Stormfront Part II

I Am Spartacus · Post by **I Am Spartacus** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:49 am

The alien Nazis may have been technologically advanced, but they displayed extremely poor strategic and tactical judgement in this episode...

Why would they attach their plasma cannon to JU-87 Stukas? They are ground attack planes, and quite poor ones at that. They had extremely poor maneuverability and rate of climb, and would not have been able to engage in aerial combat with any degree of success, regardless of the skill of the pilots. That probably doesn't matter if the cannon were intended to be used in a ground attack role, but it still calls into question the decision to send them to intercept Enterprise. Why not attach them to aircraft capable of fulfilling a dual role, such as ME-109, FW-190, or even ME-110?

All Enterprise would have to have done to get past them is accelerate to as little as 500 km/h. It looks like they used models (CGI...ahem) of early model JU-87 A/B Stukas, meaning a top speed of less than 400 km/h. Unless they were deployed somewhere immediately adjacent to Manhattan, they would not have been able to intercept Enterprise at all.

Also, in the scene we see Enterprise fire her phase cannon in multiple directions, including downward. She is flying over Midtown Manhattan at that point, which would have resulted in horrific destruction on the city streets. It was an alternate timeline and everything was conveniently restored at the end, so they could have wiped all of New York off the map, but IIRC T'Pol didn't know that the timeline would have been restored.

Sorry for the nitpicking, I just watched this episode today and these things struck me for some reason. Also, I suffer from insomnia and I hope satisfying my inner nerd will help me sleep.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:55 am

This can all be summed up with,
The writters are idiots.

Why would they attach their plasma cannon to JU-87 Stukas?

They probably just liked the design and thought it would be cool to have the fighting the Enterprise.

In unuverse I have no idea how to explain this.

DBS · Post by **DBS** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:27 pm

Rochey wrote:This can all be summed up with,
The writters are idiots.

Seriously, though. Maybe the alien Nazis did not expect to fight a starship, so they could be most effective against the ground vehicles. (also, the JU-87) was able to heft fairly large weapons for its size; I remember hearing about them mounting big groundbased anti-aircraft guns for use against Soviet tanks when the Panzer's couldn't make a dent in the T-34's armour.)

When Enterprise showed up, they were the only aircraft that mounted the weapons, so that's what they used!

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:00 pm

That would make sense. I think thats the most likely explaination.

I Am Spartacus · Post by **I Am Spartacus** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:51 am

But there's no way a JU-87 would have been able to engage in aerial combat. It simply isn't possible. They possess nowhere near sufficient performance to engage even poor quality fighters of the era, and certainly not Enterprise.

As I said, their speed, acceleration, and climb abilities are too poor to have been able to intercept anything, let alone a starship capable of travelling at several thousand kilometres per hour in an atmosphere. They simply could not have done it, even if ordered to.

DBS · Post by **DBS** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:03 am

Yeah, I see that. But since the aforementioned idiot writers had that combat happen anyway, Enterprise must not have been going faster than your average JU-87. When we see her fly over, it only looks like a few hundred KPH at most. Maybe the NX class doesn't have very good atmospheric performance.

Especially bad since the natural reaction would be to speed up to get the Stukas off of them, which wouldn't be hard to do, one would think.

So thanks to bad writing, we have a NX-class starship with the atmospheric performance of basically a Fairey Swordfish

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:50 am

Seriously though, did no one involved in that episodes point out to the writers that Stukas are for gound attacks?
Putting them on a Messerschmit (yes, yes, I murdered the spelling) would make much more sense.
I haven't seen that episode in a while so why didn't the Enterprise not just leave the atmosphere, or just speed up?

Post by **IanKennedy** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:52 am

Rochey wrote: I haven't seen that episode in a while so why didn't the Enterprise not just leave the atmosphere, or just speed up?

Because they had to destroy something on the ground and had problems with the weapons so they couldn't do it from orbit. Or something like that.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:54 am

Ah, plot device. Thanks.

I Am Spartacus · Post by **I Am Spartacus** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:22 am

Yes, they did have to slow down to 200 km/h to fire accurately on the facility and destroy it, but there's a number of problems with that.

1) Enterprises phase cannons, as we saw in (I forget the episode, the one where Archer asks for a little off the top and gets the whole mountain blown apart), are capable of tremendous amounts of firepower. They know the location of the facility, so why not just blast at the general area with as powerful a beam as possible once Archer and Trip have beamed aboard? It's not as if the damage done will be permanent, it's all undone at the end of the Temporal Cold War.

2) Surely a spacecraft 200 years more advanced than the planes around it is capable of tremendous acceleration? Can they not slow down for just a few seconds, beam up Archer and Trip, fire, and speed away before any of the 1937 era Stukas can intercept?

Even still, problems remain. The Stukas could not have made it into position to engage the Enterprise unless T'Pol flew it straight into them, which is not inconceivable since they didn't know about the plasma cannon armament.

I know why, the writers were stupid, didn't do their research, and assumed that most people aren't nitpick finding tightwads like myself. Still, it just bothers me a bit.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:01 pm

For 1 - the facility was in the middle of New York. Levelling everything within a few miles would have caused massive civilian casualties. Not an option.

For 2 - Remember the NX-01 was damaged to hell at this point. And it just wasn't designed for travelling in the atmosphere. If it goes flying round at Mach 1 it's quite possible that they would rip a nacelle off or something.

I Am Spartacus · Post by **I Am Spartacus** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:07 pm

Right but the timelime was restored at the end, so they could have wiped all of New York off the map and it would have eventually not happened.

And it still doesn't make sense to have Stukas engage in aerial combat, not one bit.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 1:29 pm

Did they know the timeline would be restored?

And I doubt anyone will dispute the stupidity of Stukas in aerial combat.

The Wormhole · Post by **The Wormhole** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:11 pm

You know, I got to say, when I saw Storm Front Part 2, the use of Stukas to fight the NX-01 didn't bother me. But that's mainly because I'm not too into history, had no idea what a Stuka was. I simply bought it as Nazi plane suped up to fight the NX-01. Clearly I'm the type of person they hoped would be in the audience.

But what did bother me was the end when the NX-01 returned to 22nd century Earth and they're greeted by that massive fleet. Where the hell were they in Zero Hour when the Xindi weapon was bearing down on Earth? In Zero Hour Earth was essentially defenseless. There's apparently no kind of orbital defense network, and there were no ships within the solar system. Except for when Shran showed up. But now suddenly there's a massive fleet of numerouse Starfleet ships and even quite a few Vulcan ships? That made no sense to me.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 4:51 pm

Archer wouldn't know that the timeline was going to be restored - that wasn't what he was aiming for. So yes, he would be concerned about collateral damage.

As for the Stukas. Remember the aliens were building weapons to help the germans win the war - or to serve their own purposes, in fighting off Earth foes. They had them in mind as ground attack units, most likely, and the Stuka was pretty good at that in its day. Then they find themselves up against a Starship. I'm sure they would have loved to have some ME-109s to send. Hell I'm sure they would have loved to have a clutch of F-22s on hand. But they hadn't known they would be in this battle so they didn't have them. They went with what they did have.