SciTech Tuesday: USS Eldridge Commissioned

Ceremony at the Boston Naval Shipyard transferring the USS Eldridge (DE-173) and USS Garfield Thomas (DE-193) to the Royal Hellenic Navy on 15 January 1951. Image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

The US Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge, named for Lieutenant Commander John Eldridge, Jr., was commissioned seventy years ago today.  The subject of urban legend, the ship was allegedly part of the Philadelphia Experiment in which it was briefly rendered invisible and teleported over 200 miles from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Norfolk, Virginia.  The experiment is connected to Einstein’s unfinished Unified Field Theory reconciling the physical laws governing matter, light and gravity.  It has been suggested that Albert Einstein, working with naval researchers, developed the elegant equations used to bend time and space.

While the experiment is considered a hoax, as the Eldridge was in New York not Philadelphia on the dates when the unusual events occurred (not to mention defying all known laws of physics), two events likely contributed to the story.  First, Einstein did in fact work for the US Navy from July 1943 until June 1944 on weapons research.   Second, a process called degaussing was applied to the USS Eldridge in which the ship’s magnetic signature was neutralized by installing electrical cables around the hull.  This made the vessel “invisible” to German naval mines which used sensors to detect the magnetic field around ships.

Post by Annie Tête, STEM Education Coordinator