I remember that film, and I just rewatched it over the summer, it's a really good movie and does make you think. I personally would let history play itself out as it did, but I did understand the Skipper's view, that no matter how bizarre the situation, he was to defend the United States of America. Really great movie.
Warren Lasky: Think of the history of the next forty years...
Commander Richard Owens: I have a suspicion history will be a little more difficult to beat, than you imagine Mr. Lasky.
Warren Lasky: I'm talking about the classic paradox of time. Imagine, for example, I go back in time and meet my own Grandfather. Long before he got married, before he had children. And we have an argument, and I kill him. Now if that happens, how am I ever going to be born? And if I can never be born, how can I go back in history and meet my very own Grandfather?
Commander Richard Owens: [angrily] I'm not half the theorist you are, Mr. Lasky. But I still have a gut instinct that things only happen once. And if they have happened, then there's nothing we can do to change them. Nor should we try.
Warren Lasky: Well, how are you going to avoid it? It's already happening, and we're already involved!
Commander Dan Thurman: [shouting] For Christ's sake! What is this, some half-assed Princeton debating society? We are in a war situation! This is a United States warship! Or, at least, it used to be. Or will be. Or what the hell ever! Oh, Goddammit, you can drive yourself crazy just trying to think about this stuff! Jesus, I must be dreaming!
Captain Matthew Yelland: Now, hold it. All right. Let's all calm down. Let's take it one step at a time and by the book. If the United States of America falls under attack our job is to defend her in the past, present or future.
Warren Lasky: And after that?
Captain Matthew Yelland: After that, we take our orders from the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces.
On the ground below them, Senator Chapman and Laurel reached the guard shack. The marines on duty pulled their eyes off the departing helicopter long enough to take notice them. "Who the hell are y’all," one asked, hesitantly pointing his Garand toward the people in strange jumpsuits who had descended from the … thing.
"Son, I’m Senator Samuel S. Chapman," one of them said authoritatively. "Take me to your commander."
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Chapter 2: Spreading the Word
Senator Chapman was getting impatient. It was taking too damn long to get to Admiral Kimmel, even with his title clearing the way. First he and Laurel had to convince those marines they weren’t invaders from Mars or another one of Wells’s damn stunts. Then they’d had to work their way up through the layers of command, waking up officers, convincing them, and moving on to the next level of naval bureaucracy. It made Sam mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets, preferably into the heads of those dolts who didn’t seem to grasp the importance of this situation.
Along the way he’d sent Laurel to a hotel. She was only getting in the way, even if she was a dandy with speechwriting. Besides, if there really was a battle coming up… well, it was no place for a woman, that was for sure. Still, it was taking time, hours of it. According to Owens’s watch — if that’s what it was — it was almost six in the morning, and the sky was beginning to brighten. At least he’d finally convinced someone high enough up to take him to Kimmel, commander of all naval forces in the Pacific.
Kimmel was in his bathrobe when Chapman arrived, waking up for his dawn tee time at the golf course. He stood up when Chapman entered the front door of his home, escorted by a marine corporal. "Senator! So glad to see you, even if it is a bit early in the —"
"Admiral, I don’t have time for small talk. The boat I was on was brutally attacked by Japanese aircraft yesterday," Chapman said brusquely, in rumpled clothes given to him by crewmen aboard the Nimitz. "Arthur Bellman is dead, Admiral, killed by the Japanese."
"Arthur Bellman… My God," said Kimmel, stunned at the news. "He was building the new P-38s for the Army." Kimmel shook himself, clearly trying to get back to what the senator had said. "Are you sure it was intentional? The Panay —"
"Admiral," said Chapman, interrupting, "this was no accident. They came back to strafe my secretary and I in the water. Our cook was killed then. We were picked up by one of your ships." Senator Chapman wasn’t going to mention that ship’s name until he was asked it, something he knew would come sooner or later, but which was to be avoided until the last moment.
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Aboard the Japanese fleet, preparations for the launch of the second wave were hurrying as quickly as possible. Crewmen rolled out fuel lines and rolled out bomb carts to waiting aircraft. Propellers were turning, engines growling on the Vals and Zeroes of the Japanese aerial armada. The pilots were confident as they hurried to their planes, walking confidently along the steel decks of the carriers. They knew they were the best in the world, the finest men the Imperial Japanese Navy had to offer. So what if the Americans had blundered into the first wave? Their puny squadron had been wiped from the sky, and the strike was continuing on. The men of the carriers were confident that all that would change would be their early return home.
That confidence was suddenly and irrevocably destroyed as the assembling pilots saw dozens of explosions above their heads. Those explosions, signalling the death of the 54 Zeros watching over the Japanese fleet, were the end results of events 30,000 feet above. In the cockpits of the Tomcats high above, radios crackled with cries of "Fox-Two, Fox-Three," and eventually "Winchester," as some pilots blew through their eight missiles. ...
Aboard the Japanese fleet, sailors scurried back and forth beneath a rain of aircraft parts and wreckage. Klaxons sounded on destroyers and carriers alike as crewmen scrambled to try to rescue anyone who might have survived. Their attentions were soon grabbed by an enormous explosion in the midst of the fleet. Necks craned and heads snapped around, seeking the source of the noise that had cut through the preparations for launch.
