If you’re anything like me, despite the ridiculous premise, you enjoyed the movie The Final Countdown. This low budget Navy flick of 1980 has a mysterious storm take the USS Nimitz back in time to just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack that drew the U.S. into World War II.
Fun low budget Sci-Fi alternate history fiction at its finest.
The plot goes through the typical Sci-Fi tropes of ‘altering history’ and the quandaries of what is moral, ethical, and physically relevant all while building up for a one sided smackdown of modern (1980’s) fighter and bomber aircraft supported by the tech suite of a nuclear carrier.
And in the end they are saved the question by the return of the storm which sweeps them back to 1980. Timeline preserved. Audience who wanted to see F14’s tear apart Zero’s… blue balled.
But… What would a super carrier battle group taking on the whole Imperial Japanese navy actually look like? Would the weapon and tech superior force be able to dominate the Pacific? It’s a harder question once you realize that cool weapons and high tech systems require a logistic system and maintenance. When everything is working, the modern complement of F/A-18’s, helicopters, and command and control aircraft would crush their AO and any Imperial Japanese ships therein. When those things start changing the overwhelming force advantage changes because bringing those systems to bear becomes harder.
Watch the video to find out.
