The object was glowing with the intensity of a bright star. It began zooming around with fantastic quickness, but then would stop on a dime. It would hover, then streak off again, only to stop again seconds later. Many people on the FDR’s deck watched it until it disappeared in the light of the rising moon.
There was never any explanation for the object, and no official report was ever filed.
In the spring of 1956, after being refitted again and recommissioned at a shipyard in Washington State, the FDR was assigned a new home port at Mayport, Florida.
The ship was too massive to fit through the Panama Canal, so a trip around the tip of South America was necessary. On the way up the South Atlantic, the carrier stopped in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for a goodwill visit.
It was at anchor off Rio one night when two unknown aerial objects were spotted approaching the ship. The carrier’s radars were immediately turned on, and word went through the crew that they were being stalked again. This time, by two UFOs.
Those who ran to the flight deck saw two large disks. They described them as one above the other, with a glowing light between the two. The objects were estimated at between 75 and 100 feet long.
They weren’t moving, and there were a few hundred feet separating them. The ship’s radar fixed them several miles from the carrier and about a half mile high. Each object had bright counterrotating lights ringing its middle.
Suddenly the top disk ejected a fiery object that fell into the lower object. After that, both disappeared at blinding speed. They went so fast, the ship’s radar could not catch up with them.
Anyone in the ship’s crew who witnessed the incident was later questioned by the navy and then told never to talk about it again.
In the fall of 1958, the FDR was back at Guantánamo Bay.
It was around 9 P.M. when a mysterious light appeared in the night sky and started heading right for the carrier.
Alerted that a UFO had been spotted, at least a couple dozen crewmen rushed to the flight deck. What they saw was a cigar-shaped object with a row of windows running through the middle. Some witnesses claimed they saw figures inside looking down at them. Others say they could feel heat coming from the object. Throughout it all, the craft did not make any noise.
The object remained hovering close to the ship for more than five minutes. Then it turned reddish orange — and then it was gone, leaving the area at very high speed.
Crewmen said that shortly afterward, the CIA arrived on the FDR. The reason the spooks gave for being on the carrier was to investigate illegal gambling on the ship.
In reality, they questioned any sailor who’d seen the UFO — and then warned everyone never to talk about the sighting again.
On October 2, 1962, the FDR was off the coast of Sardinia during one of its many tours of the Mediterranean.
At approximately 2 A.M., an aerial object was detected heading toward the ship.
The object was at the very edge of the ship’s radarscopes, more than 500 miles out and 80,000 feet in altitude. But as the ship’s radar operators watched in astonishment, the object descended nearly three miles in a matter of seconds and then just suddenly stopped.
Officers in the carrier’s radar room confirmed the sighting, and the ship’s captain was alerted. He immediately ordered the carrier to turn into the wind. In minutes, several F-4 Phantom fighter jets were catapulted off the deck with orders to confront the bogey. Once in the air, the Phantoms’ pilots hit their afterburners and started to climb.
The fighters were soon close enough to pick up the UFO via their onboard radars, but this proved fruitless. In fact, the very moment they turned on their radars, the UFO disappeared from the FDR’s radar screens. The F-4s searched for more than twenty minutes but could not find anything. They were called back to the carrier.
But no sooner had the Phantoms landed and the carrier turned around to its previous course than the UFO blinked back onto the ship’s radar screens. And this time it was right above the carrier, meaning it had traveled a distance of more than 500 miles in just a few minutes.
The UFO eventually disappeared for good. But when it came time to enter the details of the incident into the ship’s log, the sailors responsible for that duty were told by their commanding officer not to enter anything.
The officer’s words were: “This never happened.”
Why did UFOs seem to target the FDR, among all the other aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy?
There’s only one clue: In 1950, the FDR was the first U.S. Navy carrier to deploy with nuclear weapons on board.
The FDR was decommissioned in 1977 and eventually scrapped. Years later, the ship’s logs were thoroughly searched by UFO investigators, but no UFO reports were ever found.
On the evening of November 23, 1953, air traffic controllers at Truax Air Force Base in Wisconsin picked up a UFO on their radar screens.
The UFO had been detected flying near the Soo Locks, close to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The Soo Locks is the channel that connects Lake Superior with the other Great Lakes.
North of the locks is Canada, so technically this channel constitutes the border of the United States. Because this was the Cold War era, the area was under constant monitoring, as were all border areas, by the Air Defense Command and was considered restricted airspace.
As the radar controllers at Truax continued tracking the UFO, a fighter plane was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base in nearby Michigan. The aircraft was an F-89C Scorpion, a large, powerful jet for its day, capable of carrying both a pilot and a radar operator. This night, Lieutenant Felix Moncla was at the controls of the jet. Sitting behind him was his radar operator, Lieutenant Robert Wilson.
The UFO remained on the Truax radar as the F-89 approached, flying at 500 miles per hour at 8,000 feet. But once the fighter closed in on the object, the object abruptly changed course. Wilson could not get the UFO to show up on the F-89’s radar, so Moncla had to rely on the Truax ground controllers to keep him on the UFO’s tail.
The pursuit went on like this for about thirty minutes. Finally, the F-89 was able to catch up to the UFO, which was now out over Lake Superior.
That’s when the unbelievable happened.
With the ground radar operators watching, the two blips — one representing the F-89, the other the UFO — suddenly merged into one. The ground controllers were certain the fighter had simply overflown the UFO and would soon emerge on the other side. But this didn’t happen.
Instead, the merged blip suddenly accelerated, leaving the radar screen completely.
The astonished ground controllers desperately tried radioing the F-89, but to no avail. Emergency rescue units were dispatched to search the F-89’s last known position, which was approximately 160 miles northwest of the Soo Locks out over Lake Superior.
But nothing was found of the jet fighter.
The next day the Chicago Tribune ran the headline: “Jet, 2 Aboard, Vanishes Over Lake Superior.”
The accompanying news story said the plane was on radar “until it merged with an object” but furnished no more details than that.