Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

So I went there.

Unfortunately, the ship was in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard when I first got there.

So I didn't get to see a lot of stuff, but I did learn the rate that I was gonna be was the ABF, because that's the division.

What is that?

Like, I wanna learn how to do this." And then I thought to myself, "How cool would it be to sail all the way around the wo- around the world on a sailboat?" Like, that would be the coolest thing I could ever imagine in my entire life.

So fast-forward to however many years later, and I'm in a sailboat race, and this guy my cousin brought down, a friend of his that he worked with at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and he came to be a ringer on my mom's boat because he was a three-time national dinghy champion.

Mm.

And we had a three-day weekend together, and we just did every one of my activities that I love.

We all had to get clearances.

And then we found ourselves shuttling between the institute and the Brook-- the, I'm sorry, the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where they set up offices in one of the buildings overlooking the harbor for all the classified projects, including this one.

Did you know at that time, Al, what it was that they were gonna involve you in? I mean, did they tell you the whole story, or were you just sort of getting pieces of it, uh, as you needed to know?

No.

It became invisible, and, uh, at that point, the Navy said, "We have a successful test." They took over the project, classified it, called it Project Rainbow.

And of course, all personnel connected with the project, including Duncan, my brother, and myself, had to have clearances, which was no problem.

And they had special offices in the Philadelphia Navy Yard for the classified project, so we shuttled back and forth.

Did you witness, uh, were you a witness to the first one, Al?

The USS Eldridge had been shrouded in a force field so powerful it made her vanish from sight, only to reappear some distance later, teleportation, if you will.

Jessup, himself a man of science with an astronomy background, initially entertained the notion that there might be something out of the ordinary happening at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in late October nineteen forty-three.

He even presented the letters to the Office of Naval Research, hoping to get an official response, though by then, a pattern of denials had begun to crystallize.

The Navy's position is consistent across documents.

And I was al- I was supposed to get in the boat throughout the day, but he, the, the producer really didn't have the concept set up yet for the show.

And I did do an interview, but we were in an area that, uh, we were in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, and they decided to cut that from the, uh, broadcast or from the...

It, it ended up on the, on the floor, 'cause we were in a restricted zone.

Hmm.

Now look at this.

Just a couple of hundred yards from the stadium, what do you see? The Philadelphia Navy Yard.

And what's in a Navy Yard? Submarines.

It's an actual

Alan H. Turnage was commissioned in 1913 and went to France as commanding officer of the Fifth Machine Gun Battalion, Fifth Brigade of Marines.

In the interwar period, Turnage had an assortment of assignments to sea duty and to duty overseas, and in 1935 he reported as director of the Basic School, then at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

At the outset of World War II, he commanded Camp Lejeune and its training center, which was responsible for the organization and training of two regimental combat teams slated for duty with the Third Marine Division.

In October 1942, he became assistant division commander of the Third Marine Division and its commander the next September.