The REAL Story Behind THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

i was already in a fighter squadron in 1986 when top gun came out so that movie didn't influence me but in 1980 i was a second class midshipman at the naval academy and a movie called the final countdown definitely influenced my choice of warfare specialties i saw the final countdown in a theater in annapolis on main street that isn't there anymore and i was just blown away by the carrier aviation sequences the final countdown was the brainchild of kirk douglas's son peter who ultimately got production credit for the movie douglas wasn't having a whole lot of luck getting this project off the ground until he found a champion in the new skipper of vf-84 the jolly rogers commander emery brown brown was enthusiastic enough about the project to take it up the chain of command where ultimately it was approved so the carrier nimitz and the attached carrier air wing 8 got the nod to tackle this film project here's the opening sequence you see the f-14 rolling down the runway at what is nas norfolk they're kind of letting you believe that it's some field in hawaii and then an h3 comes into the picture to pick up one of our main characters martin sheen playing warren lasky who is a defense analyst working for tideman industries a mysterious black limo pulls up as he's about to board the h3 and as he approaches the car two guys get out basically tell them mr titman is just here to see you off and you don't need to say hello to him so lasky gives him a little wave and proceeds to board the helicopter for the short transit out to nimitz along the way they go by the arizona memorial you can see this was obviously shot sitting on the ramp because there's no wind blast so here we see the first look at the uss nimitz which is the lead ship in the nimitz class there are 10 of them so nimitz was still pretty new by carrier standards remember aircraft cares last about 50 years or so so she was only 11 years old when this movie was shot in 1979 and this is why the navy greenlighted this movie because they were really happy to showcase some of their new stuff the h3 lands and we see behind the hilo va 86 and a7 squadron i later cruised in 95 and then the subsequent cruise with vfa 86 it was a hornet squadron but in 1979 we didn't have hornet squadrons we had a seven squadrons light attack squadrons then the sequence moves to the bridge we see the bridge watch the leigh helm sporting a very awesome beard different time and place u.s navy allowed full beards in the late 70s and we get our first look at the committing officer played by kirk douglas who my signature kurt douglas role is that of spartacus so flight ops are going on we get a look at pry fly then we get our first look at the f-14 so in this sequence you see he's rolling into the groove here it's sort of out of order that the next shot right here he's dropped in the gear the gear would have already been down on downwind not when you're rolling into the groove plus he's straight level there we see those lso's taking him aboard good shot of him rolling into the groove see the wake there's tail hook good that's a cool view coming board working a little fast you see the index lights there on the nose gear green deck yaw string there high tech yaw string there's the lens that's a cool look from the nose gear at the deck and the trap now you can see the speed break there he does not thumb it all the way in now the tomcat when you go to military power the speed brake will retract but not quick enough so what pilots did when they went to military power is they also thumbed in the speed brake you can see that pilot didn't quite thumb it in all the way airplane clears the landing area there you go our first look at the f-14 airplane parks in the sequence you can see they're safing the seat another safety faux pas sleeves are rolled up they should be rolled down james ferentino playing kag best known for his role in dynasty the tv series in the 70s so meanwhile the weather's starting to turn south out of nowhere we get our first look at another airplane in the air wing here's an s3 viking any submarine warfare plane coming aboard and i have one flight and an es3 that i got when i was kagops but you'll also notice this movie compared to topkin is very let's call it egalitarian top gun you got a glancing look at an a6 on the flight deck and everything else was f-14s not that that's a huge problem but you'll note the difference here in final countdown as they showcase pretty much every airplane in the air wing and again that's part of the fun so here's a scene from inside the carrier air traffic control center looks a lot like a similar scene in top gun i guess screenwriters like the backslapping lasky checks out a stateroom this is ceo's quarters pretty nice compared to j.o bunk rooms or certainly 96 man birthing the weather's going south fast skipper's getting concerned so lasky's poking around as civilian analysts or want to do i guess he goes into the adjacent state room and starts reading whatever's on the desk and it's kag stateroom kag shows up after what is probably the shortest debrief in naval aviation history awkward moment and lasky tells kag that he really likes his manuscript turns out that kag is working on a history of pearl harbor coincidentally another bit of b-roll here a vf41 tomcat coming aboard as the lightning flashes again the weather is going south quickly subscribers to this channel will note that vf41 has a starring role in another episode the one about the gulf of sudra