The failed navy teleportation experiment

[ The failed teleportation Experment ]

a potentially groundbreaking experiment

in an effort to turn one of its ships invisible.

It went wrong with disastrous consequences,

or at least that's how the story goes.

Indeed, throughout history,

militaries around the world

have secretly conducted all kinds of crazy experiments,

some real, some shrouded in conspiracy.

So, from psychic soldiers to flying bears,

let's investigate some of the craziest military experiments

ever and get to the bottom of them.

(gentle instrumental music)

The Philadelphia Experiment.

The year was 1942,

and the Second World War was just reaching its height,

but the allies had just suffered a catastrophic loss

of ships at the hands of German U-Boat submarines.

To combat this, the US Navy enlisted world famous physicist,

Albert Einstein.

Why?

To develop super advanced weapons

and defense systems for them, of course.

The craziest of these by far was an invisibility cloak,

designed to hide US ships from the enemy.

Now, it wouldn't have been anything

like the one Harry Potter owned.

Einstein theorized that by surrounding a ship

with powerful electromagnetic fields,

it was possible to bend light around it,

effectively making it invisible.

In summer of 1943, it was finally time to test the theory.

Scientists installed huge electrical generators

around the anti-submarine destroyer escort USS Eldridge,

while it was docked at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

Then they turned them on.

According to witnesses,

a strange green fog suddenly materialized around the ship

and the Eldridge flickered into a surreal invisibility,

along with all the sailors on board.

Incredibly, it was actually working.

Then, in a burst of crackling blue light,

it completely vanished.

However, it turns out it hadn't just turned invisible.

Some 200 miles away in Norfolk, Virginia,

a group of wayfarers were stood aboard

an entirely different ship

when they witnessed something

that shocked them to their core.

The USS Eldridge materialized

out of thin air into the sea before them.

Then as soon as it had appeared,

it disappeared, like it had never been there.

Back in Philadelphia, onlookers were equally stunned,

when after a short, tense wait

the ship reappeared in the dock.

But as it crackled back into vision,

it became clear something was horribly wrong.

Crew members were flailing about and talking gibberish.

Others were running around on fire,

and that wasn't even the worst of it.

Upon reappearing,

some people had seemingly fused into the ship itself.

Moaning sailors were stuck inside

the vessel's metal structures,

their twisted bodies protruding

from the walls and floor at odd angles.

It was a living nightmare.

The disaster prompted the Navy

to quickly shelve the experiment

and force everybody involved to sign an oath of secrecy,

never to speak of it again.

But they didn't account for the unintentional witnesses,

or at least that's how the story goes.

Despite a multitude of witnesses coming forward

since the 1940s, not one of them has had any real evidence

to support the crazy tale.

So what actually happened?

Well, the entire event can be traced back

to a Pennsylvanian citizen, Carl Allen.

In the 1950s, Allen started sending odd letters

and documents to the US Navy detailing the account,

which he called the Philadelphia Experiment,

as well as a host of other strange stories.

Surprisingly, these letters weren't dismissed.

In fact, they captivated some government staff so much,

that over a hundred copies were made

and circulated around the office.

Despite this fanfare, Alan himself remained elusive.

However, his family has since described him

as a fantastic mind, but also a master leg puller.

Hmm, so is this whole tale just one big troll?

Well, skeptics reckon so,

but they admit it could be based in reality.

During World War II,

Einstein really did help the US Navy with weapon designs,

but probably not an invisibility force field,

and the Navy did develop a way of making their ships, well,

not invisible, but undetectable to mines.

To do this, they wrapped electrical cable

around the ship's hulls and sent electricity through it.

This reduced the ship's magnetism

and meant they wouldn't trigger German magnetic mines.

A process called degaussing.

The similarities to the so-called Philadelphia Experiment

aren't hard to miss.

If the whole thing really was just a story though,

what about the witnesses that continued

to come forward all the way up to 1988?

Well, considering Hollywood made a movie

out of Alan's account in 1984,

they were probably trying to cash in

on their 15 minutes of fame

while it was still culturally relevant.

So I think we can pretty safely put this one

in the conspiracy trash can.

But before you do, hit those like

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any of my amazing content again.

You done?

Okay then.

The Stargate Project.

