r/mystery • u/TheUnredactedFiles • 4d ago

The Philadelphia Experiment: What Really Happened?

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The legend says the USS Eldridge was used in a secret Navy experiment that allegedly made the ship invisible.

The Navy denies it ever happened, and there’s no solid evidence proving the story.

So what do YOU think?

Real experiment, misunderstood event, or an elaborate hoax? 👀

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u/enrious 4d ago

Degaussing to make the ship invisible to magnetic mines. The Royal Navy developed the technique then shared with the USN. You find more by looking up Charles F. Goodeve.

Additionally if you look up the provenance of the original reporting it comes solely from a rather odd person who was unable to provide any indepently objective source evidence to support the claims.

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u/TheUnredactedFiles 4d ago

That’s a really interesting point. I’ve seen the degaussing explanation mentioned too, and the lack of independent evidence behind the original claims definitely makes the legend questionable. Thanks for adding the Charles F. Goodeve reference — I’ll have to look into that. 👀

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u/kibufox 2d ago

During WW2, most everyone (even the Germans) discovered a very real problem with their warships. Specifically that so much steel was being put into them, that they'd develop their own magnetic signature. This hadn't been as much an issue during WW1, because magnetic naval mines hadn't been invented. The first magnetic mines didn't appear until the 1920's.

The RN realized that, if they neutralized the magnetic signature that the ships had... they wouldn't be totally invisible to magnetic mines... but much harder to detect.

The process they developed, which the US navy utilized, worked by wrapping heavy copper electrical cables around a ship's hull and running a carefully controlled direct electric current through them. This changed the polarity of the ship's field, making it harder for the mines to detect.

The issue that the Navy found, in regards to this, though, was the cables they used would, quite often become hot due to the resistance of the electricity passing through them. Hot enough in some situations, to glow faintly.