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.
-—In 1980 why wouldn’t there be black officers in the Navy? There most certainly were.-—
No, you misunderstand. He’s talking about a 1940’s Congressman who was brought on board a 1980 US Carrier.
The greatest menace might be US Navy officers and crew who these days know all about diversity and gender theory and their command structure but are deficient in basic seamanship. My father, a Kings Point grad, was in the Merchant Marine and the US Navy. Even in the 1950s, he noted the poor training and unsuitability for sea duty of many Navy ship officers. The tendency of the Navy was to protect the careers of weak officers, while the Merchant Marine and private ship owners ruthlessly weeded them out.
Would we have? Doubtful.
The Lease-Lend program was not popular with the general public and keeping it going while we were in a major war of our own it would have been political suicide for Roosevelt. When you read the editorials of the time it becomes clear that after what happened in the Great War we really had no interest in getting involved in another European war. The USS Ruben James incident shows how determined we were not to get involved.
But once Hitler declared war on us the die was cast.
What would have happened if Napoleon had a platoon of Abrams tanks at Waterloo?
Nothing. Wellington's A-10's would take them out.
I think that 20mm Vulcan cannons use the same ammo.
We were always in Condition III - wartime cruising, and flight ops were intense for at least 12 hours/day, with Helos, Hoovers and Hummers going around the clock. Our refueling stations were double probe and two stations at max psi could transfer 200 gal/sec. Often we’d be launching/recovering while refueling steaming 12 kts and 180 feet from the delivery ship.
Russo-Japanese War, and “The Voyage of the Damned”
Oh. My mistake.
The C-2 is still there, but eventually to be replaced by the Osprey.
I was a midshipman on the Ike in ‘83. Same planes. Came in on a COD, left on a Sea King. Good times. Until I washed out.
“Final Countdown” had a rather good musical score composed & conducted by John Scott.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvt7NvfK4TA
Years a go a friend (who is a giant Trek fan) used to have faux debates over who would win in a war between the Federation and The Empire from Star Wars, just to irritate his wife.
Starting in the North Sea...
The film as is, has a cliche approach, and especially ending, to the question posed in the plot. It would have actually been something of a special thought experiment had the story revolved around the Nimitz actually being unleashed to it’s full potential against the Japanese fleet.
The real question of the movie to me should not have been, Is it right to change history?, but rather throw history to the wind, and let’s find out, just how much damage can a Nimitz Class Carrier (without any support ships) do to a WWII fleet? How fun would that have been to watch eh?
Instead, we get the ‘woke’ standard cliche ending, of keeping history the ‘same’, even though the movie ignores that history is already changed the moment the Nimitz interacts with the Senator and with the Jap planes. I thought it was a cowardly approach to the story honestly.
One of my favorite guilty pleasure movies. Good job as usual by Kirk Douglas (RIP). One pet peeve, when the “time warp storm” approaches the Captain (Douglas) sends his Destroyer Escorts away, I don’t see any carrier commander getting rid of escorts when facing an unknown situation.
The Nimitz would need re-supply of everything in a matter of days, especially in a fight. The ship went through the time warp alone, without its support group.
IIRC, there was a Time Tunnel episode where some 60’s era army guys went back to Roman times.
-—The film as is, has a cliche approach, and especially ending, to the question posed in the plot. It would have actually been something of a special thought experiment had the story revolved around the Nimitz actually being unleashed to it’s full potential against the Japanese fleet.——
Like with a lot of time-travel films, the plot is constructed in such a way so that the present day ends up exactly the same as it is now. It’s not as interesting as any alternatives, but you’d need a bigger budget to show the “new” reality of the present day (which you’d assume would be a lot different;how much of the film is willing to explore that?). Like many Twilight Zone episodes, the time travel experiment in this movie is set up in such a way so that its effects are temporary, or the present day reality “always” takes into account that the time travel happened but nothing major ends up different.
This particular story is difficult because if your script does want to change something, it’s changing something major that hugely effects everything that comes after. This isn’t a case of meeting your grandfather in the past and doing something that slightly changes his life, and maybe when he’s a old man he remembers you being there.
——Instead, we get the ‘woke’ standard cliche ending, of keeping history the ‘same’, even though the movie ignores that history is already changed the moment the Nimitz interacts with the Senator and with the Jap planes.——
The plot is set up in such a way that the interaction with the Senator “always” happened. I could get into a long discussion about time travel fiction and the way a lot of these things are approached. Time loops are weird, and don’t make complete narrative sense, no matter how you write them . It’s tricky.
I had a friend who used to annoy his wife by quoting Star Wars at inappropriate times.
One time she was heading to the store and asked him if he wanted anything. His reply, “What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture evaporators”.
Bay and Bruckheimer are less woke...Bruckheimer married a Kentucky shiksa and didn’t force her to convert
He’s a sensible man.....pragmatically conservative in a sea of acid drenched Orcs
I’ve met Bay via an ex girlfriend of his he’s still pals with.....most unassuming very rich man I’ve ever met
If you didn’t know you would not know
The criticism which treats him as a McDonalds of cinema stings him though...
-—Could we have kept helping the UK? Yes.Would we have? Doubtful.-—
I’m not as convinced as you are, but even if you were right, I don’t see any scenario where the Nazis successfully occupy the UK. Before Pearl Harbor, Hitler was already at war with the Soviets, too. He was in deep trouble the minute he did that, even if he didn’t realize it immediately.
The UK couldn’t have invaded France by themselves at that point, but they definitely were going to remain unconquered themselves.
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