
When: October 28, 1943
Where: Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Pennsylvania
Before laying down any factual data, let me state that this experiment was downright denied by the US Navy to have ever occurred.
USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort, was allegedly rendered invisible by cloaking in 1943, teleported to Norfolk, Virginia (320 km away) only to have reappeared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This story came to light in 1955 when Carl M. Allen sent letters mentioning the teleportation of the Eldridge to Morris K. Jessup who was known for writing about UFOs. It allegedly propounded the teleportation of USS Eldridge to another dimension where some of the sailors encountered death and others were fused to the ship’s hull. It claims that people witnessed greenish fog in place of the ship.
The letters stated the application of the unified field theory of Albert Einstein by Dr. Franklin Reno. The theory elucidates electromagnetic space-time warping i.e. uniting of interrelated fields (electromagnetic field and gravitational field) into a single one.
In the summer of 1943, the theory was claimed to be executed by using massive electric generators to contort light around an object via refraction which makes the object invisible to the naked eye. This experiment was repeated without any calibration on October 28th of the same year, which allegedly teleported the Eldridge.
On the other hand, there were facts stated by Dudgeon who was present on USS Engstrom which was harboured along with the Eldridge. He said that the Navy might have been experimenting with invisibility in 1943, not to make the ship completely disappear, but to render it invisible to the magnetic torpedoes by degaussing them.
Variety of versions of the tale are available claiming the serious side effects of the experiment and much of the key literature emphasizes dramatic embellishments in lieu of pertinent research. It is nothing but a concoction of facts and fiction.
As said by Robert A. Goerman,
If someone were to write a book telling the real story, its title might be ‘The Philadelphia Hoax: Project Gullibility’.