In April, 1991 Leon Treadwll who served on the FDR from 1956 to 1958 wrote to Mr. Grusinski about his experiences. "I was part of the crew that put the FDR back into commission on April 6, 1956 at Bremerton, Washington. She had the best radar in the fleet...[The] FDR was to report to Mayport, Florida. We took her around the 'Horn,' since she was too large to fit the Panama Locks. Our last stop before Mayport was Rio-de-Janeiro, Brazil.
"At this time I was RD3 and on the night of July 26, 1956 I was duty P.O. in the radar 'shack' - C.I.C., on anchor detail. One other 3rd class was with me. Four lookouts were topside. While at anchor only surface radar was on line. Our VL radar was down (height radar). One lookout and then another called in that two strange objects were in the air, but did not know what. I put a VL into operation - went topside to see for myself. What you see in the sketch is what I saw that night 35 years ago. [The sketch is too dark to reproduce, but it shows two disk shaped objects, one above the other, with a bright light in-between.] I called in the duty officer and he in turn called others.
"These objects...finally vanished with tremendous speed...When first sighted the objects were suspended in mid-air over one another with several hundred feet between them. A radar fix placed them several miles from the FDRs position at a height of 2000 ft. Two rows of bright counter-rotating lights could be seen through the middle of each object that made them appear to be round in shape. For several minutes they never moved. Then the upper one released a fireball object that dropped into the top of the lower one. Within seconds they both vanished with tremendous speed. Radar contact was almost impossible. It was estimated the objects could have been between 75 and 100 feet in length.
"All involved were told to keep a tight lip on what we saw. A report was filed, signed and sent to the Defense Department, along with a color sketch by me of what was watched that night by many.
"These things were watched by many for about 5-7 minutes...My original sketch went to the Defense Department...The following names may help you if they are alive today: FDR Commanding Officer Captain John T. Hayward, 6 April 1965 - 1 October 1956; Operations Officer Whitney Wright; Navigator Commander James R. Thomson."
Mr. Grusinski had this sighting confirmed by another witness, CWO4 John C. Hau, who wrote of the event in August, 1983 as follows: "At about 2130P/25 or 26 July 1956 (0030Z/26 or 27 July 1956), I was standing a signal watch in USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA 42), then anchored in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sky was clear.
"As I recall, the signal bridge was called by Combat Information Center asking for visual verification of an air search radar contact in our vicinity, holding stationary. Inspection revealed a cigar-shaped object estimated to be at 5,000 feet, close by the zenith. It was displaying at least one row of white lights--I do not remember if any were flashing.
"After about 10 or 15 minutes, it suddenly started moving in a northerly direction, accelerating smoothly and rapidly, until it disappeared from view in one or two minutes. It may have disappeared more quickly than that, as CIC later said it went off their radar scope 'in two or three sweeps.' Unfortunately, I did not think to ask what range scale they were using at the time."
Mr. HAU wrote that the sighting was reported to the officer of the deck and, he is sure, to the Commanding Officer, Captain John T. Hayward, as well.
A letter was received from Capitan Hayward dated December 7, 1992 which reads, "Yes I was the skipper of the FDR in Rio but have no knowledge of any UFO sightings."
Additional sightings from the FDR have been reported to have occurred during Operation Mainbrace in the English Channel on September 19, 1952, during a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1953, and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, date or dates unknown - there may have been more than one. A civilian photographer by the name of Wallace Litwin reportedly took five or six photographs of the object seen during Operation Mainbrace.
An undated letter was received by Mr. Grusinski from William H. "Boots" Pierce, Cdr., USN (Ret.) which read in part, "Unfortunately though, I had debarked from ROOSEVELT by 1958 and was instructing at Pensacola. I did not make the cruise mentioned in your letter, but I did hear about the sighting at Gitmo. In fact, FDR's log will show a UFO sighting during 1953 when we took her to the Med, both a visual sighting from the bridge and on CIC's radars. It was an interesting thing of which I was a part."
A letter dated March 21, 1978 from C.L. Burbage, "Executive Officer, USS Roosevelt", reads in part as follows, "This is in reference to your letter concerning an alleged incident in 1958 or 1959 of an object hovering over the flight deck of the Franklin D. Roosevelt. I regret that I cannot glamorize such an incident as it would undoubtedly make for good reading and further lend credence to the theory of flying objects. However, I know no such thing happened during the shakedown period at Guantanamo Bay or at any other place. I was aboard for the entire period and am sure I would be aware of such an incident had it happened."
An undated letter from John S. Lawrence to Mr. Grusinski provides some information about at least one "Gitmo" sighting. "I first went aboard the FDR in the fall of 1950 and served on her until my discharge in May of 1953. I was an Electronics Technician and was responsible for the maintenance and repair of the Mark 25 Gun Fire Control radar, of which there were two, one above the bridge and one on a tower aft of the island structure...I do not remember the month or year, but the ship went on a shake-down cruise to Gitmo immediately after leaving the ship yard at Portsmouth. The ship was anchored in GITMO BAY after a day of training maneuvers. As I mentioned, our berthing compartment opened up to the cat-walk around the flight deck, and one night I was in my bunk reading when my compartment buddies, who were outside, called for me to come out quick. They pointed an object out to me that was in the sky. It looked like a very bright star that moved in an erratic pattern, accelerating VERY rapidly, would stop for a short period of time, and again accelerate VERY rapidly and again stop. We followed the object across the sky, with this same start-stop action and not in a straight line, until we lost it in the light of the moon, which was just starting to come up...To this day I am not sure what we saw...I think we mentioned it to our Electronics Officer but, to my knowledge, no official report was ever filed."
The FDR was decommissioned in 1977 and later scrapped. The ships logs have been searched and no UFO reports were found. FOIA requests to various agencies have all resulted in negative responses.