incidents 1981 vf41 shot down two libyan su-22s if you haven't seen that episode check it out but in this case they are the sister squadron to vf-84 so a little bit about the history of vf-84 vf-84s lineage goes back to world war ii in the mid 90s as the tomcat community was getting smaller the east coast fighter wing commander was a well-known tomcat guy captain dale snort snodgrass snort had been the co previously of vf-103 but they were known as the sluggers snort didn't love that name he very much wanted to preserve the heritage of the jolly rogers so he got rid of vf-84 got rid of the sluggers and made vf-103 the jolly rogers now vfa-103 still the jolly rogers flies the super hornet but back in the late 70s and until halfway through my tomcat career the jolly rogers were vf-84 and these days carrier air wing had two tomcat squadrons in this case kagg 8 had vf 84 which is the starring squadron of the final countdown and vf41 which has a little cameo right here the skipper calls the me talk the meteorological officer to the bridge and ask him what the heck's going on with the weather he has a look at the scope and he's frustrated by what he's seeing these lines on the radar that are showing up and then disappearing and then they look off across the bow and they see this weird blue swirl that's pulsing on the horizon so it turns out that blue swirl is a lo-fi special effect that the producers kind of threw in at the last minute when they were running out of money the guy who came up with that special effect was best known for doing special effects in bond movies but he was brought aboard to create this special effect and he did so on a very low budget and it shows it based on the imminent weather situation the captain orders the other ships in the battle group the what we call small boys to return to pearl harbor so they turn around meanwhile there's still an airplane that's out there it's an a7 flown by a junior pilot who radios that he can't get his tail hooked down so the captain orders the crew to rig the barricade and you see here they go through the sequence of ringing the barricade this is an emergency procedure i've seen it done in person twice during my career once during the daytime once at night it is if you're below a fuel state where if you bolter again you're gonna flame out that's when they will barricade somebody or if you have either a landing gear problem that will prevent you from having a safe boulder or in this case your tail hook isn't working this is an artificiality because in this scenario they're pretty close to pearl harbor so they would have just diverted this airplane this a7 if his tailhook wouldn't come down but what actually happened is while they were out there off the east coast filming these aviation sequences they had a real life emergency and they barricaded an a7 so they rigged the barricade but before the a7 comes aboard they go through this weird storm and the sequence is this loud shrill noise and everybody's holding their ears and looks like kag is going crazy here and the grease boards are exploding so forth and so on so based on that once they get through it the captain goes in to general quarters so general quarters everybody's scurrying around you see here they close the ship store interesting their main product are cigarettes i guess the tobacco cessation program has not taken hold so once the storm passed they get a tally on the a7 the nugget brings it aboard turns out that once he is shut down in the barricade he's completely passed out so the crash crew pull him out kag looks at him along the way and they're trying to figure out what's going on the captain talks to the camo who has a really cool beard late 70s early 80s era navy and he mentions that he can't communicate except on really specific frequencies which are dated the frequency band is is sort of an archaic old frequency band so amid all the confusion as the captain's trying to build the picture of what the heck has happened he rightly orders an e2 to launch to get a big picture surface and air and he orders an rf8 to launch to get some reconnaissance photos of pearl harbor so we see this sequence here e2 launches right hand clearing turn rf8 crusader launches noteworthy here is the fact that the rf8 uses what we call a bridle instead of a launch bar to attach to the shuttle these aren't used anymore it was a wire that went from one hook on on the base of one wing across the shuttle to the other wing the f4 used to bridle a4 used to bridle f8 used to bridle they were not as safe as a launch bar and so they've gone away we have this sequence here that shows the acting chops of just regular sailors hold it hold it hold it go hold your own who said that grace sakes chief all we want to know is what's going on whatever it is you'll be told when as soon as the skipper's ready and as a function of general quarters we're moving ordinance around you can see it's time to load the sparrow missiles there's a elevator coming up with a tomcat in all kinds of ordinance including phoenix missiles on it the captain says let's launch a couple of alert tomcats so here's a great sequence pilot salutes you see the shooter in the bubble nimitz class had a bubble so those shooters didn't have to go on the flight deck good shot here off cat two first then cat one here comes the clearing turn and they're gonna rendezvous right away so that's a cool sequence as i said the shooter is using the bubble instead of being on the flight deck they have this little capsule that's in the flight deck between the cats the shooter can