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Thread: What Is Going On With Online News These Days?

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Macca View Post
    I've got a book about the Philadelphia Experiment. It's a very interesting read.

    As a work of fiction?

  2. #12
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    It covers the established facts and asks some 'what if' questions. It isn't a load of sensationalist nonsense.

    It is a fact that the Yanks (and the Germans) experimented with all sorts of weird ideas and concepts in WW2 so it is a perfectly credible suggestion that at some point they attempted to make a warship invisible using an electromagnetic field.

    Whether that resulted in the ship teleporting and the crew meeting trans-dimensional aliens is another matter.
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  3. #13
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    I think the key word is 'invisible'. The aim was to make warships 'invisible' to radar than than actually invisible to the naked eye. ISTR from my boyhood reading of the Hotspur comic that British planes used to drop strips of aluminium foil to make their exact whereabouts less obvious. And my memory proves correct:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)

    'The idea of using chaff developed independently in the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States and Japan. In 1937, British researcher Gerald Touch, while working with Robert Watson-Watt on radar, suggested that lengths of wire suspended from balloons or parachutes might overwhelm a radar system with false echoes[2] and R. V. Jones had suggested that pieces of metal foil falling through the air might do the same.[3] In early 1942, a Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) researcher named Joan Curran investigated the idea and came up with a scheme for dumping packets of aluminium strips from aircraft to generate a cloud of false echoes.[4] An early idea was to use sheets the size of a notebook page; these would be printed so they would also serve as propaganda leaflets.[5] It was found the most effective version used strips of black paper backed with aluminium foil, exactly 27 cm × 2 cm (10.63 in × 0.79 in) and packed into bundles each weighing 1 pound (0.45 kg). The head of the TRE, A. P. Rowe, code-named the device "Window". In Germany, similar research had led to the development of Düppel. The German code name came from the estate where the first German tests with chaff took place, circa 1942.[6] Once the British had passed the idea to the US via the Tizard Mission, Fred Whipple developed a system (according to Harvard Gazette Archives) for dispensing strips for the USAAF, but it is not known if this was ever used.

    The systems used the same concept of small aluminium strips (or wires) cut to a half of the target radar's wavelength. When hit by the radar, such lengths of metal resonate and re-radiate the signal.[5] Opposing defences would find it almost impossible to distinguish the aircraft from the echoes caused by the chaff. Other radar-confusing techniques included Mandrel, Piperack and Jostle.[7] Ignorance about the extent of knowledge of the principle in the opposing air force led planners to judge that it was too dangerous to use, since the opponent could duplicate it. The British government's leading scientific adviser, Professor Lindemann, pointed out that if the Royal Air Force (RAF) used it against the Germans, the Luftwaffe would quickly copy it and could launch a new Blitz. This caused concern in RAF Fighter Command and Anti-Aircraft Command, who managed to suppress the use of Window until July 1943.[8] It was felt the new generation of centimetric radars available to Fighter Command would cope with Luftwaffe retaliation.'

  4. #14
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    I remember hearing about 'chaff' as a little kid.

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Joe View Post
    I think the key word is 'invisible'. The aim was to make warships 'invisible' to radar than than actually invisible to the naked eye. .'
    Possibly, but chaff and other variations on that theme were also being developed.

    The idea behind the Philadelphia experiment was to use electromagnetism to bend light. So that a ship would become invisible to an observer, if not to the people actually on the ship. According to supposed eyewitness accounts the ship was not entirely invisible whilst in the magnetic field, there was a hazy cloud effect in its location.

    The originally proposed idea was that they could make a battleship invisible, sail it into Tokyo Bay and start shooting the place up with impunity. IIRC there are USN documents to this effect. But as I said the US military green-lighted all sorts of ludicrous projects that never went anywhere and were eventually shut down, some well before the end of the war.
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  6. #16
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    I've never, as far as I can remember bought a tabloid newspaper, and only occasionally read other people's copies, but it seems to me that they were always crap. With the daily Mail being the worst. Tory, royalist crap intended for women readers. I'm really not their target audience.

    But still better than the 'online' versions - at least you could wipe yer arse on them. I blame the health & safety morons for the declining circulation of printed versions, by stopping chippies wrapping your takeaway in them. Bit of printers ink never did me any harm.
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  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Macca View Post

    The originally proposed idea was that they could make a battleship invisible, sail it into Tokyo Bay and start shooting the place up with impunity.
    I'd have thought the wake left by the ship would be a dead giveaway to its presence, let alone the noise its engines made.

  8. #18
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    I bet the US military continued with ludricrous projects long after WW2, and probably still do. Puts me in mind of one of my favourite films, "Jacob's Ladder". I've no doubt there could be an element of truth in that.
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  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pigmy Pony View Post
    I bet the US military continued with ludricrous projects long after WW2, and probably still do. Puts me in mind of one of my favourite films, "Jacob's Ladder". I've no doubt there could be an element of truth in that.
    Certainly the CIA had some wacky ideas; eg getting Fidel Castro to smoke poisoned cigars so his beard would fall out and make him look foolish. I bet most of the time the boffins were just having a laugh, seeing what crazy ideas might gain some traction/funding. Just shooting the bloke would just be too easy, too quick, and too cheap.

  10. #20
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    Check out MK Ultra (not the band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
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