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187 DEATH OF AN ASTRONOMER tasted the ozone odor of it and my ears heard the sizzing-hum [sic] of its surrounding electrical envelope. The experiment, he said, took place in the last few days of October 1943 and the first week of November 1943. That period in the history of the Navy indeed marked a turning point in the application of science to the art of war. Pioneers in operations research like Von Neuman were working on the optimization of the size and frequency of convoys across the Atlantic. It had become critical to supply British and American forces in Europe and Africa while avoiding the deadly German submarines. And a new device—radar—was being placed in operation to detect planes and ships even at night and in fog. As I have stated publicly many times over the last fifteen years or so, I consider it very likely that Carl Allen did witness an actual Navy experiment that attempted to make a ship invisible ... to radar! In their book about the Philadelphia Experiment, the authors do mention such a possibility, even quoting a mysterious Navy commander to the effect that "I heard they did some testing . . . with regard to the effects of a strong magnetic field on radar detection apparatus." Yet they turn away from its obvious implications. Citing strange "tips," curious "rumors," and amazing "coinci- dences," they launch into a jumble of UFO reports and strange alien entities. A Canadian man named Robert Suffern was said to have had a close encounter on October 7, 1975, in the course of which he saw a landed saucer and a four-foot-tall humanoid. According to a Canadian ufologist, he was later visited by three military men, including one from U.S. Naval Intelligence, who revealed to him that they had made contact with aliens as early as 1943, presumably during the Philadelphia Experiment, and that they now cooperated with them! Having thus succeeded in escalating the mystery of a radar camou- flage test into an interplanetary sensation, the authors of the book suggest that "if a vessel could be projected into another space or energy continuum through mistake or design, it might also be possible that its occupants could encounter entities on the other side." They have taken