You might hear the word Stargate

and immediately think of old school science fiction,

but some things are far stranger than fiction.

Back in the 1970s, the US government formed a secret unit

of the army dedicated to, wait for it,

psychic phenomena, yeah.

Named the Stargate Project,

it was initially established in response

to a similar program supposedly being funded

by the Soviet Union.

US officials determined that if there was any value

in psychic research, they couldn't be left behind Russia.

So they began funding tests

to determine the credibility of psychics.

In 1972, a group of so-called psychics were selected

and took part in tests at the Stanford Research Institute.

Now, famous celebrity,

Uri Geller, was one of the participants,

and apparently correctly guessed symbols

hidden inside envelopes to a wild degree of accuracy.

- [Announcer] It is interesting

that when he drew his response in this case,

he didn't recognize the object as eyeglasses,

it seemed to him to be an abstract drawing.

- [Narrator] The project's main focus was a phenomenon

called remote viewing.

That is a person being able to physically see events, sites,

or information from a great distance.

Two of the most successful remote viewers

were Gary Langford and Rosemary Smith.

Incredibly, they located a lost Soviet spy plane

that had crashed in a remote area of African jungle,

with no prior knowledge of where it could have been.

President Jimmy Carter was so impressed

he became a firm supporter of the project.

However, after some 20 odd years of research,

it was eventually canceled in 1995.

Renowned psychology professor, Ray Hyman,

had evaluated the program and found that although

something beyond statistical hiccups was happening,

he wasn't convinced remote viewers

were useful for intelligence gathering.

So despite a modest amount of success,

Stargate was shut down for good.

Hmm, something beyond statistical hiccups,

what does that mean?

I'm not sure where I stand on this one,

valuable research or waste of time and money?

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Double points if you transmit

the answer straight into my brain.

Blinding battle tank.

The Cold War was a period in which east

and west raged against one another to try

to achieve the greatest scientific and military feats.

And some of the results of this were absolutely insane.

Take, oh,

I don't know, the fully fledged laser tank developed

by the Soviets in the '70s and '80s.

Yep, in a move straight out of science fiction,

the Soviet Union genuinely began pumping money

into creating the wacky 1K17 Compression tank.

It had a total of 12 aimable lasers,

created by focusing light through a whopping 66 pounds

of artificial rubies.

These lasers were then beamed through amplification lenses,

turning them into one mega beam of light

that could reach twice the range of a conventional tank.

But I know what you're thinking,

what damage could a beam of light

do against something that fired missiles?

Well, it turns out a lot.

By aiming the intense laser at enemy tanks' optical systems

it could blind them

and render the vehicle unable to accurately attack.

Apparently during testing, one of the tanks

actually managed to disable a helicopter's optical system

from five miles away.

Geez.

So what happened to this fantastical bit of tech?

Sadly, not a lot.

The prototypes weren't ready until 1992.

But by that time,

the Soviet Union had collapsed,

sending the country into economic despair.

Suddenly throwing heaps of cash

at a glorified mobile flashlight

didn't seem like such a bright idea.

Rebirth Island, a mysterious,

uncharted island,

a series of sinister inexplicable incidents,

a government coverup.

This is. (laughs)

Hmm, darn it, whatever.

I'm talking about Vozrozhdeniya or Rebirth Island.

Located in the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,

the small, unassuming island began gathering attention

at the start of the 1970s, for all the wrong reasons.

In 1971, a young scientist was sailing

near the island on her research vessel

when she realized she was headed straight

into a strange brown mist.

Days later, she was diagnosed with smallpox,

even though she'd already been vaccinated

against the disease.

A year later, two fishermen were found

drifting in their boat nearby, neither were alive.

Somehow autopsy results indicated

they'd fallen victim to the plague.

Not long after that,

local fishermen started pulling entire nets

of dead fish from the water.

That's more than a little fishy.

But then in May, 1988,

things got a lot worse.

A huge, 50,000 strong herd of antelope

that were grazing nearby all dropped dead

in the space of an hour.

What?

Well, it turns out all these incidents were linked.

The Soviet Union had been using the island

to secretly test biological weapons for half a century.

