The Philadelphia experiment

[Gary_of_Fresno]

I have clicked on Google some time ago and found several pages on the Philadelphia experiment. One website is the US Navy denying any such secret project.
I think they were degaussing the ships hull to make the ship invisible to German magnetic mines. It is not a large jump to imagine some sailer in a bar telling a story about making the ship invisible to mines. Someone overheard that and left off the word mines and a great urban legend is started. Once that idea is planted in a sailers brain the tall stories began.

[Baldwin]

My father once told me that the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story is, a fairy tale begins “Once upon a time…” and a sea story begins “No shit, this really happened…”

[FriarTed]

The origin of the Philadelphia Experiment legend is weirder than that.

IIRC…
Scientist & UFO buff Morris K. Jessup received a copy of his own book THE CASE FOR THE UFO hand-annotated with bizarre notes, some of which alluded to what became known as the Philadelphia Experiment. He then received communications from a Carlos Allende who claimed to have been the source of the notes & a participant/victim of the PhilExp. Jessup was later found dead in his car, apparently a suicide who gassed himself. Some attributed his breakdown to the Allende communications. In the late 1970s. one UFO magazine claimed to have found the man who claimed to be Allende who admitted to the hoax. Alas, I don’t recall the details.

Other than that, the OP’s theory would make sense. Also, it wouldn’t be a further leap to speculate that if the military used electro-magnetic fields to create “radar invisibility” that some servicement may have suffered physical & mental problems as a result.

[glee]

I think also that there was a rumour that a ship left Philadelphia, then was seen a few days afterwards elsewhere. The conspiracy theory was that the ship must have ‘teleported’ to reach the destination so quickly.

However there was a canal linking the two places, so the Eldridge could have just sailed along that.

(Sorry I don’t have a link - there’s a mass of speculative sites which pop up with any search.
An example of the ‘scientific rigour’ from these sites: “Since anything is possible, this must have happened.” :rolleyes: )

[Peter_Morris]

It is worthwhile noting that Robert Heinlen, L. Sprague De Camp and Isaac Asimov were all working in the Philadelphia Navy Yard around 1942/3 when the experiment suposedly happened.

BTW, since nobody linked to the original article yet, http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_293.html

[Chronos]

Peter, everyone knows that Heinlein was Navy. But do you have a cite for Asimov? I don’t recall hearing of him ever holding down a regular job outside of academia.

[Krin]

@Chronos

Peter, everyone knows that Heinlein was Navy. But do you have a cite for Asimov? I don’t recall hearing of him ever holding down a regular job outside of academia.

Actually, belive it or not… He worked for the Navy and then enrolled in the Army.
And married his wife, got a PHD and then started into academia.

I’ve seen a write-up on him before so I went looking for one online.

I’m sure you can find a much more authoritative version than the following. But it was the first Google hit so I give it points for that.

@About the Author

*http://www.bookrags.com/shortguide-ugly_little_boy/*He went to Seth Low Junior College in 1935. He attended Columbia University from 1936 to 1939, earning a Bachelor of Science degree; then from 1939 to 1941, he was a graduate student there, receiving a Master’s degree in Chemistry. His studies were interrupted by World War II, and he became a chemist in 1942 at the U.S. Navy shipyard in Philadelphia. That same year he married Gertrude Blugerman. He served in the army from 1945 to 1946, then in 1946 returned to his graduate studies at Columbia, earning a Chemistry Ph.D. in 1948. The following year he became a teacher of biochemistry at Boston University School of Medicine.