The Final Countdown

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The Final Countdown is also the name of an album and song by the rock band Europe.

The Final Countdown is a 1980 science fiction movie starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katharine Ross, and the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. It was directed by Don Taylor.

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Kirk Douglas is Captain Matthew Yelland, commander of Nimitz, who has been requested to take on a civilian observer Warren Lasky, played by Martin Sheen, before going on exercises in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. The ship encounters a strange storm, passes through a sort of vortex, and after the storm passes, all the usual communication with the shore has been cut off.

The captain sends out patrols, who are just as surprised to run into Japanese Zeros as the Zeros are to see F-14 Tomcat jets whizzing by. Finally they figure out that they have been transported back in time, to December 6, 1941, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Worse, they've also rescued the passengers of a pleasure boat that had been attacked by the Zeros, a Senator Samuel S. Chapman (Charles Durning) and his secretary Laurel Scott (Katharine Ross), and the Senator is especially indignant that the Navy has kept him in the dark about the new supercarrier that he finds himself on.

Captain Yelland now has the dilemma of deciding whether to alter history by using the awesome power of Nimitz to foil the Japanese attack, or to stand by and watch the destruction. Meanwhile, the one surviving Japanese pilot (Soon-Tek Oh) uses a moment of distraction for a soldier who isn't war-sharp to kill guards and take a hostage; he ends up dead after Air Wing Commander Owen, played by James Farentino, gives detailed information about tomorrow's attack. Chapman demands to see the captain, questions Yelland about the information Owen told the Japanese airman to shock him, then demands to speak by radio with Pearl Harbour.

In order to move the Senator and his secretary out of his affairs, Yelland orders Owen to take them to a desert island north of Oahu, feigning that they would go to Pearl Harbor at the Senator's insistence. Chapman, realizing he's been conned, hijacks the helicopter, an SH-3 Sea King. During a struggle, he accidentally fires a flare inside, killing himself and the flight crew. Owen and Scott are stranded, and Nimitz's crew believes they, too, are dead. Meanwhile, during the attempt to intercept the Japanese fleet, the freak storm returns and sends the ship back to 1980.

At the end of the movie it turns out that Owen and Scott became wealthy from Owen's knowledge of then-future technology and own the company that built Nimitz, and that he, "Mr. Tideman," was the one who requested the civilian Lasky to sail with Nimitz.

This was Nimitz's movie debut, and the movie features enough shipboard scenes and action to satisfy any Navy buff, and shows off many reconnaissance, defence/attack, surveillance and rescue capabilities of vessels like the Nimitz.

A novelization of the movie has been written by Martin Caidin.

The Philadelphia Experiment also features a US Navy ship travelling in time (but forwards).

The Axis of Time novels deal with a similar situation where a US-led naval task force from the near future is sent back in time to World War II.

In a different take on the idea, the manga and anime Zipang has a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Yukinami-class Aegis escort going back in time to just before the Battle of Midway.

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