push the button that fires the cat instead of signaling the guy in the catwalk to do the same thing so it's more efficient it's less visual than what the shooter would go through in terms of his movements on the flight deck so it doesn't look as cool but in this movie the navy wanted to showcase this new technology where the shooter was in a bubble so you see it right there so the rf8 you can see here the canopy rail soup campbell as i described in punk's war pretty much every campbell in naval aviation has the callsign soup then the rf8 comes aboard with these photos that need to get processed wet film in this airplane's cameras you see how the wing is away from the fuselage a little bit that was unique to the f8 in the landing configuration another thing to point out in terms of a continuity error in the movie is you'll note as the f8 crosses the ramp there is an s3 at the 90 which doesn't match the storyline because at this time the only airplanes airborne now that the rf8 is coming aboard are two tomcats and an e2 so we see this yacht called the gatsby floating serenely in what's supposed to be the pacific actually these are the waters off key west and we meet laurel scott who is played by katherine ross in my mind the signature catherine ross role is that of the daughter in the graduate and actor charles durning plays senator samuel chapman so they're on this boat when suddenly the two tomcats do a flyby and they're amazed it's december of 1941 senator chapman is on the defense committee now known as the senate armed services committee and so he immediately is like what are those and how come i don't know about them the tomcats need a tanker all of a sudden which is not accurate i mean they've been airborne for like you know a few minutes they're not going to need gas already but again this is a showcase vehicle let's let's get everybody in the movie so we launch a ka-6 at the same time down in the intelligence center they're looking at the photos that the rfa took and you can see that here it's battleship row circa early december 1941. we have this tanking sequence which includes some pretty cheesy comms you got two thirsty tomcats what do you got i've got the hard stuff pull right in mmm contact we've got a green light fill it up check the oil and clean the windshield over when they're done tanking they get a vector to go check out a couple of bogeys brings us to the first tomcats and zeros sequence those zeros are actually t6 texans that are flown by what was known as the confederate air force because of obvious and justifiable social pressure the confederate air force renamed themselves the commemorative air force now these flying sequences took place off the coast of key west the vf 84 airplanes there were two of them aircraft 202 and 203 the folks involved were very instrumental in choreographing these sequences the director and the producers had really no idea how how this was going to work one of the pilots a lieutenant fresh from top gun described the process as trying to make three pool balls hit at the same time on a pool table as you can imagine that's that's hard to do that's a great analogy and what made it so tough is you had tomcats that with flaps down could loiter at about 140 knots comfortably you had t6s painted as japanese airplanes that could go about 130 plus full out and then the camera airplane was a helicopter originally so you could see trying to make those three things work out so that the zeros and the tomcats were in the frame at the same time was problematic the other thing that made it frustrating was they'd choreograph a shot and then they'd take the film and they'd have to send them to new york to get developed and then a day later they'd get these shots back and they'd see how they did and many times all you'd have is a tomcat or you just have a t6 go through or you'd have neither and so they have to do everything all over again this is very frustrating and as always the case when shooting a hollywood production is you're burning through your budget so nobody's very interested in doing the same sequence over and over again so the solution came in the form of a modified b-25 that was now used to shoot air-to-air sequences so here's the initial fly past thump them they lose control this actually happened in real life because of the shock wave you see the wings are initially aft the directors wanted them to have the wings aft you can see the glove veins there um which a lot of people are asking what are those little winglets those are the glove veins later airplanes didn't have the glove veins because they actually were aerodynamically unnecessary wings coming forward loadout two two and two two winders two sparrows two phoenix missiles which was kind of the standard air loadout practical if you're doing air-to-air again you can see the tomcat going pretty slow the choreography here is tricky now this sequence is infamous let's say the pilot fox claims that he did not depart the airplane but you can see him throw up the spoilers here at the end i don't know to my eye that looks like an unplanned maneuver split s very low buries the nose recovers full burner right spoiler all the way up i don't know i'll give them the benefit of the doubt but that doesn't look like a plant maneuver to me all right back to the action as the dogfight continues one of the zeros does a forward quarter raking gunshot which definitely gets the tomcat pilot's attention the pilot relays back to the ship that he has been engaged and as the captain who has a whole lot of roe decision making