Imagine being a Japanese engineer trying to reverse engineer a F18 just to find the words made in Japan on the electronics.🤯

Up next: Emperor Palpatine's imperial strike force vs Harvard's rowing crew...

You overlooked an important factor: nuclear carriers carry nuclear engineers. They would have accelerated the Manhattan Project. The war ending nukes would be available years earlier.

Also an important part is, the Sailors and Marines in this strike group would probably have tons of knowledge of WW2 which alone would be incredibly devastating even without the actual ships

Imagine being a Japanese sailor in this scenario and being on a carrier when suddenly the ship next to you explodes out of nowhere.

"Captain there are flying things that fly without propellers that shoot invisible bombs" "That's not possible" *Akagi sinks*

I think Japan seeing a 60ft fighter jet going Mach 1.8 loaded missiles and blowing shit out of the sky would be enough for a surrender long before fuel and ammo became an issue.

"How many ships the IJN has" "around 600 sir" "damn we need to order a few resupply of missiles"

who would win? the entire WW2 Japanese Navy or one Somali pirate with an AK-47?

Imagine being a japanese bomber pilot fighting through the CIWS of the fleet and then you get strafed by a seemingly engine-less aircraft at quintuple your speed

“Can one carrier group hold on against Japan” Well the Enterprise sure did.

As a former Carrier crew USS Nimitz I would say yes for sure. The primary issue would be jet fuel exhaustion. It would need to be an all out fast attack.

Having served in the Navy (Cdn), and worked with carrier groups, there is a slight flaw in this whole scenario. It was specifically mentioned that a carrier strike group doesn't have a submarine. It is actually the opposite, it is extremely rare that you'll see an American carrier without at least 1 submarine lurking in the depths keeping watch.

This would be a great idea for a movie we will call it The Final Countdown.

The modern US carrier is unbeatable by 1942 standards, and that's even without its escorts. Early warning aircraft would detect any Japanese aircraft long before they could see the carrier and they'd be shot down if there was any threat of detect. The same early warning aircraft would detect the Japanese fleet as well. Super Hornets could attack the fleet with near impunity with laser-guided weapons that wouldn't miss and would likely destroy a ship with every hit. Maybe the battleships would take a beating, but they're not the threat. The carriers are targeted first and sunk with ease. The only real threat to the US carrier is a chance encounter with a Japanese submarine. Then again, submarines in that era sail on the surface most of the time, so the early warning aircraft would detect them at great distance and then a guided missile, say a Harpoon, could sink it with ease.

The most dangerous asset would most likely be the crew to be fair. Assuming that the crew are also teleported to the past with all their knowledge about history would mean that they'd be able to predict a lot of what Japan would try in the war.

The japanese lack of radar is what seals the deal. They'd have no idea where the carrier is because it would always know where they are and be able to keep a far enough distance where its strike groups could take them out while being out of the Japanese carrier's ranges.

Something to consider: The Imperial Japanese Navy had one extremely flawed practice: Damage control. Whereas the US and Royal navies trained every sailor in flood control and firefighting, the IJN had a dedicated damage control team that would have to be called in from their stations to make their way to the damage and fight or contain the fire and/or flood. The rest of the crew had no idea how to effectively perform these duties. Because of this, if a Japanese ship was set on fire, it tended to stay on fire.

Can you imagine a kamikaze coming in hot with the seaRAM system in operation?

Kamikaze pilot: *exists* Phalanx: and i took that personally

Haven't watched this, but the only way the U.S. loses is if they run out of ammo lol

Decrypting Japanese and German coded messages would be child’s play for the average iPad on the American ships.

The biggest weapon carried by the moden carrier would actually be the knowledge it carries. Lots of engineering manuals, and Navy officers tend to skew heavily to engineering degrees. Heck, the information in the textbooks for all the CLEP courses we took in the Navy would jumpstart the US industrial base.

This video severely underestimates modern sonar and submarine detection technology.

There's a big difference between a carrier and a carrier group. As long as the carrier has fuel, munitions and supplies to run, they would be untouchable. Final Countdown is a great movie.

"Dr Oppenheimer, some of the reactor technicians from the USS John F Kennedy are here to consult your research program. They MAY be able to offer some valuable insight."

I don’t think the real morale damage was considered. Imagine being a Japanese sailor in a carrier escort group. When out of nowhere multiple ships randomly explode. Followed by the sound of the F18 without being able to see it. That would terrify anybody that had no idea what was happening.

