Jessup was found dead in his car.
Jessup, by now disturbed and despondent, had apparently taken his own life: a hose had been run from the exhaust pipe into a rear window of the vehicle, the author succumbing to toxic fumes. Jessup had attempted to write further books on UFO technology, but his ideas were deemed pure fantasy by his publisher.
The copy received by the ONR in Arlington, Virginia, contained various handwritten notes and annotations suggesting that extraterrestrial technology allowed the US government to make breakthroughs in unified field theory.
Ten years later in 1969, Carl Allen admitted to the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization that the Philadelphia Experiment had been a hoax. Most government officials had by then already come to the same conclusion. Nonetheless, it proved a bombshell to those who genuinely believed that a warship had somehow been teleported from one location to another by an extraterrestrial hand.
But that's not quite the end of this mysterious saga. In 1984, 'The Philadelphia Experiment' was released.
Based on the urban legend, the movie was a so-so effort to recreate the events of 1943. One cinema-goer, a guy called Alfred Bielek, claimed the film reactivated a long suppressed memory of his being on the Eldridge during the teleportation episode.
Apparently one of only two known survivors from that remarkable day, Bielek spoke of the stress he had to deal with as a result of the subsequent cover-up that kept the Philadelphia Experiment under wraps for decades.
But Bielek somewhat lost credibility when he also insisted that the US Navy had in fact captured an alien during the cloaking process.
Asked why he'd written the false annotations suggesting implementation of alien technology, Allen replied that he'd wanted "to scare the hell out of Jessup." Image: US Navy
And perhaps most conclusive of all, records in the Archives Branch of the Naval History and Heritage Command have been repeatedly searched, but no documents have been located that confirm the event, or any interest by the Navy in attempting such an experiment.
What is real is the fact that invisibility might one day be a reality. By bending light of all wavelengths around an object, irrespective of its shape, both metalenses (flat lens technology) and metamaterials (composite media that can be engineered to exhibit unique electromagnetic properties) offer the potential to effectively "cloak" any object.
And right here, right now, the United States Air Force has in operation its stealth bomber, whose peculiar shape deflects radio beams, thus making detection by radar that much slower and far more difficult.
Sources: (Military.com) (Naval History and Heritage Command)
See also: The remarkable story behind the capture of the German submarine U-505
Depression was cited as the most likely reason behind his decision to end it all. But a conspiracy theory emerged suggesting he'd been murdered to silence him before revealing more details about the events in Philadelphia.
So what really happened on October 28, 1943? Both the Eldridge and another vessel, the USS Engstrom, were dry-docked in the Philadelphia Naval Yard.
According to Military.com, both ships had classified devices onboard, but neither were built as futuristic invisibility cloaks or teleportation machines designed by aliens.
Instead, these instruments scrambled the magnetic signatures of ships using the degaussing technique, a process in which systems of electrical cables are installed around the circumference of a ship's hull that when activated cancels out the vessel's magnetic field. This electrical current effectively provided protection from magnetic torpedoes launched from U-boats.
But what about the strange glow reported by Allen? That has been explained either by an electrical storm, or St. Elmo's Fire, a natural phenomenon in which plasma is created in a strong electric field, giving off a bright, incandescent glow.
Click through and relive the moment when aliens were blamed for abducting a battleship.
Einstein, teleportation, and the mysterious "Philadelphia Experiment"
Did aliens really abduct a World War II battleship?
LIFESTYLE History
In 1955, details emerged of a military experiment conducted by the US Navy that has endured as a bizarre Second World War conspiracy. According to an eyewitness, 12 years earlier a warship had suddenly disappeared from a Philadelphia shipyard. It reappeared several minutes later. What had just happened? It's an incredible story that involves Albert Einstein, the theory of teleportation, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Fact or fiction? You decide.
Click through and relive the moment when aliens were blamed for abducting a battleship.