authority by modern standards as we know from the gulf of sidra incident episode usually it would be the battle group commander strike group commander making these sorts of decisions another thing to note is in the late 70s up to the late 80s the air wing commander was subordinate to the carrier commanding officer carrier commanding officer was a captain and the air wing commander was a post squadron command commander so when john layman was secretary of the navy he elevated the air wing commander to be co-equal to the carrier co they called it a super cag at the time now it's just back to being kag but these days kag and the ship's co are the same rank and co-equal in terms of being warfare commanders and suddenly they wind up strafing the yacht they killed two two guys and you can see here in their second pass the boat blows up the senator and his assistant have abandoned ship fortunately along with another member of the crew who subsequently gets strafed in the water and at that point the captain orders the tomcats to take out the two zeros so we see here wings coming aft there's again the offstring sometimes that string would get hung up in the ray dome and that was frustrating for a pilot to not have a yaw string but it's basically just a piece of cord that would tell you what your yaw is so the first one is a guns kill and the airplane goes down turns out this pilot survives and then the second one is going to be a winder shot fox 2 good kill that zero pilot definitely did not survive that one as that's going on one of the seconds in the tube of the e-2 picks up the japanese task force heading for pearl harbor meanwhile an h3 star bird plucks the survivors out of the water kag jumps into the water and rescues laurel's dog production note charles derning playing senator chapman was a fairly obese fellow so they used a stunt double for him to go up the hoist while catherine ross did her own stunt she was a trooper now speaking of catherine ross the tomcat crews got along with all of the actors while they were all in the same hotel down there in key west except they were kind of blown off by katherine ross in one sequence the rio held up a poster that said pardon my french [ __ ] you catherine ross we didn't want to meet you anyway and they were watching what they call the rushes the next day after they'd been processed up in new york she's sitting there and she saw this b-roll of them holding up that sign and apparently she was kind of pissed and maybe a little bit embarrassed the japanese pilot who was shot down is also rescued and winds up being escorted by marine guards as the h3 lands on the flight deck back in the air the e2 crew spots the japanese battle group and on the ship all the principals wind up having a timeless and meaningful conversation about time space and the ethics associated with it imagine for example i go back in time to meet my own grandfather long before he got married before he had children we have an argument i kill him now if that happens how am i ever going to be born and if i can ever be born how can i go back in history and meet my very own grandfather martin sheen once again goes back into kagg's stateroom for the third time gets busted again and he confronts kag with part of his manuscript that states that senator chapman who had predicted the attack on pearl harbor mysteriously disappeared sometime during the attack meanwhile back in sick bay where the senator and laurel are being attended to along with the japanese pilot japanese pilot takes the m16 from one of the marine centuries and winds up shooting to the marine centuries and taking laurel hostage kagg using his historical knowledge recites the composition of the pearl harbor strike package to the japanese pilot which kind of freaks the japanese pilot out he makes some demands about how he has to get on the radio to communicate with his chain of command in the process there's some confusion and after the japanese pilot shoots yet another marine sentry he himself gets taken out by other marine centuries keg comforts laurel and they start having some chemistry kag delivers this oscar-worthy line senator chapman is not at all happy demands from the captain to get on the radio so he can communicate with the world about what's happening and as he does that captain tells kag he wants the senator and laurel and maybe even warren lasky transported to a small island off of hawaii not pearl harbor kag decides that he's going to be the guy who escorts them on this flight walking through the hangar bay which contains the shiniest airplanes in the history of carrier aviation boards the hilo as the captain tells the crew he's not quite sure what's going on but they're going to launch strikes see here the a6 ready room this guy with the cool heineken shirt on kind of random they upload the airplanes including these bombs with snake eye fins the high drag fins which allow for low altitude delivery meanwhile the hilo lands at the remote island and the senator immediately figures out what's going on so he tells kag he's not going to stay on this island he needs to go to pearl harbor kag argues with him and wanders off to see what laurel's up to and as he does the senator hijacks the helicopter with a flare gun there's a scuffle ultimately the flare gun goes off and the helo explodes killing the four crew members and senator chapman back on the ship the strike package launches some great cat shot footage here you can see accurate salutes a7 guys put their head against the head rest it's a little cameo for commander emery brown the