The Final Countdown

[Graham Kennedy]

I was watching the old 80s movie The Final Countdown the other day, and it got me wondering.

For those who haven't seen it : the premise is that a strange electrical weirdness appears one day and sweeps over the USS Nimitz, depositing the ship back into the year 1941 on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and in that vicinity. After they finally accept where and when they are, they realise that they have the opportunity to actually stop the attack and avoid the massacre. Some argue for the preservation of the timeline, but the Captain ultimately decides to go ahead and take on the Japanese. Unfortunately, the electrical weirdness returns and sweeps the ship back into the present before they can do so, and history plays out as before (minus one or two small changes).

It's not a great film, though it's kinda interesting, but it got me to thinking; what if the weirdness hadn't returned? The USS Nimitz is in 1941. The ship proceeds to launch a bunch of Harpoons and sinks the entire Japanese fleet. My question is... what happens next? How would history play out?

Without the "day which will live in infamy", would the US even have come into World War II? Or would war have broken out anyway and the US would have just won in the Pacific all the sooner? Would the US still have declared war on Germany? If the Nimitz really wanted to it could have sailed to Europe and wiped out the German U Boat fleet in dock... hell, the ship probably carried some nukes, they could have used those to end the war in both the Pacific and Europe in short order right there in 1941.

So how do you see it playing out?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Because someone has to

Well, they wipe out the Japanese fleet, but then what? Would they go to Pearl Harbor and try to convince them of the truth? It wouldn't be too hard. The Nimitz would eventually start needing supplies, too. I suppose they could help jumpstart certain technologies.

It's one hell of a game changer, that's for sure.

[Graham Kennedy]

In looking around online I find there's a set of sci fi books on a very similar theme, but in this case a whole multi-national task force is transported back from 2019 to just before the Battle of Midway. What makes it sound interesting is that the ships belong to different nations, including some Japanese ones, so you end up with some future tech trying to stay neutral, some on one side, and some on the other.

[Tsukiyumi]

Just watched it; good flick.

Yeah, Nimitz would deep six the Japanese fleet no problem. The real trouble would be resupply, at least for the aircraft.

I wonder what, exactly, the government would do with Nimitz and her crew... try to use the ship to fight until it ran out of "modern" ammo, or try to reverse-engineer the hardware and lock up the crew somewhere to be interrogated?

[Graham Kennedy]

The ship would be a priceless military asset in those days, and only that crew could operate it; I'd think they would use it.

Once it's out of ammo... I wonder. Modern planes can drop dumb bombs and still be worlds better than anything around in WWII just in terms of range and accuracy and speed. 1940s America might be able to produce compatible dumb bombs for the ship so it could keep on fighting.

Whether they could produce parts to keep the planes flying is another issue. Iran lost all US support after the revolution but kept some F-14s flying for a long time after... but they had modern-ish industry to draw on.

[Tsukiyumi]

Also, you have to consider the fuel; I have no idea if a 1940's era refinery could produce high-grade jet fuel at all, let alone in large quantities.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I know it'd be impossible at first, but would the crew and tech they have aboard be able to jump start-for lack of a better term-the advances necessary to begin replacing parts when they begin getting worn down?

[Tsukiyumi]

I was thinking that as well, but how long would it take to build the necessary infrastructure?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Not a clue, Tsuki. I'll leave that to people smarter than me: IE, most of the forum.

[Tyyr]

Hmm, very interesting question. The biggest issue you've got is that without Pearl Harbor to stir the nation into War what do we do? We were already gearing up for war well before Pearl, dramatically increasing the defense budget, instituting a draft, and starting up Lend-Lease. Americans liked Lend-Lease as a means to help the British against the Germans but most Americans were not wild about getting into an outright war. Pearl was the real impetus to change that and get the US from isolationist to fully ready to fight.

