Travel in Time with Dan — Episode 53: A Fictional Interview with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Aboard the USS Iowa
Travel in Time with Dan | USS Iowa, Atlantic Ocean, in route to the Tehran Conference
⚠️ Author’s Note: The following is a fictional historical interview. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) was the 32nd President of the United States and the only president elected to four terms. In November 1943, he secretly traveled aboard the USS Iowa, the most powerful battleship of its era, across the Atlantic Ocean to attend the Tehran Conference, where he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to plan the final strategy for defeating Nazi Germany. During that voyage, a U.S. destroyer accidentally fired a torpedo at the Iowa, which the ship narrowly avoided. This imagined conversation takes place in FDR’s presidential quarters aboard the Iowa, shortly after that incident. The historical facts are real. The dialogue is creative fiction, inspired by Roosevelt’s documented speeches, letters, wit, and leadership philosophy.
📍 Setting: The Presidential Quarters aboard the USS Iowa, Atlantic Ocean in November 1943. The quarters are modest by White House standards but remarkable by any battleship standard. It has a bathtub visible through the open door, ramps fitted where hatch frames would ordinarily force a step, the whole space adapted with quiet ingenuity for a man the world does not fully know uses a wheelchair. The President is seated at a small table, a cigarette holder tilted at its characteristic angle, a glass of something nearby. He looks, despite everything, entirely relaxed… even after nearly being torpedoed by his own Navy is simply one of those things that happens on a Tuesday.
Dan: Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to speak with me. I have to ask… how are you feeling after what just happened out there?
FDR: (The famous grin, immediate and unhesitating)
Invigorated, I should say. There is nothing quite like a torpedo to sharpen one’s appreciation for being alive. (Reaching for the cigarette holder) I watched the whole thing from the deck, you know. Remarkable piece of seamanship by our captain. Remarkable. I confess I found it rather thrilling, though I suspect that opinion is not universally shared among the crew at this particular moment.
Dan: You weren’t frightened?
FDR: (A pause, something more genuine crossing his face for just a moment)
I have learned, over a long career in difficult circumstances, that fear is most useful when it produces action and most useless when it produces paralysis. The captain acted. The ship turned. The torpedo found nothing but turbulence. I watched and trusted the men around me to do their jobs, which they did magnificently. That is really all a leader can do in a moment that moves faster than any decision he could make.
(The grin returning)
Besides, one of our own destroyers firing on the presidential flagship would have been a rather embarrassing way to go. I prefer to think history would have been unkind to that particular ship’s log.
Dan: Let’s talk about this ship. The USS Iowa. When you came aboard, what was your impression?
FDR: (Genuinely animated)
She is extraordinary. Nearly three football fields of American ingenuity and naval power, moving through this ocean at a speed that would surprise you for something this size. Those 16-inch guns, which are the largest in the world, and yet the thing moves. I have always believed that if you control the oceans, you control the world’s stage. The Iowa makes that belief feel less like philosophy and more like simple fact.
Dan: The ship was modified for you specifically. The elevator, the ramps, the…
FDR: (Waving his hand lightly, comfortable with the subject but not dwelling)
The bathtub, yes. (Dryly) I am reliably informed it is the only bathtub in the history of naval warfare. I find that a distinction I am entirely happy to hold. The Navy was very thoughtful about the accommodations, and I am grateful for it. One adapts, as one must. The mission is what matters, not the arrangements required to accomplish it.
Dan: And the mission is Tehran. Meeting with Churchill and Stalin. Can you tell me what’s at stake?
FDR: (Leaning forward slightly, the lightness setting aside for a moment)
Everything, in the plainest sense of the word. Winston and I have been working together for some time now — we understand each other reasonably well, though we do not always agree, which I think makes for a more honest partnership than complete agreement ever could. Stalin is a more complex proposition. A man of formidable will and, shall we say, a very direct negotiating style. But we need each other, the three of us, and all three of us know it.
What we decide in Tehran… the timing of the second front, the shape of what comes after the war… will determine not just how this conflict ends but what kind of world emerges from it. That is not a small thing to carry across the Atlantic Ocean on a battleship.
