Posted on 02/12/2020 1:07:24 PM PST by setter
I watched the 1980's movie, The Final Countdown the other day about the USS Nimitz after going through a strange storm ended up back in Dec 6, 1941.
I have some questions.
How handicapped would a modern carrier such as the Reagan or Ford be without GPS and military satellites? Isn't everything pretty much now digital versus analog? I presume there is analog backup in case satellite feeds are lost. Without GPS how could say an F-18 plug in their coordinates? Would radar still work?
Couple of other questions: Why did they take the Senator and Laurel to the island instead of Pearl? The Nimitz was going to attack the Japanese fighters anyway why did it matter?
Instead of going to Pearl to meet the Japanese why not attack the Japanese fleet?
One of my favorite movies, I would love to see a high dollar Jerry Bruckheimer style remake done of it.
-—Would WWII fuel work in a modern jet?-—
No, I think it’s different enough that you’d have to get the 1940’s Navy to somehow synthesize some with the modern formula once you were in danger of running out.
To offset GPS vulnerabilities, the US Navy has continued to maintain skill with the traditional method of determining ship location at sea through celestial navigation. In addition, the Navy is installing modern inertial guidance devices that rely on laser gyros. In short, while there would be some problems in the scenario you described, they would not cripple the Navy’s ability to operate effectively and carry out its missions.
“after that unless the Navy is in the habit of putting how-to-refine-jet-fuel texts that are detailed enough to be of quick use to 1940s”
Basically Kerosene
If a modern US aircraft carrier task force (because carriers don’t move around alone) did find itself around 300 miles northeast of Hawaii on December 6, 1941 I expect they’d quickly determine their temporal displacement.
Then they would likely contact Pearl Harbor to alert the Navy of the impending Japanese attack. This would be done convincingly with a helicopter and a flyover by F-18 Hornets.
If the Admiral in charge of the task force was audacious enough he’d have F-18 fighters perform another flyover but this time of the Japanese forces and then contact the Japanese fleet in the clear and let them know they had lost the element of surprise.
The Japanese would retreat.
The US would then be in a position to dictate peace in the Pacific and soon enough the US would dictate peace in Germany...perhaps by using a nuclear weapon on Berlin.
Russia would then be ordered to retreat from Poland and the Baltics because the task force would invoke Article V of NATO to defend our (future) NATO allies.
And millions of the best American men would have lived and the leftist scumbags who took over their jobs in the public schools could be rooted out and dealt with to prevent them from hurting our country.
One can dream, right?
-—To offset GPS vulnerabilities, the US Navy has continued to maintain skill with the traditional method of determining ship location at sea through celestial navigation.-—
Yeah. The IJN would still be destroyed without ever getting close to the modern ship to counterattack.
It’d be a slaughter.
“The Japanese WWII fleet would not be a threat to a modern US Carrier. Take the carrier to position and launch nuclear armed cruise missiles at mainland Japan until surrender.”
The US could not provoke anything until the Japanese attack first. If the Nimitz/Reagan/Ford attacked first the US would be the instigators of starting a war and possibly brought up on war crimes. The Japanese could say they were only out on manueuvers even though history books on the carrier would say otherwise.
“As for technical knowledge of her crew, think that one novel where a small US town ends up in Europe centuries ago for comparison ... only in spades.”
Remember ‘we’ all stood around and said NO way or didn’t even think about the concept of
Jules Verne “20,000 Leagues under the Sea”
Chester Gould, “Dick Tracy” and his wrist watch
Al Capp, ‘Lil Abner’ The Schmoos were supposed to be the Politicians who could turn OUR money into Their money.
George Orwell ‘1984’ a look at the future.....hmmm
Ayn Rand, most of her writings
and more, just some off the top of my head....
Who knows what Star Trek etal will bring us???
Guns of the South is another. South African radicals time travel back to the Civil War and outfit the Southern Armies with AKs and all kinds of other goodies...
In the movie, it wasn’t the Nimitz, itself, that mattered,
it was the planes that she had on-board that made a difference.
The Nimitz (all carriers) was just a floating mobile airports.
Charlie made it back? What happened to Martin? ;-)
Realize that a modern aircraft carrier would only have enough modern jet fuel as she holds
They had to fire the first shot. We try not to start wars, but to finish them...
The problem with that premise (other than the nukes) is that the modern ship would run out of ammo rather quickly. Have fun threatening Joe Stalin’s 6 million man army with a single carrier’s ammo - we’d kill them for a few hours, then our planes would be useless except for surveillance (not that it is useless, of course).
Ditto with bringing back a company of Israeli special forces to defend the Temple against the Roman assault - they probably couldn’t carry enough ammo to kill all of the Romans in 2-3 legions, and would have to count on dispersing them after killing a few hundred or a couple thousand...but Roman soldiers of that era were highly disciplined and didn’t run off so easily.
Personally, just having a sniper each plug Hitler, Stalin, Tojo and Mussolini from a mile or more away with a .50, and then be evac’d with a modern chopper covered by modern fighters would do lots to change the outcome of the War.
I read Victor Davis Hanson’s latest WW2 book, and was amazed when I read the US produced 90% of all aviation fuel used in the entire war.
Anybody declaring war on the US, Soviet Union and the British nearly simultaneously must have been a damned fool. And he was.
“...after about the 7th guy in a row boltered...”
-
What does “bolter” mean?
“Women pilots, a gay ship Captain, etc...”
One flub of the movie. The Senator who was on the armed appropriations committee never asked why there was a black officer on the bridge.
—The problem with that premise (other than the nukes) is that the modern ship would run out of ammo rather quickly.——
Yeah, eventually you’d have to find a way to finagle a modern fighter to carry 1940’s machine guns or bombs if you wanted them in the fight for any length of time.
But like I said, you’d also run into the problem of maintenance and spare parts (which you wouldn’t have) when things eventually stopped working at 100% efficiency.
You’d have to go hard and end it quickly, which they would be capable of doing.
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