Now, if Japan went ahead with the attacks on the Philippines and Wake it might draw us into the war but that's a big might. Would attacks on American garrisons on the other side of the Pacific have the same catalyzing influence as burning battleships in Hawaii? I think Roosevelt himself would have played a role here. The man wanted to get into WWII in the worst way but had his hands tied by the Neutrality Acts and a population that wasn't ready to go to war with Japan when the only thing the Japanese had done was attack China and a few other places and Germany was just fighting in Europe.

Roosevelt would have probably spun the attacks on the Philippines and Wake as hard as any politician ever had and used them to try and stir up as much righteous fury with the Japanese as he could. I'd expect a declaration of war on Japan sometime in December, early January 1942 at the latest. At that point things get squirrely as the entire face of the war in the Pacific is stood on its head. The Nimitz will have just put the cream of the Japanese naval air arm on the bottom long before Midway. On top of that our battleships in the Pacific will be intact and the Nimitz group will have likely taken out the two battleships accompanying the carriers. The loss of two Kongo class WWI vintage battleships wouldn't be crippling but both played a role in the battle of Guadalcanal. Without those battle wagons the Japanese might not have contested the island as they did.

So what you have is the USA entering the war with it's Pacific navy intact and the Japanese starting the war with their best carriers and naval aviators dead and down two battleships. This is going to have some serious implications in the war in the Pacific. Midway never happens of course, and I can't see Guadalcanal being that severely contested. I'd expect Japan to pull back and just try to hold on to what it's got. They won't have the naval power to try and project. The US will certainly be far bolder in the Pacific as we'll be starting with a big lead rather than down most of the fleet. Depending on what happens in Europe we might even choose a Japan first strategy this time in an effort to strike a mortal blow.

The next question is what happens in Europe. Japan will be at war with the US but it'll have started with a huge defeat. So what does Germany decide to do, go ahead and join their ally in a war with America or sit tight? Hitler is just off and may not realize just how badly the Japanese are off to begin the war so he might declare anyways. However he might figure out how badly the Japanese are screwed and stay out of it. If he does Roosevelt might keep things spinning like a mad man and use the ground swell of "GET'EM" to start a war with Germany. Assuming war is declared one way or another I think we'd likely see a Japan first strategy since the Japanese will have been so soundly thumped at Pearl instead of crippling the US.

All this though doesn't really take into effect what the Nimitz could do in this scenario. Obviously she's got the firepower to take on just about any navy of that time period and level it. With the Nimitz and her airwing at the lead the Japanese navy would likely be swept from the Pacific and that's probably the best use of her. Wipe the Japanese navy out and clear the way for the Marines to start sweeping the Japanese off their holdings and back to the islands. The real kicker is if the Nimitz starts to use a few of her nukes. You could see the Nimitz nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki in late 1942 and the war in the Pacific ending. The psychological blow of watching their navy be swept from the Pacific and their holdings be taken away by the Marines with it culminating in the destruction of two of their cities will I think bring them to the barginning table.

Which leaves Europe. The Nimitz isn't going to have as major an impact there as it would in the Pacific. They'd be a great help in destroying U-Boats and making sure the German navy remains a non-issue but their airwing doesn't have the size or longevity to make a huge impact there. In fact after the Pacific campaign I wouldn't expect the Nimitz to have much of an airwing left, maybe 50% operational just do to not having a constant source of spares. Finishing off the German navy would likely be the last their airwing could do. The ship itself will likely be able to soldier on longer and I can see it being refitted with a conventional for the time airwing but even then it wouldn't have much to do with the German navy out of it.

The stores thing isn't a huge deal. For a modern fighter to be able to drop a 40's vintage bomb is a matter of fitting the right lugs to the bomb. If you want the accuracy you'll need to program the computer with the bomb's ballistics but that's do-able. Alternately you could provide copies of Mk 82, 83, and 84's and have them replicated as best they can manage. Fuel, likewise no one had reason to make fuel that refined, not that it was impossible. So it's do-able. The killer though will be all the fiddly little spare parts that you won't be able to replace. There would be no way to build the infrastructure to build the parts these aircraft and the ship itself would need. It's not do-able, certainly not in a time frame that would keep these aircraft operational.