Dan: That weight doesn’t show on you.
FDR: (Quietly)
It shows where it needs to show, which is in the work. A leader who allows the weight of a thing to show on his face gives the weight to everyone around him as well. My job is to carry it so that the people… the sailors on this ship, the soldiers in the field, the families waiting at home… feel that someone has it under control. Whether I sleep as well as I appear to is, perhaps, a separate question. (The grin again) One I will not be answering today.
Dan: This ship has been called the floating White House. What is it like conducting the presidency from a battleship in the middle of the Atlantic?
FDR: (Looking around the quarters with genuine appreciation)
Clarifying, actually. The White House is a magnificent and somewhat relentless place. There is always someone at the door, always another meeting, always the accumulated noise of the machinery of government. Here, the noise is the ocean. The decisions that find me here are only the ones that truly cannot wait. There is something to be said for that kind of focus.
And there is something to be said (Gesturing toward the porthole and the Atlantic beyond it) for being reminded of the scale of things. Out there, it is very large and very indifferent. It does not care about politics or press conferences or what the opposition party thinks of my latest proposal. It simply is. I find that clarifying.
Dan: The Iowa has been called the peak of battleship technology. But there are those who say aircraft carriers are changing everything and that the era of the battleship may be passing.
FDR: (Nodding slowly, without defensiveness)
They are probably right, and the wise response to that is to say so plainly rather than argue with the evidence. Pearl Harbor told us something important about what air power can do to the greatest ships afloat. Billy Mitchell had been saying it for years, and we were slow to listen. I try not to make the same mistake twice about what the future is telling me, even when the present is still very impressive. (Patting the arm of his chair) Even when the present is this impressive.
Dan: That sounds like a philosophy that extends beyond naval strategy.
FDR: Every good philosophy does. The leaders who survive… the institutions, the organizations, the nations — are the ones that adapt. Not abandon their principles, mind you. I am not suggesting one simply blows with every wind. But the world changes, and the question is whether you change with it deliberately or whether you are changed by it against your will. I strongly prefer the former.
Dan: Last question, Mr. President. People will remember this ship for a very long time. It will carry your name in its history — the bathtub, the torpedo, the Tehran mission. What do you want them to understand about this moment, right now, crossing the Atlantic?
FDR: (A long pause, looking toward the porthole)
I want them to understand that the people who turn the great moments of history are rarely doing something that feels historic at the time. The sailors on this ship are doing their jobs. The captain who turned us into that torpedo this afternoon was simply doing what a good captain does, which is acting quickly, trusting his instincts, and protecting his crew. The men who built this ship built it to the highest standard they knew how to reach.
That is what history is actually made of. Not grand gestures, but people doing difficult things well, day after day, in circumstances that are frequently uncomfortable and occasionally terrifying.
(The full Roosevelt grin, one final time)
And sometimes involving a torpedo. Which, I cannot stress enough, is much more entertaining to survive than to contemplate in advance.
The USS Iowa continued east through the Atlantic, carrying a president and a secret toward a conference that would help shape the end of the deadliest war in human history. The torpedo that had come for them was gone, dissolved in turbulence, a footnote that might have been something far worse.
FDR would meet Churchill and Stalin in Tehran. He would be elected to a fourth term. He would not live to see the end of the war he spent everything to win.
The Iowa would go on — reactivated for Korea, reactivated again in the Cold War under Reagan, earning eleven battle stars across decades of service. And then it adapted one final time, becoming the museum it is today in the Port of Los Angeles, where millions of people walk the same decks where 2,800 sailors once lived and worked on a floating city crossing a dangerous ocean.
The leadership lesson is the one the Iowa lived more than once: great leaders adapt to changing times. The ship that was the peak of battleship power became something different when the world changed — and in becoming something different, it survived. It remained relevant. It kept serving.
Roosevelt understood that instinct. The world he was sailing toward in November 1943 was going to be a different world than the one he had inherited. His job was to help shape what it became.
He was very good at his job. 🚢⚓
Travel in Time with Dan is where travel, history, and leadership come together. Uncovering History. Inspiring Leadership.
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