Plot
It is nine years after the events that thrust David Herdeg into 1984, where he met and later married Allison. She has since died, and David is living alone with their son, Benjamin. His business is slowly failing, Ben's school attendance has dropped and the banks are threatening to foreclose on his house; however, he refuses financial help from Professor Longstreet, the original project director, in exchange for rejoining the U.S. Navy. In addition to this, he has also been having painful experiences which Longstreet rationalizes as stress-related hallucinations. Unbeknownst to Herdeg, Longstreet has been doing some research of his own.
In a demonstration, engineer William Mailer –son of Friedrich Mahler, a Nazi scientist who worked on a project similar to the Philadelphia Experiment –uses the technology as a demonstration for a potential teleportation attack-defense strategy. The concept was to beam a bomber into a high-risk area to surprise enemy air defenses, attacking before they could react. To demonstrate, he beams a model aircraft across a room. Despite getting significant interest, Longstreet manages to convince the panel that the technology is too dangerous to use. It is then revealed that Longstreet himself gave Mailer the necessary equipment – on condition that they be used only for test purposes. It is these tests that David is experiencing.
Herdeg, furious to learn that Longstreet has lied to him, packs to leave California, hoping to get far enough away from the experiment. Mailer, on the clock to vindicate his work, uses the technology to transmit an F-117 Nighthawk, but the aircraft does not rematerialize. David feels tremendous physical pain as the world around him changes and Ben disappears.
David finds himself in a different 1993, on the run from a heavily armed military team. He is rescued by Jess, a member of an underground resistance group, who explains that Nazi Germany won World War II and is about to mark 50 years of Nazi rule over America. Jews, African-Americans, and other ethnic minorities are being sent to concentration camps, while all citizens suffer under an oppressive puppet government.
Germany had won the war using a futuristic aircraft called the Phoenix to deliver atomic bombs, destroying Washington, D.C., and other major targets on the east coast. The United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and other Allied nations then surrendered to Nazi Germany. The Phoenix was destroyed in an explosion and Friedrich Mahler, the scientist who took credit for building it, was ridiculed since he was unable to reproduce "his" successful design.
The aircraft was the same F-117 from Mailer's beaming experiment, accidentally sent back in time. His test of the device was meant to transport the F-117, with a payload of nuclear weapons, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. While the aircraft was successfully teleported to Ramstein, it was also transferred through time, arriving in 1943 Nazi Germany. Mahler found it and told the Nazis that it was his invention.
Because of Herdeg's unique blood, he still knows the original history, and is recruited by Longstreet –the leader of the resistance group –to go back in time and prevent the Nazi's use of the F-117. The revised Mailer has developed the same beaming experiment, but has also studied the Philadelphia Experiment, and knows that an injection of Herdeg's blood will allow him to travel through time using the beam. When the resistance attacks Mailer's base, in its effort to send Herdeg back, Herdeg is captured by Mailer, who draws a vial of blood. As Jess and the others are gunned down, Herdeg escapes and travels back. Mailer soon follows.
Herdeg is warped back to the night before the F-117 leaves for the attack on Washington. Mailer meets his father –Mahler. Mailer tries to explain to a disbelieving Mahler as to who he is, and tries to explain the fate of the Phoenix. While they are talking, Herdeg successfully destroys the aircraft and attempts to escape through the time portal. However, Mailer shoots and wounds Herdeg, knocking him to the ground. Before Mailer can deliver a kill shot, Herdeg is able to shoot and kill Mahler. This erases Mailer from existence, and Herdeg crawls into the portal. Herdeg returns to the (mostly) original America in 1993, meeting Ben at his Little League game –bemused to see that Jess is now the mother of one of Ben's teammates.
The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a retired American single-seat, subsonic twin-engine stealth attack aircraft developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). It was the first operational aircraft to be designed with stealth technology.
Ramstein Air Base, or Ramstein AB, is a United States Air Force base located in Rhineland-Palatinate, a state in southwestern Germany. It serves as the headquarters for the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA) and NATO Allied Air Command (AIRCOM). Ramstein is near the town of Ramstein-Miesenbach, which is situated outside the base's west gate, in the rural district of Kaiserslautern. The base supports forward elements deploying to Eastern Europe and Africa.
Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel was a German neo-Nazi publisher and pamphleteer of Holocaust denial literature. He was jailed several times: in Canada for publishing literature "likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group", and on charges of being a threat to national security; in the United States, for overstaying his visa; and in Germany for charges of "inciting racial hatred". He lived in Canada from 1958 to 2000.
Stealth aircraft are designed to avoid detection using a variety of technologies that reduce reflection/emission of radar, infrared, visible light, radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and audio, all collectively known as stealth technology. The F-117 Nighthawk was the first operational aircraft explicitly designed around stealth technology. Other examples of stealth aircraft include the B-2 Spirit, the B-21 Raider, the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II, the Chengdu J-20, and the Sukhoi Su-57.
The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany began with the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, continued with the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and by the end of 1944 extended to all parts of Czechoslovakia.
The Philadelphia Experiment is a 1984 American science fiction film. It is directed by Stewart Raffill, stars Michael Paré, Bobby Di Cicco, Kene Holliday and Nancy Allen and is based on the urban legend of the Philadelphia Experiment. In 1943, United States Navy sailors David Herdeg (Paré) and Jim Parker are thrown forward in time to the year 1984 when a scientific experiment being performed aboard the USS Eldridge suffers a catastrophe. The film follows the two men as they attempt to survive the future and race against time to put an end to the experiment that now threatens the fate of the entire world.
Richard Girnt Butler was an American engineer and white supremacist. After dedicating himself to the Christian Identity movement, a racialist offshoot of British Israelism, Butler founded the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations and would become the "spiritual godfather" to the white supremacist movement, in which he was "a leading figure". He has been described as a "notorious racist".
Yehudi lights are lamps of automatically controlled brightness placed on the front and leading edges of an aircraft to raise the aircraft's luminance to the average brightness of the sky, a form of active camouflage using counter-illumination. They were designed to camouflage the aircraft by preventing it from appearing as a dark object against the sky.
The Dutch resistance to the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized as non-violent. The primary organizers were the Communist Party, churches, and independent groups. Over 300,000 people were hidden from German authorities in the autumn of 1944 by 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers. These activities were tolerated knowingly by some one million people, including a few individuals among German occupiers and military.
"Arsenal of Democracy" was the central phrase used by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a radio broadcast on the threat to national security, delivered on December 29, 1940—nearly a year before the United States entered the Second World War (1939–1945). Roosevelt promised to help the United Kingdom fight Nazi Germany by selling them military supplies while the United States stayed out of the actual fighting. The president announced that intent a year before the Attack on Pearl Harbor, at a time when Germany had occupied much of Europe and threatened Britain.
Ramat David Airbase is an Israeli Air Force (IAF) base located 20 km southeast of Haifa in the Northern District of Israel, close to kibbutz Ramat David in the Jezreel Valley. It is the northernmost IAF base in Israel with fighter jets, UAVs and helicopters based on it.
S.S. Doomtrooper is a 2006 television science fiction film starring Corin Nemec, in which a mutated Nazi supersoldier, who can generate electrical charges as a weapon, and has greatly enhanced strength, fights against Allied troops during World War II. It was aired from Sci Fi Channel on April 1, 2006.
Horst Mahler is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was a far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction who later became a Maoist, before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung and Holocaust denial, and he served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.
The German invasion of Denmark, was the German attack on Denmark on 9 April 1940, during the Second World War. The attack was a prelude to the invasion of Norway.
Doctor Nemesis is the name of three fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics and Ace Magazines.
The 526th Fighter Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with the 86th Operations Group, based at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. It was inactivated on 1 July 1994.
The 86th Operations Group is the flying operational component of the 86th Airlift Wing, United States Air Force. The group is stationed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.
Operation Silbertanne was the codename of a series of executions that were committed between September 1943 and September 1944 during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The executions were carried out by a death squad composed of Dutch members of the SS and Dutch veterans of the Eastern Front.
Walter Herdeg was a Swiss graphic designer, noted for his travel posters and work with Graphis Magazine, who was awarded an AIGA medal in 1986.
German submarine U-856 was a Type IXC/40 U-boat built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II.