If it was me, after the Japanese were finished off I'd bring the Nimitz into dock and start to use her. The techonological cornucopia this thing would represent would be unbelievable. Radar, jet propulsion, nuclear propulsion, sonar, weapons, etc. While there might not exist the information on board telling you exactly how to make some of this stuff just having copies of it in hand and someone telling you, "Yeah that works, not that doesn't," would let a lot of researchers straight line right to solutions rather than spending years researching potential dead ends. Heck, it doesn't even require detailed technical knowledge. Just some guy telling them, "Yeah, our tanks use APFSDS rounds. Little steel dart surrounded by a sabot. Works awesome," could potentially have rounds like that being handed out to Shermans in Germany.

I suspect that the Navy would continue to build battleships as without being forced to rely entirely upon them by Pearl Harbor they'd still figure strongly into WWII. However with the Nimitz's example I think you'd see a fairly even balance between carrier and battleship production. I think nuclear propulsion comes along much sooner and the Navy goes full into it.

[shran]

Let's see:
No attack on Pearl Harbour, so the fleet remains intact in the Pacific.
What will teh USS Nimitz do? Form a faction of its own, or joining the USA?
If joining the USA, they will get a massive tech boost from getting working nuclear reactors and seeing a practical implementation thereof. Reverse-engineering can start from researching the spare parts.
Also, minor improvements on ship hull designs might deliver slightly faster ships due to improved hull design.
Aside from that, the crew will have quite some knowledge as well, giving the USA a 40 year jump ahead in other fields. The space race might even be started a bit earlier.
Plane catapults would get a massive upgrade from the Nimitz version. Although it may not have changed that much, it is a later version nonetheless.
Helicopter development would be speeded up greatly, as well as aircraft technology, having access to jet fighters. Several generations and stages of research and refinement can be skipped.
Computers will get a huge kickstart. Any christmas card on the USS Nimitz would have a similar calculating power as the whole USA. Transistors and the like will go a completely different way.
Historical foreknowledge might give several advantages.
Stealth technology and radar technology would go a long way.
As for the other powers, USA will become even more of a superpower and will give either a morale blow or a huge impetus to speed up R&D in the rest of the world.

[Graham Kennedy]

One vital feature, of course, would be the crew. I daresay you could put a 1940s radar in front of the ship's technicians had have them say "oh, the next step is to improve this in this way, and then you improve that like that, and then you do this..." you would face the limitations of 1940s tech to be able to actually make those improvements, but I daresay that the right advice could hugely increase the capability of radars, engines, submarine and ship designs, you name it. Even simple things like angled flight decks, catapults, snorkels on subs... all these things could arrive years before they actually did.

Then I would think that you'd find more than a few folks who were knowledgeable about history and could tell you all kinds of useful things about what was to come. What's the next clever tactic the Germans came up with, what things do the allies believe that turned out to be false, what great opportunities did the allies have that they missed at the time. I'm no expert but even I could say "D Day goes well at Sword and Utah, but casualties are a lot heavier at Gold and Omaha," or "The Germans are going to launch a last big offensive through the Ardennes," or "Market Garden works on some levels, but there's a Panzer division at Arnhem and your paratroops end up fighting it without armour on their side. You might want to rethink that". Even "The jet engine is the way of the future, so put as much development into it as you can" would be a sentence that could change the entire world.

Of course, the more they change the future, the less useful their knowledge of actual events becomes.

[colmquinn]

Also someone should mention "keep an eye on that Stalin fella"

[Graham Kennedy]

The west know he was an a-hole already. They pretty much had him in the "not quite as bad as Hitler" category.

I saw a Historian once who said "One of the main outcomes of World War II was that much of Europe exchanged one form of brutal dictatorship for another. But given the nature of the two dictatorships, that was actually quite a positive achievement."

[Mark]

With a military advantage like that, I can see the US setting itself up as a "democratic" Empire