ceo of vf-84 on the canopy rail back on the island laurel realizes as she looks at an mre that kag is from the future laurel and kags see the japanese strike package headed for pearl harbor as the american strike package gets ready to engage and at the same time the ceo and the weather officer see another blue swirl coming at the ship so the captain orders the strike package to return to the ship which causes one of the aviators to deliver this semi-racist quip mission aborted but we can see them they're gonna let the chaps do it again they go back through the storm obviously not having learned their lesson of the first go-round and that nobody's wearing hearing protection once again this footage is interspersed with b-roll from the movie tora toratora the storm passes and presumably the carrier is back in modern times which is a great occasion to do a strike package flyby one last little bit of carrier aviation b-roll airplanes coming aboard note that they launched loaded with bombs and missiles and now as they return they're all slick in spite of the fact that they didn't actually conduct the strike they sealed back into port past the arizona memorial a metaphor in case the moviegoers aren't quite getting it yet once again having not learned his lesson the previous two times martin sheen goes into kag's stateroom and looks at the manuscript ultimately decides to just let it go he puts the manuscript back down they get to the pier and all the admirals basically west of san diego come aboard trying to figure out what the heck happened the box score that the kirk douglas the shipsio is going to have to explain is okay you you shot a winder some bullets you lost an h3 four crew members and three marines how do you explain that never mind the time space continuum perturbation how are you going to explain to the families what happened to their loved ones that's not addressed at all in the film that's a rabbit hole they didn't want to go down in the interest of time and tidy plot lines the captain walks out of his grilling by the animals looking a little bit beat up his hat is on his head crooked as he walks out then the captain and lasky walk down the brow blasky is now the owner of laurel's dog and the same limo that was there at the very beginning that lasky was not allowed to address the occupants pulls up zalaski gives him a classic sheen look with his shades pulled down rear window rolls down and spoiler alert it's kag and laurel 39 years later it turns out that kag is actually mr tideman lasky gets into the limo as mr tymon slash kag says we got a lot to talk about the last scene is them driving down the pier there's an unfortunate postscript to the final countdown with respect to the skipper of vf-84 let me read you this ap report from 1985. a former navy commander convicted of accepting 5563 dollars in connection with production of a film about navy fighter planes lost a supreme court appeal today the court without comment lets stand emory brown junior's conviction of taking an illegal gratuity and engaging in a conflict of interest brown a resident of springfield virginia received a one-year suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation for three years federal prosecutors said brown while commanding a squadron of f-14 planes aboard the uss nimitz took the money after he under billed the civilian producer of the movie by more than four hundred thousand dollars in nineteen seventy nine in filming the movie the final countdown producer peter douglas was supposed to be charged by the navy four thousand dollars per hour for flight time for brown squadron fbi investigators said that brown undercharged douglas by more than four hundred thousand dollars and pocketed a five thousand five hundred sixty three dollar check for the favor brown said the money reimbursed him for movie-making expenses for which he paid brown was also convicted of a conflict of interest in selling the navy a lamp and table for 280 without disclosing that the products were made by a company he set up the commander was charged with bribery for accepting the film producer's money but a federal jury only convicted him of the lesser charge of taking a gratuity brown's appeal said that since the jury acquitted him of bribery there was no rational basis to convict him of the lesser crime but the fourth u.s circuit court of appeals ruled last august there was substantial evidence that brown took the money either in return for undercharging the movie producer or for remaining silent to conceal the improper billing when i first got to the f-14 training squadron vf-101 in 1983 the effects of this situation were still resonating there were a number of vf-84 alums who were my rag instructors during that time so this is a cautionary tale in flying too close to the flame that is hollywood overall the final countdown is a fun movie it demands that you do not scrutinize the sci-fi part too rigorously but it has great carrier aviation sequences throughout and that as i said at the outset influenced me greatly in my choice of naval flight officer and ultimately tomcat rio as my warfare especially all right that'll do it for this episode if this is your first time to the channel please ring the bell become a subscriber so you don't miss anything going forward give me the likes very important and comment i love the comments and try to engage as much as i can if you want to help us take this channel to the next level please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com carroll and i look forward to talking to you again soon you

