So I recently came upon a YouTube clip here where apparently the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack fleet has been transported through time to modern Hawaii. (I’m actually not familiar with what movie this comes from). Two F-14s have been dispatched and after initially “playing” with some Japanese Zeros they’re finally given the job of blowing them away. I’m wondering if due to the extreme differences in power and speed between the two types of planes if the F-14s could have buzzed the zeros so close so as to force them down with just their jet wash.
Or more to the point let’s say the jets were not armed when they encountered the Zeros, what would be the best way, if any, of forcing those planes down without firing upon them?
The movie is The Final Countdown. And you have it backwards. The Nimitz was transported back to 1941.
I know we’ve discussed the film at length, but I’m not finding the threads in CS right now. IIRC, the consensus was that yes, an F-14 could slap down a Zero with jet wash, especially on afterburner. As for an unarmed F-14, I’d always go for the “drop into a stall 5 feet above the Zero and piledrive it” approach. The size differential and structural strength of each plane aren’t even in the same ballpark.
Umm, that really sounds like a Darwin award waiting to happen. I mean, sure, the F-14 is more soundly built, but deliberately colliding two aircraft? Remember what happened when a cesna hit a 737? Everybody died, despite the 737 being far more soundly built.
I guess it’s a tradeoff, if the zero is on a bombing or strafing mission to kill people on the ground, I guess you can risk your life and your aircraft and maybe survive for a sure kill on the zero or not.
I’m not suggesting the f-14 ram the zero just that its engines could create an air flow which would prevent the zero from continuing to fly. I imagine the pressure created by a super sonic jet with afterburners running could potentially rip the wings off the more fragile zero.
Worlds of difference between an unplanned strike between a private plane and a passenger jet and a planned impact between a modern fighter jet and a flimsy WW2 prop plane that is less than half the F-14s size and 1/12th its mass. I didn’t say “ram the sucker.” I said “get right above it and drop.”
The best bet would be dump it with jet wash anyway.
Fair enough. Does anyone have any idea what the rough process is to get an aircraft on the ground actually loaded with something to shoot with?
I mean, assuming they have a clear order to do it. Is the ammo bunker typically far from the flight line or right next to it? How long does it really take to grab a missile or a box of 20 or 30 mm cannon rounds and get back to the aircraft?
I mean, obviously that’s going to depend hugely on the specific base, I’m just wondering what a typical “maximum effort” scramble load would really take. Can you mount a missile in 5 minutes? How long does the ammo feed usually take for cannon rounds? Is one faster than the other?
It takes some time, even on a carrier. I’d think the quickest load-out would be for the cannon, but I’m sure folks will be along shortly to tell me an AIM-9 could be railed much quicker.
While at sea, a naval vessel will often undergo underway replenishment, with all kinds of ropes and hoses and so forth going between two ships as things are passed to the receiving ship. This is how an aircraft carrier restocks its supply of JP5 fuel for the planes.
As one can imagine, this is a bit of a challenging operation, fraught with navigational dangers while at the whims of the sea. There is a standard procedure for casting off all of the lines and releasing the hoses in an emergency–known as an Emergency Breakaway.
In order to keep the crews sharp, this is the standard way in which the refueling/replenishing process is terminated: when everything is done, the sailors hear a voice come on the 1MC ¶ announcing “Emergency breakaway! Emergency breakaway!” and the two crews carry out their emergency procedures with vigor.
As the emergency breakaway is being performed, it is tradition that they play the ship’s theme song on the 1MC. I don’t know what they use in most ships, but the Enterprise used the obvious Star Trek theme, and my ship, the Nimitz, used…
…the theme from The Final Countdown, with its rich strains rising up on the loudspeakers as the two vessels parted ways.
It is a pretty good tune to accompany such an interesting military action.
They would show the film on the ship’s cable TV channel upon leaving port and returning home.
This is my thinking. Might not be easy but with enough altitude recovery should be possible with an experienced pilot.
It’s structural damage that the jet would have to inflict to ensure a take down. And given the trickiness of hitting the right location in front while having a big enough speed difference, it might not be that easy.
Drop the tail hook (a very sturdy aircraft component) and pass by close enough to snag it on … something. I imagine that would have a decidedly unbalanced outcome.
I hope the OP doesn’t mind if I tag on a very similar question: in at least 2 Jack Higgins books (notably The Eagle has Landed but he used exactly the same scenario in another work) a pilot of a slow and unmanoeuverable plane manages to evade (and indeed kill) a fighter by waiting until the latter was right on their tail at a very low altitude above the sea, then suddenly dropping their flaps. The fighter pilot, presumably caught out by the sudden change in speed, crashes into the water in attempting to turn out of the way. Does anyone know if such a plan would have any hope of success in reality? Kind of the opposite of the OP’s question.
It should be a piece of cake really. You have to remember the Zeros are flown by fighter pilots. Unusual attitudes, stalls, spins, aerobatics, it’s bread and butter to them. The worst a wake turbulence encounter could do is flip the Zero on its back. In Top Gun, Maverick’s F-14 is put into a flat spin by another F-14 because it disrupted the airflow to one of its jet engines which caused asymmetric thrust and a large yaw. Even allowing for that to be realistic (it’s not), a Zero’s single piston engine is not susceptible to that kind of airflow disruption and if it was shut-down there would be no yaw because it only has the one engine.
Agreed. They might try the V2 tactic of flying along side and whacking a wingtip with the F-14’s wingtip. Pretty risky, and the Zero’s pilot isn’t just going to sit there and let it happen.
It turns out that during the filming of The Final Countdown - which featured actual F-14s mingling with replica Zeroes - the turbulence from the tomcats was pretty violent:
Since we’re on this hypothetical, if the Tomcat swooped in on a danger-close arc w/ afterburners on would the flame out the back do anything to the zero or is it too fractional a second to cause combustion?
I don’t think there would be enough exposure time to cause any serious damage.
It’s an interesting scenario. Realistically, the F-14 has to smack the Zero down fast, because otherwise the jet is totally out-maneuvered. As long as the Zero pilot keeps the F-14 in sight, it can fly rings around it.