A carrier group is never with out it's subs. When i was in the navy the carriers carried fuel for their escorts to top them off between oil tanker visits.

Watch the movie, The Final Countdown. It's about a modern carrier going through a wormhole to defeat the Japanese fleet in 1941. Movie was made in 1980. Starred Kirk Douglas. It had potential.

Imperial Japanese Navy: “Why do I hear boss music?” Nimitz Class Carrier: *ANCHORS AWEIGH MY BOYS, ANCHORS AWEIGH!*

I don't even think the US would need to really fight the Japanese navy. Just sink a ship or 2 from beyond visual range, which could be done at a whim, and then do a quick show of force by flying some F/A-18s over and showing off their performance (something like a full afterburner supersonic pass around 5,000 ft, then immediately zip climbing to around 40,000 ft). I think the remaining Japanese fleet would just turn around and go home.

In reality a carrier strike group operates much larger than this. They have One carrier, three destroyers, one cruiser, one LPD and LHD, two submarines, and a AOE-R. That in of itself could probably make quick work of most of the pacific campaign. The submarines act as strike craft, while the aircraft carrier acts as a central hub. The amphibious ships would probably be paired with two destroyers to take islands. AOER would be with fleet main, composing of the carrier, the cruiser, a destroyer and the AOER. It would be brutal. The biggest constraint would be fuel and ammo.

I think I can model morale: U.S.: "We lost our entire navy!??!?!" -100 morale U.S.: "An aircraft carrier from 80 years in the future has travelled back in time to defend our freedom with its advanced technology??!!!!" +100000 morale

As an airline pilot, I assure you that we can navigate just as precisely without GPS.

Hollywood already made a Movie something Like this in 1980 called "The Final Countdown" the USS Nimitz goes through a Weird Storm at Sea and gets sent back to December 6 1941 it's a Good Movie

The most important part of the carrier group would honestly be the computer tech and other modern tech they bring with them. It would obviously be studied by the Americans and the US would see an even bigger technological golden age. It would of course lead into a paradox, as the these ships probably would be way more advanced in our time if they got access to the tech int the 40ies. Time travel is complicated :)

Contrary to what the narrator says, attack submarines and supply ships WOULD be a part of a carrier strike group.

This is basically a gun, against a stick.

‘The final countdown’ has a carrier go back to pearl harbour. Great movie

One interesting tidbit that wasn't discussed is the fact that US Carriers are very likely to still carry nuclear weapons on board... Dozens, with variable yields of up to 400kt. Which is the equivalent of over 25 Hiroshimas, each... The USS John F Kennedy was revealed to have carried up to 100 B61 nuclear bombs during the cold war. The government has also neither confirmed, nor denied whether or not carrier strike groups are still armed with nuclear capable gravity bombs.

More like "what if" the USS Nimitz found itself in the middle of WWII? Might be a good idea for a movie. What could we call it? I'll think about it while I listen to some Europe.

Considering the Japanese navy lacked adequate radar, they would be at the bottom of the ocean before they saw a single ship. This scenario is very similar to the commodore perry incursion into Japanese ports. They had ships, but stood no chance against (at the time) modern warships and had to open the country up completely to trade or risk annihilation.

Even if we say the F18s only have era ammunition, they could still carry a lot of bombs and drop them accurately, after reprogramming the bomb computer. The japanese fleet would be wiped out with no chance of defense.

Imagine Nimitz's reaction when he gets a 21st century carrier that's *named after him* to blow up the IJN...... McArthur and Nimitz is gonna have some fun raising temperatures in Asia

When they filmed the movie The Final Countdown . They had F14s fly by the actual ww2 planes and just the turbulence from the tomcats passing nearly caused them to crash. It’s a great story to read up on the filming of that movie. So in theory if some huge supersonic jets like the tomcat. Flew at actual top speed through a formation of zeros , it could cause lots of havoc without even firing a shot .

One fact that isn't considered in the analysis is that the carriers reactor engineers would have adequate knowledge of nuclear dynamics to accelerate the US A-bomb program by years.

A jet plane flying at 50K+ feet would be something else to a WWII era plane. WWII was the first war fought by airplane decidedly. If there was enough refueling, bombs, and missiles, nothing would stand a chance in 1942. This posturing of numbers, etc. would be nothing. A good commander would wipe the floor with whatever they had to offer. If they didn't, fire them.

