Seapower in Culture: Final Countdown
By In 1980, the USS Nimitz sails out of Pearl Harbor and into a strange storm. On the other side, the crew finds itself in December 6, 1941. After coming to terms with the basics of the situation, Captain Yelland (played by Kirk Douglas) decides to destroy the Japanese strike force before it can attack the Pacific Fleet at Pearl. However, the storm returns just before the Nimitz’ airgroup encounters the first Japanese wave, and the Captain decides to take the ship back into (what he presumes to be) the present without changing history. Martin Sheen plays Warren Lasky, an annoying civilian contractor dispatched by DoD to observe ship operations.
And thus, Final Countdown. Alas, while time travel is certainly a fun plot device, the film doesn’t really develop any memorable character-driven conflict. A crew mutiny scenario is mooted, but then left to lay fallow. The end resolves the basic plot conflict (Nimitz returns home), but opens a host of other questions (how does the Captain explain the loss of a helicopter and nine crewmen, including his Chief of Air Group? Does he try to lie, or just put everything on the table?). Dialogue is by and large terrible (although I acknowledge the difficulty of writing plausible dialogue about the situation). The acting isn’t particularly good, even from Sheen and Douglas, because they simply aren’t given much to do. Another scene of the major characters working through the implications of what they were about to do would have added to character depth and given the principals a chance to work, even if (I hesitate to add) it had come at the expense of reviewing the weapons load procedures on an A-6 Intruder.
Final Countdown is interesting largely because of the role played by the Navy in its production. Filming was conducted on board USS Nimitz, and numerous naval aircraft were depicted in flight, landing, etc. In an important sense, Final Countdown was part of the Navy’s post-Vietnam effort to control its own brand. Top Gun would represent a later, and much more successful effort in this regard.
Theory of Seapower
There’s a lot to this movie that’s fun for the naval aviation fanatic. We get to see Hawkeyes, Tomcats, Intruders, and Corsairs engage in a variety of different missions, including recon, intercept, air refueling, and strike. The sheer amount of time spent launching, arming, fueling, and recovering aircraft is remarkable. The most memorable sequence from the film comes when a pair of F-14s intercept a pair of Japanese Zeros. There’s not much to say about this sequence beyond the obvious; it’s incredibly awesome, up to and including the point at which the F-14s splash the Zeros. From a dramatic point of view, the basics of carrier operations take up a lot of screen time, and I can appreciate why the film wasn’t particularly successful.
What implications for seapower? Because the focus lies squarely on carrier operations, this is less a film about airpower than, say, Top Gun. However, it doesn’t really have much to say about seapower. The utility of the Nimitz is evaluated solely in terms of its ability to stop the Japanese strike, up to and including destruction of Nagumo’s task force (this is presumably the purpose of the A-6s and A-7s in the strike force). Sheen suggests that Nimitz has the opportunity to change history, and right “all the mistakes” of the past half century, but there’s no clear theory of how Nimitz would effect that change. Destroying the Japanese military? Giving the US the means the break the Soviet Union? Giving the US a critical early technological advantage?
Final Countdown is really more about civil-military relations than about seapower. After losing communications with the rest of the world, Captain Yelland naturally wonders whether nuclear war has precipitated the event. In this sense, the idea of an aircraft carrier captain being forced to act without any guidance from either USN or civilian authorities is not absurd. Once the situation becomes clear, Yelland reaffirms the supremacy of civilian authority, arguing that the crew of Nimitz is responsible for the defense of the United States past, present, and future. The extant President of the United States would surely desire to use the power of the Nimitz to defeat the Japanese task force. But on the other hand, while we could expect that President Roosevelt would have few qualms about ordering Nimitz into action, I suspect that civilian authorities in 1980 would be exceedingly ill tempered about the notion of transforming world history. Thus, even a decision to abide by perceived civilian authority would require Captain Yelland to make a critical decision.
Given the confidence that the Yelland and Lasky have regarding the gravity of the decision to engage the Japanese, however, we can assume that they believe Nimitz intervention in the war would be decisive, although the film doesn’t work through that belief in any detail. Moreover, given that the first action of Nimitz would be to intercept and defeat a Japanese attack, we can also assume that they believe that Nimitz decisiveness would to at least some extent come in operational terms. Unfortunately, all we can do for most of this is assume; the characters have a few simple, not terribly interesting conversations about their role, but give little indication of how they would conduct the actual intervention of the Nimitz in World War II.
