What We Know About The CIA's Alleged Secret Time Travel Program
In October of 1943, an alleged experiment took place at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard that opened the proverbial door to time travel (via Military.com). According to legend, the USS Eldridge (DE 173) — a Cannon-class battleship used primarily to hunt and destroy enemy submarines — left our timeline in an experiment in invisibility gone wrong, per USS Slater. Part of a CIA research project known as Project Rainbow, the alleged incident with the USS Eldridge at the Philadelphia Naval Yard has become unofficially known as "the Philadelphia Experiment," per The Guardian.
In an effort to put an end to World War II, the story says that the U.S. military began experimenting with ways to end the dragging world war in the quickest, most efficient manner. One of the ideas floating around was the idea of cloaking — or making invisible to radar — battleships. Using a device called a "time zero generator," the military attempted to do just that, per The Guardian. What allegedly happened, however, was completely unexpected.
Where did they go?
On October 28, 1943, the switch was allegedly thrown on the time zero generator. Eyewitness' claim to have seen the USS Eldridge suddenly begin to glow in a green-blue haze that surrounded the vessel (via Military.com). The Eldridge began to fade, leaving just the outline of the ship remaining. And with that, the ship blinked out of existence, according to The Guardian. Time slowly ticked by. No one knew exactly what happened to the ship or where it went. After a long 20 minutes, the Eldridge reappeared, but with horrifying results. Much of the vessel was on fire, members of the crew — who allegedly left our reality along with the ship — were found insane. And those were the lucky ones. Reports swirl that many crew members of the Eldridge had "fused" with the ship upon its return to our reality; torsos, limbs, and other miscellaneous body parts were found amalgamated into the ship's steel hull.
A hoax or horrifying accident
According to the surviving members of the ship's crew, during the vessel's alleged 20-minute disappearance, the ship seemingly re-appeared 600 miles away in Newport News, located in Virginia. Of course, The Guardian calls the story "hokum" concocted by UFO enthusiast Carl Allen. And with no real concrete proof of the event ever taking place, the U.S. Navy outright denies the Philadelphia Experiment ever happened.
Nevertheless, the USS Eldridge did exist — sold off to Greece in 1951 and finally decommissioned and sold for scrap in the '90s — and Project Rainbow did occur. But the Office of Naval Research (ONR) stated that force fields to make a ship invisible don't "conform to known physical laws" (via the Black Vault). Coupled with the fact that there are no official documents, military or otherwise about the event, it's very well likely the story of the Philadelphia Experiment is likely to remain just that ... a story.