I know this is all just for fun .. but American carrier strike groups *_ALWAYS_* have at least one submarine attached, and for certain a supercarrier will have at least two. They're just too valuable of an asset (the supercarrier) to not provide them w/ every tactical advantage in both offense and defense. Of course, I understand leaving them out of this scenario lol .. what with just one Ohio class sub capable of launching ~14 nukes (each with MIRV's) .. that strike group wouldn't have just ended the Japanese Navy .. it would have conquered the planet. The only other major beef I have with this is that the carrier aircraft all seem to be unable to use their 20mm etc cannons, and waste valuable missiles on WWII planes that pose zero threat to them.

Already seen in "The Final Countdown", 1980, movie starring Kirk Douglas.

I have a feeling someone watched “The Final Countdown”.

Weebs Isekai into a fantasy world into a harem. Real men Isekai entire carrier battlegroups to defens Hawaii.

There is a movie using the same premise but being the USS Nimitz being somehow transported to Pearl Harbor on Dec 6th 1941. It's called "The Final Countdown" Makes you wonder if that premise might have worked. Also the "CAG" officer and others knowing where the Japanese fleet was might have convinced the US carriers where to find the Japanese fleet.

Kinda reminds me of 1980 film The Final Countdown when the USS Nimitz goes back in time to December 7, 1941. Stars Michael Sheen.

They actually made sci fi movie about this theory. It's a 1980s movie called "The Final Countdown". A modern US Carrier travels back in time a day before the attack on pearl harbor through a strange storm at sea. It's a nice movie.

The Final Countdown (1980) was an entire film based on this premise.

Watch the movie , The Final Countdown. It's about the U S S Nimitz loaded with F 14s going back in time through a freakish storm and being back in Dec 1942.

This situation was contemplated in the 1980 movie The Final Countdown. In the movie the carrier Nimitz hits at strange energy storm which. have been transported back in time to December 6, one day before the attack. Captain realize they must have traveled through a time wormhole and has to decide whether to destroy the Japanese fleet and alter the course of history, or to stand by and allow history to proceed as "normal". They beleved they could take out the entire Japanese strike force. The movie is worth checking out.

Range is key here. The US carrier group could hit and sink Japanese ships before they knew they were there. Same goes for aircraft.

Want to make it even more onesided, send one modern submarine instead.

To make this fair, if you are allowing resupply of the Japanese fleet, it should also be allowed for the U.S. Fleet.

Funny, didn't mention that US Supercarriers have around 50-200 nuclear bombs a piece. Nippon would be a crispy critter by week two.

The 1980 movie "The Final Countdown" the USS Nimitz slips into a time vortex and goes back to 1941 just before the Pearl Harbor attack.

There's a 1980 movie called The Final Countdown like this. Synopsis from web: A modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time to 1941 near Hawaii, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1980, an assistant in the Department of Defense, Warren Lasky, is assigned by his mysterious chief Richard Tideman to visit the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz commanded by Capt. Matthew Yelland as an observer of the routines. Lasky learns that Commander Air Group (CAG) Richard T. Owens has a great knowledge of history. Out of the blue, the vessel faces a weird storm and they find they have traveled back in time to the eve of the attack of Pearl Harbor on 06 December 1941. When the two Japanese Zeros attack the motorboat of Senator Samuel Chapman, the crew of the Nimitz rescues the senator and his assistant Laurel Scott. But Lasky soon learns the senator had disappeared on that day and Capt. Matthew Yelland is planning to attack the Japanese. Will these actions create a time paradox? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f75jZqea3NjaY3U.html

Two words “laser guided”. That’s game over.

There was a movie made in 1980 called The Final Countdown that kinda touched on this scenario.

What this scenario ignores is the psychological effect of the summary destruction of ALL of Japan's carriers in short order. As with Midway, after the loss of the carriers the Japanese navy was fatally wounded, never to recover and never to pose a serious threat to even the ww2 American Navy. So a modern US carrier would prove devastatingly decisive in the short term, and to a greater extent than even Midway. All of this ignores the psychological impact on Japanese sailors from experiencing the shock of unanswerable, unknowable ferocity while they found their ships suddenly destroyed by an unseen enemy. The ww2 Japanese Navy would not recover from the initial contact, end of story.

A single F/A-18 squadron, in a single sortie, would have sunk all the carriers and 4-5 of the picket ships each.

