So the captain of the mighty USS Nimitz decides he has to interfere in the timeline and stop the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I don’t remember the movie all that clearly, but was the plan to intercept the Japanese aircraft once they were already in the air, or to attack the Japanese fleet and sink it before the air wing was even launched? Could an F-14 Tomcat effectively fight Japanese propeller-driven aircraft c. 1941? Tomcats have a single machine gun, IIRC, but I wonder if air-to-air missiles would be ineffective and the Tomcat would be too fast and at risk of stalling by engaging at the Zero’s speed?
The gun’s a cannon, which is deadly when it connects and has a long range. The Tomcat wouldn’t have to engage at the Zero’s speed: it could sweep back and forth so the Zeros could not effectively engage them. Especially since it does not have to worry about climbing, having a vertical flight capability.
The Wiki of the Zero even states that
worked in real life.
I agree. Faster aircraft use slashing attacks to zoom in on their prey and then zip away. Then they can turn at their leisure and come back for another pass.
The missiles might work. The radar guided ones certainly. I don’t know if a radial engine gave off enough heat for a heat-seeker to lock on to.
I speculate that the Tomcats would first engage the zeros from behind at long range with the radar guided missiles. This gives near-certain kills at no risk to the Tomcats. Especially since the F-14 was designed to simultaneously engage with missiles up to six targets at beyond visual range.
The Phoenix is a radar guided missile. It would’t care about the Zero’s speed.
In the movie it looked to me like one of the Tomcats was on the edge of a stall and corrected it no more than 2000 feet above the ocean. Since the Zero actually used its exhaust to add a little extra thrust, Sidewinders would have no trouble locking on, and newer models of the missile can intercept the target from the front without having to get a lock on the engine heat anyway.
It has been a while since I have seen this flick, but I seem to recall a fleet strike. (A6 Intruder bombers are shown carrying strike packages. You dont use the A6 in an A2A role…)
I would argue that an A6, loaded correctly could compete just fine against a WW2 era Zero.
My memory is that they went after the zeros. They were about to fire when the recall was ordered.
The Zeros were irrelevant. Except for the two they splashed after they strafed the civilian yacht, the Tomcats and Intruders were targeted after the dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The only way a Zero could damage a battleship would be to kamikaze into it. There was no need to shoot them down.
That said, I always saw the strike force from the Nimitz as going after both the first wave and the Japanese carriers.
The ending of this movie could probably go into that other thread about bad endings. I am 100% positive that if this movie was made this decade we would have seen that massive engagement between the 1941 era IJN and the 1980’s era USN. The costs for such a battle back in the early 80’s would have been hugely prohibitive, so I am sure it was in the script discussions until the issue of cost was raised. Then upon returning to the '80’s there would have been a twist ending, a lesson on how good intentions often go awry (returning to port the Nimitz is met by a squadron of Kriegsmarine (Nazi) or Russian navy ships…).
The technique is called Boom & Zoom. I’m sure LSLguy et al will be here soon enough to explain in vastly better detail than I could.
It would be a difficult fight. The jets wouldn’t be in much danger from the old fighters, but with around 60 modern jets of all types against 183 Japanese aircraft in the first wave, 167 in the second wave, a third wave standing in reserve and fighters providing cover for the Japanese carriers they would have their hands full. The sheer volume of targets would be difficult to handle. Maybe fly by at supersonic speeds and inflict damage and confusion with the shockwaves and break up the formations?
I don’t think it would be that difficult. The Intruders could take out the carriers without ever getting involved with the Japanese CAP. Anti-ship missles, you know. The Tomcats could then deal with the attack waves at their leisure. It’s not like they would be pressing the attack on Pearl home after they were discovered, and without any carriers to land on, the whole attack wave would be a total loss. The F-14s could splash the dive bombers with Sidewinders, and then take out the torpedo bombers with cannon. Then back to the Nimitz, a quick re-arm, and a return strike to take care of the rest of the Japanese fleet.
Could the Nimitz employ tactical nukes to down entire waves of zeroes? Seems to me the EMP alone could take out a few dozen formations.
I may be wrong about this, but AIUI EMP takes out electronics, not electrical systems. And, my understanding is that the Zero, and most other Japanese war planes of WWII were largely mechanically controlled. Compasses and radio would be affected. Any pilots or air crew unfortunate enough to be looking at the airburst would be blinded. Beyond that, the aircraft would continue to work quite well, I believe. The physical effects of an airburst, could be devastating, depending how well the Japanese pilots can deal with the turbulence, and heat effects. However, that’s seperate from EMP. And a far more limited area of effect.
For a look at a well-researched fictional look at the effects of EMP on WWII era technology take a look at the first of Harry Turtledove’s WorldWar series, In the Balance. Short version, it did not do the invaders the good they expected.
Given the ethos of the Japanese military at the time, perhaps taking out the carriers would have had no effect on the actual assault itself?
The EMP effect would be wasted on the Japanese as their aircraft would have been equiped with tubes (transistors not having been invented as of yet). There’s a slim possibility that it could short out the generators onboard the planes but a much better use for a nuke would be to set it off underwater near the IJN fleet. One of them going off would probably take out 99 - 100% of the fleet. The US did a test shortly after WW II where they set a small nuke off underwater to see what it would do to ships in the area. The results were waaaaaay bigger than anyone expected and the military scrubbed further planned tests because they were totally unprepared to deal with how big the effect was (In the film footage of the events, you can see tiny black dots rising up in the mushroom cloud. The dots are ships that had been anchored in the area.).
Putting a modern aircraft carrier up against the IJN fleet of WW II would be like dynamiting puppies in a barrel. Actually, it’d probably be closer to nuking puppies in a barrel, the Japanese would be so outclassed.
The US Navy (ostensibly) does not equip its carriers with nuclear weapons, as part of their standard ordinance.
IIRC the actual wording there, Bosda, is that the USN can neither confirm nor deny special munitions are part of the normal deployment load-out for carriers. Which isn’t the same thing as a saying that the USN doesn’t normally deploy nukes with it’s carriers.
What I’m trying to remember is whether there’s an Air-to-Surface missile in the US arsenal that’s nuke capable. The best I can come up with is the knowledge that there are nuke-tipped ASROCs, but I can’t recall if those are air capable munitions.
Good point. The Operation Crossroads Baker test at Bikini Atoll (the one you’ve mentioned) detonated a fairly small bomb–21 kilotons–only 90 feet underwater. Anything not sunk immediately would be contaminated and there’d probably be lots of longer-term casualties depending on the exact radiation exposure.
I haven’t seen the movie–is it just the carrier or the entire battle group? I guess the entire battle group wouldn’t be as fun. Even if most of the fighting was done by the carrier’s planes intercepting incoming dive and torpedo bombers, the destroyers, Aegis cruisers, guided missile destroyers, and Los Angeles-class subs could do an awful lot of damage. Of course, once you’ve used all the specialized modern weaponry, how do you reload from the WWII-era US Navy if needed?
Oh, I guess that is a group of today. Well, just edit the components of the group for the time the movie was made as needed.