I’ve been deployed on an aircraft carrier. The marines onboard aren’t guarding smoke bombs.
The movie wasn’t that great, and it was just the carrier that went back in time. Reloading wouldn’t be all that difficult. You wouldn’t have the things like smartbombs, but converting the “big dumb bombs” from that era to fit modern jets should be doable, since the carrier would have it’s own machine shop onboard. Not that you’d really need to use them all that much.
A small nuke that took out the IJN on it’s way to Pearl Harbor would pretty much end the war for the Japanese at that point. Another nuke on the mainland, and I’d bet that the Japanese would be looking to surrender almost immediately. With Germany, you’d just need to pick a time when you knew that Hitler was in a specific location which was lightly populated (something that should be possible if there’s any history books in the ship’s library), drop another small nuke, and it’s all over for them. The Italians would no doubt quickly surrender, since Il Duche wasn’t nearly the nutter that Hitler was.
Are you sure about that? Would 1941 America even notice? If America doesn’t go to war with Japan (lets assume that the diplomats get a cancel signal), then Germany doesn’t declare war on America. Japan has to concentrate on its land war with China and Britain. There’s no support for Britain against Hitler…
Hmmm… could be an interesting scenario.
I hear you, baby. There’s nothing more frustrating than bellus interruptus.
The diplomats couldn’t get a cancel signal, since there was no way for the fleet, if any of them had managed to survive, to get word to anybody, as communications weren’t that fast back then. One of the reasons that the Japanese Declaration of War didn’t make it to the White House when it was supposed to was because of how long it took to decrypt the thing. Also, FDR was chomping at the bit to get into the war, so he’d have spun the situation anyway he could to get the US riled up. Remember, folks back then weren’t used to seeing instant news footage of big events, so they would be more inclined to go along with a story saying that the US had beat back a sneak attack.
Finally, a nuke powered aircraft carrier can operate pretty much independently for long periods of time, so it’s not like they’d need support from the US in any way, so they could just do it on their own if they chose. After all, they technically wouldn’t be in the service of the US government as the ship hadn’t been commissioned in 1941. FDR would no doubt be more than willing to back anything they wanted to do, since they would have technology far in advance of anything available to the rest of the planet, and this would give the US an unbelievable edge over the rest of the planet, especially the Soviets. Also, if you found yourself in 1941 with the means to wipe out Hitler, could you honestly say that you wouldn’t seize the opportunity?
Then the scenario would be:
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Destroy Pearl Harbor Strike Force with a nuke.
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Nuke Tokyo. Then take out Osaka, Yokahama and a few others just because.
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Launch Intruder strikes on Japanese force attacking the Philippines.
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Sail around the Cape of Good Hope into the Atlantic, and launch a nuclear strike against Hitler. Forget waiting until he’s somewhere sparsely populated. Nuke Berlin.
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Nuke Moscow. With tanker support this is easy to do from the North Atlantic. IIRC, The Nimitz did time-travel with at least a couple of screen destroyers, so that takes care of any random U-boats who think they can do anything.
You could probably do all of the above without anybody ever seeing you on the high seas. The only limiting factor would be jet fuel and food. Eventually you would have to make contact with US authorities and deal for replenishment. This could also be done without ever getting within range of land-based bombers. Then…who knows?
Tuckerfan, the captain of the Nimitz (Kirk Douglas) specifically said he would consider himself under the authority of the then-CINC, President Roosevelt.
silenus, that warplan seems a bit… overambitious. And no, the Nimitz didn’t come through with any screen destroyers. Just the supercarrier itself, and no other U.S. warships.
Word.
ABE3 Zakalwe
The Phoenix got retired (or is getting retired soon)? Anyway, the Phoenix was a big, unwieldy missile designed to take out large bombers at long range - they wouldn’t be used against small, nimble fighters. More likely they’d use AMRAAMs if anything.
I’m not sure if the zeros would actually be targetable by the radar of the fighters and missiles. Targetting radars on modern jets are designed to look for things that are significantly beefier, and if I recall correctly, the zero was made up of a lot of wood and canvas too.
Most likely they’d just use guns. Modern fighters carry extremely fast firing cannons, and one or two rounds would rip up a WW2-era fighter. They also have computer assistance on the aiming. So they could simply approach the the zeros slowly (slowly for them - still faster than the zeros can travel), line up a shot, take it, and zoom off for the next pass.
They wouldn’t have encrypted a message that they intended to deliver to their enemy. They did have to translate it, and if I recall correctly, didn’t they send it through a third party - I’m thinking Sweden - because the US and Japan had broken off diplomatic relations by this time? Or… maybe I’m thinking of the attempts to surrender pre-Nagasaki.
As is to be expected of a military officer, however, given that there’s exactly zip in the Constitution or other US law to cover such a situation, it would have no legal weight whatsoever. One could rather easily make the case that the crew weren’t even citizens of the US at that point. This means, that FDR could look at Douglas and say, “Why don’t you go nuke the living shit out of the Congolese?” and if Douglas agreed, there’d be nothing from a legal standpoint that the Congress could do about it, since FDR had no legal authority to issue an order (and thus his suggestion wouldn’t be) to a foreign body that the Nimitz would be, nor would the Congress have any legal authority to stop the Nimitz from going and doing just that.
The Phoenix is retired now, not at the time at the movie.
The Zero was made of aluminum and other metals. Even if it is smaller than modern fighters, the F-14s radar would pick it up. At worst, it would have to be closer before it was detected. But since radars are meant to detect objects at extreme long range it probably would not be enough to make a significant difference.
