The Philadelphia Experiment
A story says the Navy made a destroyer escort vanish around 28 October 1943. It traces to letters written after 1955.
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The Philadelphia Experiment is an alleged event, said to have taken place at the naval shipyard in Philadelphia some time around 28 October 1943. That is the date usually given, and no record places the experiment on it. In the story, new equipment was fitted that day to USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort. Watchers on nearby ships supposedly saw the generators start humming, then a green-blue glow or fog rise from the hull and the ship disappear in an instant.
The Office of Naval Research, speaking for the Navy, traces the legend to 1955, the year Morris K. Jessup published a book called The Case for UFOs. A reader named Carl M. Allen (he sometimes used the name Carlos Miguel Allende) wrote Jessup about what he described as a secret naval experiment of 1943. Allen claimed to have been on the SS Andrew Furuseth, a merchant vessel, with others who watched the Eldridge jump to Norfolk. One writer calls it the Navy's biggest hoax, and another calls it an urban legend.
"The Philadelphia Experiment was an alleged event claimed to have been witnessed by an ex-merchant mariner named Carl M. Allen at the United States Navy's Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, some time around October 28, 1943. Allen described an experiment where the U.S. Navy attempted to make a destroyer escort, USS Eldridge, disappear and the bizarre results that followed."
- The Philadelphia Experiment: The bizarre WWII urban legend about an invisible Navy destroyer, Task & Purpose
- About The Philadelphia Experiment: The Navy's Biggest Hoax, War History Online
- What is the True Story of the Philadelphia Experiment?, Discovery UK