The Fun Part
Now the fun part; how would the presence of Nimitz affect World War II? We can start with the assumption that Nimitz could have destroyed the Nagumo’s carrier task force and its aircraft without great difficulty. While the F-14s would have run out of missiles before shooting down the entire first wave, they could certainly have disrupted the attack and done further damage with their cannon. The A-6s and A-7s carried enough ordinance to destroy the six Japanese carriers, although to my understanding they would not have carried Harpoon missiles; the bombing would have to be straight and level. But then they’d get a number of chances at it, given that the A-6s could carry a lot of bombs and considerably outranged the Japanese aircraft.
Beyond that the USN would face some interesting choices. Integrating Nimitz into the fleet would have taken a while (“We’re here from the future!”) and it’s not obvious what the most efficient way to use Nimitz would have been. One option would be to have Nimitz spearhead a task force to turn back and defeat the IJN invasions of the Dutch East Indies. With history driven intel, the obvious technological superiority of Nimitz, and the rest of the USN carrier fleet, the IJN would have been hard press to carry out operations with any degree of success. Nimitz would have been nearly invulnerable to Japanese air attack, assuming that A-7s and F-14s could be kept in the air for CAP. A successful attack would require waves of aircraft and suicidal tactics (press forward until Nimitz and her CAP ran out of missiles), and even then might not disable the carrier. A Japanese submarine could certainly give Nimitz a very bad day, but against sufficient escort and modern ASW, getting into firing position would be difficult.
An alternative use of Nimitz would involve trying to end the war right away by sustained air attacks on Tokyo. Nimitz would have carried a dozen or so A-6s, which in a sustained operation could have dropped a lot of bombs on Tokyo. The rest of the USN would either support Nimitz or concentrate on the DEI invasions. I’m no fan of strategic bombing, but on the heels of the sudden destruction of the IJN carrier fleet, the likely impending defeat of the IJN in SE Asia, and an essentially unstoppable bombing campaign over the capital, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising to see the Japanese sue for peace. Of course, even the Nimitz couldn’t stay on station indefinitely; eventually ordnance and jet fuel would run short, forcing Nimitz to retire (potentially for an extended period of time).
In a longer conflict, complications ensue. The USN of 1942 was not the USN of 1944, even without Pearl, and would have been hard pressed to carry out offensive operations in the Western Pacific. There was no fleet of B-29s to bomb Japan, and the prospect of fighting the Japanese on mainland Asia wouldn’t look any better in this scenario than it did in real life. The USN probably would have been able to cut Japan’s economic lifeline, however, eventually rendering the Japanese military toothless. This could have rendered the question moot from a strategic point of view; badly wounded and without oil, Japan could be hemmed in by extant USN and USAAF forces, allowing the US to concentrate more heavily on the ETO.
And what to do with Nimitz in such a campaign? The F-14 squadrons would prove devastating in any tactical situation, but amounted to only 36 aircraft. As the F-14 was notoriously unreliable, use of the fighter in support of the Combined Bomber Offensive would likely have led to some attrition, especially given a shortage of spares and jet fuel (although I assume the latter could be remedied without great difficulty). Retooling American industry to produce either missiles or more F-14s would have been a complicated undertaking, manageable in the medium but probably not the short term. Of course, the E-2 Hawkeyes could have made a big difference in the air war in Europe, and the A-7s could would also have proven extremely capable air superiority fighters against the Luftwaffe of the time.
The other big question (which Final Countdown does not touch upon) would be the availability of nuclear weapons onboard Nimitz. I simply don’t know enough about nuclear weapons policy on USN carriers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it wouldn’t be terribly surprising to find that Nimitz carried nukes. This would pose very interesting challenges; with sufficient weapons, Nimitz very likely could end both the Pacific and European wars before the end of 1942. Explaining the power of nuclear weapons to Roosevelt would be a challenge, as would convincing him not to use them, if Yelland and co. were even interested in going that direction.
Conclusion
Final Countdown is a fun movie for people who love naval aviation. The scene of the F-14s splashing the Zeros is itself worth the price of admission. As a film, it’s lacking; the characters aren’t strong enough to support the plot. From a seapower point of view, the film’s assumptions are incomplete and poorly specified. The Navy devoted considerable resources to making this film look good; most of the extras were Nimitz crewmen. Exchanging three minutes of shipboard operations for three minutes of conversation about the actual role that Nimitz might play in a war would have been more than worthwhile from both dramatic and public relations points of view. And really, you generally hire Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen for a reason; it wouldn’t have killed the director (Hollywood vet Don Taylor) to give them a few more minutes of conversation. A work about time travel is neither inherently absurd nor without potential lessons, and it would have been better if Taylor had allowed the premise some space to breathe.