It seems almost that it would be a waste to use those phoenix or sidewinders on Zeros. Better to ship them back to the US for R&D. The 20mm cannon on the Tomcat would indeed tear up a Zero in one short burst. But I’m not sure if they would have enough ammo to get the job done. So they would probably have to use missiles after all the cannon ammo was expended.
The declaration of war was indeed encrypted since it was sent to the japanese embassy ahead of time for THEM to deliver. The idea was that the declaration would be made before the attack but not early enough for us do anything about it. They screwed up and took too long. Therefore, the Japanese could not even claim that we were technically at war when they hit Pearl.
Tucker, you bring up an interesting point. What exactly is the citizenship of a time traveller? I guess the best practical solution is to say that you are a natural born citizen of any country in which you were or WILL BE born.
Since the captain and his crew were, as far as they knew, stuck in 1941 and expected to live out the rest of their lives from then forward, it only makes sense that they would still consider themselves citizens of the U.S. as it was at that time, and thus subject to the lawful orders of FDR. The Constitution was only shy a few amendments, from their perspective, and it was that to which they’d sworn an oath. (I understand this issue is discussed at some length in the Axis of Time series, particularly given the pervasive racial discrimination and segregation of the day, which most modern officers and sailors would find repugnant).
The citizenship of a time-traveller. Hmmm. The situation would be a bit more complicated for, say, a soldier of the Russian Federation’s Army c. 2007 going back to the Stalin era, or for a modern Chinese PLA officer going back to even before the founding of the People’s Republic. Some countries have changed out of all recognition, or no longer even exist. Should one’s loyalty under those circumstances be to the predecessor or successor state for the region you formerly served, or to its ideals (which may be sharply different from those you’re used to)?
Overambitious, my foot! With that kind of power, it would be a sin to turn it over to any authority existing in 1941.
OK, no destroyers. The plan still holds. Use more AWACS helicopters. I still stand by my “nuke anybody I don’t like” scenario, and all the Zeros in the world wouldn’t make any difference. One nuke and the whole strikeforce is vaporized anyway. Toss a nuke-tipped ship-killer into the path of the first wave and you can save a lot of cannon ammo.
It was just the carrier - and you’re missing the point of the movie. The question wasn’t whether a modern-day carrier COULD take out the PH attack force (I think it could), it was whether or not they SHOULD take out the PH attack force.
-J
It would not be a popular decision, but if I had been the captain I’d have let the attack happen. Then wait a few weeks at sea while everyone declares war on everone else. Only then would I put in at San Diego (Pearl would be in no shape for visiting ships). The tricky part would be not getting attacked by US forces on approach. Then visit the president to see how the Nimitz can best serve the war effort. Mostly as a source for R&D. Sure, they wouldn’t be able to build microchips for a few years, but transistor technology would still be a huge jump. And we’d might be able to build something akin to the F-86 Sabre after a year and half, hopefully. That would be more than sufficient to take on anything in the air and we’d have an industrial base cranking them out by the hundreds.
I’d save the nukes for when things were getting close to an end (Hopefully mid '43) and the axis needed one last bit of persuasion to surrender. As nice as it would be to sic those Tomcats on Japan, it would not be pratical in the long term or maybe even the short term. Without the modern day industrial base to support them, those jets have a very limited operational life. The Japanese forces might take heart that we were losing our will to fight after a few weeks when the “super planes” stopped attacking.
Yes, but how many die in the meantime? Pop a few nukes on Japan and the war’s over. Ditto Germany. Then you go for the R&D.
Right. Remember that it was the shock and anger over the attack on Pearl Harbor the propelled the US into the war and onto the world stage.
(It’s been suggested the Winston Churchill knew of the attack from codebreaking and witheld the info from the US for fear the Americans would “screw it up” and cause the Japanese to back off, thus keeping the US out of the war.)
Pity they were not carrying AIM26 Nuclear AA missiles. That would really upset a flight of japanese bombers far out to sea, and no-one would be really any the wiser.
Si
I’m not sure that this scenario is realistic. (Yes, it’s more than a little silly to talk about realism when talking about time travel, but…) The Japanese in particular were not entirely reasonable about the concept of defeat. In our time line, even though people were starving in great numbers because the economy was in a shambles come 1945 there were still military officers who felt that surrender was unconscionable. I don’t believe that a Japan with an intact economy would be in a position to even consider surrender - no matter what miracles of modern technology might appear from the Nimitz’ supplies and crew.
As for Germany, I think that in many ways it’s fair to say that Hitler was so far gone into megalomania that he wouldn’t have been able to even imagine surrender. For any reason.
Then, of course, my understanding is that the Atlantic Conference also was where Roosevelt and Churchill had established the policy of planning to demand unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.
In short, I don’t think any number of bombed out cities would have convinced Germany or Japan to surrender unconditionally, and the Allies would not have accepted any other kind of surrender.
I’m with other posters in this thread who’ve suggested that using the Nimitz’ crew and facilities for R&D would be a far more effective means to shorten the war. In particular, use the Mk 48 torpedos that the Nimitz would have onboard to give the US submarine fleet a torpedo that effing worked before 1943.
Maybe. Maybe not. It takes a long, drawn-out fight to really beat an opponent into true defeat. Cutting off the head of the Japanese Empire might result in more problems than you want. You might find that your fighting a Hydra instead of a dragon. Hell, even when we got their *own Emperor * to tell them to cool it, there were some holdouts. The Japanese army was spread throughout China and the far east. Would you nuke China, Korea, Vietnam and many of those small islands? That would sure make the post-war world happy towards us. How many nukes did the Nimitz have anyway? Not that anyone can answer that last question. You have to save a few so that you can build more without having to rely on those pesky, politically unreliable theoretical physicists. AND YOU WANT SOME LEFT OVER TO SHOW MR. STALIN.