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 596,402

Rating: 4.9448452 out of 5

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, aircraft carriers, U.S. Navy, military, aircraft, fighter pilots, fighter jets, USS Nimitz, The Final Countdown, military movies, aviation movies, history, science fiction, World War II, Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese Zeros, DCS, DCS World

Id: nzMiKjzFbOg

Length: 33min 29sec (2009 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/WigboldCrumb]

pulled from imdb:

Virtually unknown outside Naval Ranks, there is something known as "breakaway music." Breakaway music is a modern U.S. Naval tradition used to motivate sailors upon the conclusion of underway replenishment (UNREP). When the two ships involved in the UNREP conclude their transfer of fuels and stores, and commence their breakaway, a song (usually selected by the Captain, but sometimes chosen by the Officer of the Deck or Navigation Officer) is played over the 1MC, the "all hands" circuit that talks to the entire ship. Breakaway music may sometimes be related to the name of the ship, such as the "Theme from Star Trek" (USS Enterprise), "Theme from Rocky" (USS Boxer) and the "Theme from Bad Company" (USS Forrestal). The present day breakaway music for the USS Nimitz upon completion of UNREP can only be the music uniquely written for the ship - John Scott's "Theme from The Final Countdown."

[u/Dont__Grumpy__Stop]

yvan eht nioj

[u/raven080068]

Damn you op for getting that song stuck in my head

[u/Skyrun57]

Awesome video and underrated movie. I was seven when I first watched this movie in the early 80’s but it left an impression on me and I’ve watched it numerous times since. The plot and cinematography has aged well. Outside of Michael Bay perhaps using his military connections, I’m not sure it could be rebooted today without a heavy reliance on CGI.

[u/Hadr619]

Shot on the USS Nimitz as well

[u/AccipiterCooperii]

“Splash the Zeros, I say again, splash the Zeros”

[u/SG_Kubrak]

Totally underrated sci-fi, time travel movie. Great flick!

[u/love_feral1418]

I’m definitely going to try to find this movie

[u/DickweedMcGee]

I saw that movie a long time ago but it still sticks with me the idea of a modern ACC suddenly appearing in WWII. It'd probably end the war, right? I guess thats what hitler was counting on with his wonder weapons.....