Humans and animals alike had been participating

in horrific experiments as part of a top secret project

that saw the island transformed from a peaceful fishing spot

into a creepy wasteland.

One of the main things the Soviet Union was testing

was anthrax, a seriously dangerous bacterial disease

that can live for hundreds of years.

But as the Cold War drew to a close,

the Soviets dumped

their remaining stocks of it into pits and left.

So to avoid it getting into the wrong hands,

the US government splashed 6 million on a cleanup operation.

Today, the island has merged with surrounding land

due to the Aral sea drying up, but it's still contaminated

and littered with the burial pits of infected animals.

Hmm, talk about eerie.

High flying bears.

Flying a plane can't be easy, but how would you feel

about flying a plane with

a bear strapped into the seat behind you?

Well, as crazy as it sounds back in the 1950s,

US pilots did just that.

A new bomber called the B-58 had just been developed.

Capable of flying at tremendous speeds of Mach 2,

which is twice as fast as the speed of sound.

The problem was that they were so fast,

pilots couldn't eject safely.

So a new ejector seat had to be developed,

and rather than using humans to test it,

the military decided to use bears.

Supposedly, American black bears

and Himalayan brown bears simulated

the weight of human pilots fairly accurately.

Okay, but how do you go about getting

a bear strapped into a plane?

Well, you just anesthetize it,

of course.

After giving the bears a heavy dose of anesthetic,

they were strapped into the ejector seats

and human pilots took off flying the planes

at breakneck speeds before hitting eject

and sending the bears tumbling through the air.

Then their parachutes would deploy, and the furry payloads

were sent floating back down to earth.

Whoa.

On touchdown, any injuries were assessed

and used to improve the design of the ejector.

There's no denying this was super unethical

and utterly bonkers.

Luckily, the testing period wasn't very long,

and not many animals had to be subjected

to this terrifying experience.

I can't bear the thought of what they went through

Unlimited solar power.

If you're familiar with "Star Wars",

you'll know about the Death Star, that huge,

floating laser weapon capable of destroying entire planets.

Well, it turns out German scientists were planning

a weapon spookily similar to this during World War II.

Known as the Sun Gun,

the idea was to build a space station

over 5,000 miles above Earth.

From there, a huge concave 3.5 square mile reflector

would harness sunlight and beam a concentrated ray

of it wherever the weapon was aimed.

Hypothetically, the laser-like ray of light

would be so powerful

it would boil oceans and burn cities to the ground.

And this wasn't just a silly idea,

the allies found detailed plans for the solar cannon

in 1945.

Originally thought up by renowned German rocket scientist,

Hermann Oberth, it was to be a crude space station

with gardens to generate oxygen and solar power generators.

There was even an estimated budget for it

of around 3 million Reichsmark,

which was $1.2 million, or a whopping $25 million today.

Despite these grandiose plans, the weapon was estimated

to take a good 50 to 100 years to build.

So it wouldn't have been much use when it came

to fighting the war.

If things had gone another way and the Axis powers had won,

though, well,

if you looked up at the sky right now,

you might have just been able to see the massive,

terrifying mirror looking back down at you.

Oh.

Ghost station.

In the middle of some Russian swamp land

near St. Petersburg, there's a collection of radio towers

and abandoned buildings surrounded by a gated fence.

If you happen to see it, you might assume

it was some long defunct Cold War era communication space.

But the truth is much more mysterious.

Many people suspect it's not actually defunct at all,

but rather the secret headquarters of a radio station known

as UVB-76.

Instead of playing Taylor Swift, though,

this radio station has been broadcasting this.

(radio whining)

It's been broadcast every day,

every hour, for almost four decades.

Occasionally, a voice breaks the monotony

by reading out seemingly random words

in Russian like dinghy or farm specialist.

But aside from that, nothing changes.

Yet the eerie broadcast keeps on going,

and it's sparked all kinds of theories.

Some people think it's an encoded message used by spies,

while others are sure it's an attempt to commune

with extra terrestrials.

One of the more popular theories

is that it's a dead hand signal,

meaning if Russia is ever hit by a nuclear attack,

the broadcast will end

and automatically trigger a retaliatory strike.

I really don't know what to think about this one,

but if it is the latter,

let's hope that creepy broadcast never ends, right?

Wandering souls.

When you hear the word warfare, what do you think of?

I'll bet whatever it was, it was violent,

but there's a whole subcategory of warfare

that isn't violent at all,

at least not in the traditional sense.

It's called psychological warfare

and focuses on influencing people's emotions, beliefs,

and behaviors.

The US waged a particularly strange campaign

of psychological warfare during the Vietnam War,

which they termed Operation Wandering Soul.

It was based on the Vietnamese belief

that if the dead aren't properly buried,

their souls continue to wander

the earth in pain and suffering.

Nice.

Because of this, US engineers spent weeks

recording eerie sounds and voices to imitate

what could be the ghoulish cries of fallen soldiers.

The final recordings termed ghost tapes were then played

through loud speakers in areas of Vietnam where the enemy,

Viet Cong, were active.

Take a listen.

(speakers whirring)

Pretty unnerving, right?

The idea was to spook the Viet Cong

so much they'd give up and retreat, but in practice,

it had limited success.

Sometimes it worked, but other times Viet Cong would realize

it was a tape and shoot where the noise was coming from.

And despite this, the US Psychological Operations Battalion,

or PSYOPs, continued the tactic for most of the war.

Indeed, PSYOPs are still active today.

This footage isn't a movie trailer or anything,

it's a legitimate video released by them.

Who let the edgelord take control of their marketing team?

Seeing infrared.

As we've seen, there's not much a government won't try

to give itself an edge in war.

So you might not even be surprised to learn

that in World War II, the US Navy tried to create soldiers

with infrared vision.

Yep, the Navy wanted its soldiers to be able

to see special infrared lights that would be invisible

to the enemy, in order to communicate things visually

without them knowing.

Normally humans can't see infrared light.

This is because the photo receptors in our eyes

are only activated when light hits them with enough energy.

All naturally visible light has enough energy

to activate them, but infrared doesn't.

US scientists knew, however that vitamin A

is key to our vision.

They also knew there are different types of vitamin A,

and we usually only consume one of them.

So volunteers were fed diets rich in alternative forms

of vitamin A and deficient in the usual form

to see if their vision would be altered.

And low and behold, it worked.

After just a few months, their vision changed

and their eyes became more sensitive

to a greater range of light.

Whoa.

And hypothetically, if they'd have carried on,

their eyes could have adjusted so much,

they'd have been able to see better in the dark,

and indeed even be able to see infrared.

However, the experiment was canceled when technology

became available to see infrared

without biologically altering anything.

Looks like I'll stick to eating carrots then.

The Montauk Project.

Did you know that Netflix's smash hit show,

"Stranger Things" was originally called "Montauk"?

If not, you're probably wondering why I'm telling you.

Well, it's because the show was actually inspired

by a real life series of US experiments,

collectively known as the Montauk Project,

or at least they might be real life.

Supposedly, the US government conducted

a number of top secret projects at Camp Hero in New York.

Think of it as the actual Hawkins Lab.

The strange experiments were first discussed

in a book published in 1992

by Ufologists Preston B. Nichols,

where he claimed to have been a researcher for the project.

According to Nichols, runaway children were abducted

for the experiments where they were trained in mind control,

telepathy, and even opening space time portals.

Sound familiar?

Well, hold on to your tin foil hats

because it gets even wilder.

One Al Bielek,

who also claimed to have seen the Philadelphia Experiment,

said he was on board the USS Eldridge

in the 1940s when a wormhole to the future opened up

and dropped him into Camp Hero in 1983.

While there, he teamed up with Nikola Tesla,

yes, the famous inventor,

and developed a special chair

which amplified the psychic powers of anyone who sat in it.

Now, if all this sounds bonkers,

it's because it is.

I mean, if it was true,

would there really be no evidence whatsoever?

Another supposed witness has the answer.

Stewart Swerdlow claims to have been

one of the abducted children, and that after accidentally

summoning an interdimensional monster,

the base had to be destroyed and the project shut down.

Right, I guess that clears that up then.

In reality, the Montauk Project is probably

a fabrication of Nichols that got picked up

by others wanting to be part of of the narrative.

But who knows, maybe there's a shred of truth in it,

or 11.

Gruesome Gruinard.

If you cast your mind back a few minutes

you should remember the Soviet Union's biological

weapons test site, Rebirth Island.

Well, years before the Soviets,

the British had a similar testing ground for anthrax,

and it was in aid of a plan so diabolical

it would've changed history as we know it.

The year was 1941,

and World War II could still have ended with an allied loss.

So the British were working towards using anthrax

as a weapon against the Germans.

To test how dangerous the bacterial disease really was,

they dropped an anthrax bomb on to Gruinard Island,

a small, unpopulated island off the coast of Scotland.

The results were shocking.

Though the place was mostly deserted,

60 sheep were wiped out within days

and anthrax spores were carried

to the mainland for months after,

infecting far more animals.

Teams of people in hazard suits were sent

to the island to incinerate the dead animals.

And afterwards it was closed to the public until 1990.

But the plan wasn't to drop an anthrax bomb on Germany.

Oh, no.

It was to infect linseed cakes with anthrax spores

and drop them all over German fields.

That way cattle would eat the cakes,

civilians would eat the cattle,

and millions of civilians and animals would kick the bucket.

Plus those that did survive would face a huge food shortage.

See what I mean by absolutely diabolical?

And thankfully, the plan never came to fruition.

And by the time it was ready,

the war had turned firmly in the allies favor.

A whopping 5 million cakes had been made for it though,

and all of them had to be incinerated.

Geez, I knew cake was bad for you,

but that's something else

Falling with style.

I can't think of many things more terrifying

than fighting in a war

and seeing a tank rolling over a hill coming straight at me,

other than maybe if I saw a tank flying straight at me.

Yep, that's exactly what the Soviets were trying to achieve

back in World War II.

The proposed Antonov A-40 was a tank designed

to glide down onto the battlefield.

Able to glide like this,

it was hoped that the tank could both arrive

at its destination faster and also land

alongside airborne troops to provide them

near instant support.

So they first lightened a T-60 tank

by removing its ammunition, headlights,

and interior elements,

then attached wooden fabric biplane wings to it

alongside a twin tail.

The plan was for a bomber plane to fly

the gutted tank across the battlefield and drop it

at the correct time so it glided gently to the ground.

At least that was the plan.

The gliding tank was tested in 1942,

but even after its modifications

it was too heavy for the bomber plane to effectively fly.

To avoid crashing,

the pilot had to ditch the tank early,

though it apparently did glide smoothly

to the ground afterwards.

Regardless, the project was abandoned.

Guess they wanted to just glide over that one.

The perfect soldier.

When you think of super soldiers,

you might imagine towering cyborgs

with laser weapons and robotic augmentation.

I doubt you imagine chimps.

Yet, back in the 1920s,

Russian zoologist, Ilia Ivanov,

out on a mission to create a human chimp hybrid

that would be the perfect super soldier.

Communist leader Joseph Stalin

had seen potential in such a creature,

as he believed they'd have the immense strength of chimps

but without a fully developed human brain,

they'd be easier to control.

Ivanov himself was more interested

in the political and scientific implications.

He was part of the Bolshevik party

who opposed religion because they saw it

as dangerous competition.

By breeding such a creature,

Ivanov hoped to prove Darwin's theory of evolution

and strike a blow to religion.

So researchers went to Africa where they torched trees

and chased chimps into cages to use for experimentation.

Sounds ethical.

Once they were captured, it was onto the next phase.

To try and create his humanzees,

Ivanov ordered three chimps

to be artificially inseminated with human sperm.

Yuck.

And believe it or not, none of them fell pregnant.

The whole plan failed and Stalin later arrested Ivanov.

Who would've guessed this wouldn't have a happy ending?

Humanzees have lived on

in the international conscience though,

and as recently as the 1990s

a chimp called Oliver was believed by many to be one.

He didn't just look odd, he also walked upright,

had a soft spoken voice, and was attracted to human women.

DNA testing revealed he was,

in fact, just a chimp.

So no super soldier here.

But I can't deny there's something super uncanny

about this guy.

Either way, I think it's safe to say

that humanzees are a load of monkey business.

(upbeat music)

that's about it for today.

Which of these did you find the most interesting?

And do you know about any other freaky experiments

that I missed?

Let me know down in the comments below

and thanks for watching.