The !980 war film Final Countdown sees a modern-day aircraft carrier transported to the eve of the real-life Pearl Harbor attacks in Dec of 1941. This movie assembles a stellar cast including Kirk Douglas, Charles Durning, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Martin Sheen. Don Taylor directed the scifi, while Peter Vincent Douglas and Lloyd Kaufman were the producers.
A science fiction war film about a modern nuclear-powered-aircraft carrier that travels through time to the day before the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Produced by Peter Vincent Douglas and Lloyd Kaufman and directed by Don Taylor, the film contains an ensemble cast starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Charles Durning.
The USS Nimitz, a nuclear powered carrier leaves Pearl Harbor in 1980 for the mid-Pacific to conduct naval exercises. Martin Sheen plays Warren Lasky a civilian systems analyst for the warship’s manufacturer, who is taken along on a mission for the government working as an expert in efficiency.
Flashing lights and electrical phenomena suddenly envelope the Nimitz and draw it into a vortex. All of the ship’s techincal equipment fails as her crew drops to the floor in pain when it makes contact with the vortex. When they can get back on their feet again, they are still in the mid Pacific, but they have no contact with the fleet command at Pearl Harbor. Kirk Douglas as Captain Yelland is convinced that the radio silence is due to a nucleaar attack on the USA. He launches reconnaissance aircraft RF-8 Crusaders who return with images of Hawaii from 1941, including a photo of Battleship row containing all the battleships ready to go.
The US Department of Defense and Navy worked with the film production, using the real vessel USS Nimitz (CVN-68) as the set. The background imagines and scenes are of actual operations aboard the vessel. The film Final Countdown was a relative success when first released.
