Fireball and siver object viewed from U.S. Navy aircraft carrier

While a crewman onboard U.S.S. John F. Kennedy [CV-67] during the late spring, early summer of '77 while on the flight deck checking on our aircraft I saw what I initially thought was a meteor coming down at approximately a 45 degree angle.  The sky was clear with no moon and no clouds, there was no glow from the coastline of Florida and the ship was operating with red lights only above deck. 
I called my crew away from the aircraft to look at this thing, which continued down on it's initial trajectory off of our starboard quarter.  The object was very high, about the size of a cigarette ember held at arm's length.
As it got lower, we could plainly see that the front was white, the middle orange, and the tail a flickering red.  Then a contrail became visible, which we took to indicate it was in the atmosphere.
After 5 or so minutes a fog bank formed in that part of the sky with this object behind it, resembling a streetlight as seen through a heavy fog.  
At this point, a laser-thin beam of light blue suddenly appeared, aiming back up the way this object came from. After 2 more minutes, everything started fading away, the glow diminished, the beam of light faded and the fog dissipated to where stars could be seen again in that portion of the sky. 
Then, at an angle approximately 30 degrees above the horizon, a dull silver colored object about 3 times the size of the largest star dropped down out of the bottom of the fog bank, shot forward paralleling our course on the starboard side of the ship then angled back upwards and was gone in literally the blink of an eye. 
Looking about the deck, I noticed between 50-75 personnel standing and watching this display. 
Years later I encountered one of my former crewmembers who was there that night and who asked me to please tell his wife that we saw what we saw because she thought he was nuts.
Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate.  PD