The "Axis of Time" book series by John Birmingham actually addresses the logistics of a naval force from the future going back to WW2; in short they use the tech from the 21st century to speed up development in order to produce more feasible aircraft and weapons of equivalent advancement to the 50s and 60s.

The premise is immediately flawed by discounting Battle group submarine escorts which ALWAYS accompany the carriers... ALWAYS.

In 1942 that would be considered a moving bermuda triangle... cause anything enemy suddenly vanishes.

*purposefully excludes support ships and submarines for no reason* “Guys, the U.S. would lose because a lack of supplies.”

Surveillance capabilities alone would have provided the Allies with a Sauron-like advantage over axis.

I can't help but think from a tactics standpoint the Carrier group would prioritize targets. I suspect night would set on the Pacific Ocean and the next morning inexplicably the entire Japanese naval group would have just disappeared with scant or little information on what the hell happened. By the end of the week, I would think parts of Tokyo would just start exploding in the middle of the night. With that massive advantage in intel and radar, the Japanese might never actually lay their eyes on the Carrier group. The fog of war, and simply not know what the hell was going on would probably be the most effective weapon against Japan. When your entire navy just starts disappearing, and you have not actually inflicted any confirmed damage on the USA that has got be debilitating. They would have no idea this was only one Carrier Group, could all USA ships do this? Japan's entire strategy was to get the USA to the negotiating table, and they knew they could not beat the USA in a prolonged war. When they can't even get a confirmed kill, they would have to be seriously rattled.

Every ship in that group has a minimum of 2 or 3 tech manuals for every single sslystem and part on board. Composition of jet fuel, maintenance records, schematics, soup to nuts everything can and has to be made on board at times. Maintaining the aircraft would be a matter of getting tech specs to US Military R&D and they could have all the work done quite quickly. We had plenty of chemists, metallurgical experts, engineers and mechanics, they didn't have the knowledge. The only issue will be computer parts as silicone chips and stuff are way beyond the pay grade of a Lt JG. They do carry boxes of stores and with the new upgrades to older planes and even new versions of planes, there would be no shortage of sorties off the deck. The torpedoes on the helos would be a MASSIVE upgrade to the US torpedo and would change the entire war in the Atlantic over night. And an earlier poster was right, a single reactor tech petty officer and the right weapons specialist could probably build you a nuke faster than Los Alamos because they didn't have to invent it from scratch.

Isnt it said that a supercarrier carries or can carry more fighters than most countries around the world that has fighters?

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Oh hell yes!

One major factor I think you aren't taking into account is the training and material of the US crew. The military goes into pretty great depths on theory for stuff like communications, nuclear reactors, ordnance and all kinds of stuff that is required for each ship to function. You don't think about it much today cause "who cares how a transistor functions, yeah its just... " but boom you just replaced vacuum tubes 8 years early. Even the dumbest techs onboard probably knows equal to the greatest minds in the field during the 40s. Having them all get together and write out and print 1000 basic manuals of everything they can think off collectively would advance tech 20 years in a week let alone any training material or tech manuals onboard for copying. Basic transistors were still used to build an Atari, yeah old old tech by our standards, but computationally stronger than the tech that got us to the moon calculation wise. Imagine the power of the crews cellphones alone, things already built to run on 2 prong US power sources, than imagine how useful the prebuilt calculator app alone is to people designing and engineering on a slide rule. Something so perfectly accurate it can calculate to within 10 decimals instantly at a time when 3 decimals was overkill that took minutes. Imagine the machine shop in the carrier, inside it a decade old metal lathe that can get down to 5 micron precision at a time when they couldn't even measure that. That you can use to build more lathes and precision measuring tools to almost instantly make manufacturing 50 to 100 times more accurate. Old laptops the crew have sitting around can go straight onto radio broadcasts making your communications absolutely uncrackable for decades just because no one could even read a basic packet even if they figured out they could carry data, and there should be enough combined capability to rig up that kind of adhoc network. Basic cameras and their sensors would become the beginnings for advance imaging as they can just cheat and measure the precise (with your new super accurate tools) curvature of 60 plus years of glass design for image purposes. Even just a basic catalog of each exact shape, ratio, and capability would advance sensor tech and those could be produced in house. Knowing stuff alone like space absolutely exists and humanity can absolutely survive it, aside from stuff like orbits, geostationary orbits are a thing, and that rockets are important to get there, would advance people 10 to 20 years at a time when those were theoretical or not even thought of yet. