Thin Air

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Summary: Thin Air by George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger
Review: An excellent novel. About Naval experiments done to crew members and the effects these experiments brought about years later. Crew members having nightmares about a ship vanishing from under them and dissapearing itno "thin air". Crew members breaking from the safety of interconnected hands and "going zero" and "getting locked out". Well worth a read. Great plot with lots of twists. I have read it about half a dozen times and it gets better every time!

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Summary: Murder mystery based on "Philadelphia Experiment"
Review: In 1943, the US Navy desperately wages a brutal battle with German U-boats across the unforgiving Atlantic. Ready to try anything, the Navy takes a stab at a mysterious project involving radar invisibility. About 35 years later, navy vets who had served on a ship used for testing radar-invisibility gear are still fighting a private war - on involving shell-shock, memory blocks and periodic trips to Navy doctors. A US Navy investigator, as a favor to his ex-wife, looks into the plight of one of these former sailors, and manages to step into a web of deceit surrounding a highly classified wartime project called "Thin Air". As the former sailors mysteriously die off, our hero begins to realize that "Thin Air" was not one of the countless dead-end projects pursued by a desperately besieged America, and that the project may have survived the end of the war, with ramifications so profound that those who have kept the secret will do anything to keep the lid on....

This is a suspense novel "inspired" by the legend of the so-called "Philadelphia Experiment", in which a Navy destroyer escort (depending on who you talk to) either achieved invisibility or even teleportation during highly secret tests on a destroyer escort based in the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1943. The tests were based on an un-exploited aspect of Einstein's Unified Field Theory which links together light, electromagnetic force and gravity (plans called for generating a huge magnetic field to bend light rays away from the ship.) According to the legend, the experiment worked but had some way-out and ultimately dire conseuqences that continued plaguing crewmen even after the experiment was finished. Some sailors materialized inside of solid objects like walls when the generators were shut down. Others continued to "wink-in and out" afterward, either becoming invisible or even dematerializing. Some were said to have disappeared for good, like one sailor reportedly walked through a wall and was never seen again. As the story spread, interplanetary travel and even aliens came into play. (With Watergate and "Close Encounters" fresh in public minds, just about any paranormal-conspiracy theory was possible, but time-travel seems like an idea made up for the dissappointing movie. However, as the legend grew, it evolved further, "spawning" a parellel legend of a contemporary project in time travel called the "Montauk Project" which claims to have "rescued" sailors trapped in temporal flux since 1943.) The problem with the legend has always been that too little of the legend actually comes from those who've claimed to have witnessed it - with virtually all of it based on speculatoin. (Another whopper is that those who claim to have seen the destroyer wink-out of Philly, were on a Liberty ship moored nearby - so much for a highly classified experiment!).

"Thin Air", a detective story centered around the Philadelphia Experiment, takes an unoriginal idea and actually churns out a good story. At the heart of the story, the authors craft a hero who's nobody's fool, and doesn't begin to buy into the legend until he starts seeing proof for himself - those truly enraptured by the myth of the Philadelphia Experiment believe in it too easily to make for much tension. If anything, the Philadelphia Experiment gets such a good treatment, that the book's worst error is glaring - it's a thin story that's over way too soon. Just when the hero is on the trail, he manages to track down one of the project's wartime planners, and this mysterious figure (now an apparent eccentric sharing a desert trailer with a horde of cats) solves the mystery by telling all. (This happens all the time in thrillers - the hero doesn't so much solve the mystery as merely track down the person who does). Luckily, the authors mainatin their own shepticism even then, and there's a sense of mystery about whether the whole thing might be real or just a big hoax. Because neither Mssr.s Simpson or Burger claim to have unraveled the true secret of the Philadelphia Experiment (they only use it as a convenient and meaty plot device) they leave the biggest mystery unsolved - essentially, how such a thin story - completely uncorroborated by official sources and supported only by crackpots with the blessings of others with limitless powers of supposition - remains as heavily believed in til this day.

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Summary: An amazing book
Review: My father had a well-worn copy of this book, and when I sat down to read it it became worn some more because I had to read it several times. It's an incredible tale, and just for the record I ought to mention a timeline (I'm pretty sure this is accurate): This book was first. The movie "The Philadelphia Experiment" was BASED ON THIS BOOK, not vice-versa (at least that's what I've been told). Then came "The Philadelphia Experiment" (the book), then came "The Philadelphia Experiment II" (the movie). If anyone knows if this is true or not, please let me know.

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Summary: a book I've read more than once
Review: When Harold Fletcher starts having nightmares about people and ships vanishing before his eyes - he does not want to believe at first that what he is seeing is actual memory. Memory that has been deliberatly supressed over many years by a "government service psychartrist" of all surviving members of the ship USS Sturman.

However, when Nicholas Hammond of Naval Intelligence gets a call for help from an old friend he ends up hunting down a mystery and conspiracy deeper and older than he or Harold Fletcher could imagine.

This book is well written. Part detective story, Part thriller, part horror and part SF story. After you read this, watch the movie "The Philadelphia experiment". You'll be amazed at the basic simlarties and this book was written long before that movie was made. Published in 1977 this can not be called a new book, but it's a very memorable, and still readable book that hasn't dated too badly.

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Summary: A terrific blending of fact and fiction
Review: When I was a teenager, my father told me about the Philadelphia Experiment. A fews years later I read this book and the story has stayed with me for 20 years. This book was the basis for the movie, the Philadelphia Experiment, which was produced in the mid-eighties. If you can find a copy of this book, I'm sure you will find it as memorable as I did.

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Summary: Thin Air. Fiction?
Review: With all of the government projects in the works during world war II, could this have happened. Who knows.

This novel will really keep you interested. There actually was a n project during wwII that had many of the facets included in Thin Air. Truck mounted deagaussers (electromagnetic coils), were positioned around an DE (destroyer escort). Supposedly, the idea was to render the ship invisible to certain electromagnetic frequences. If this was intended to cloak the vessel entirely or not I haven't a clue.

From what I have seen and read, the entire experiment is still classified. I don't have any idea what really hppened, but the novel tells a plausible story.

Read it. Very good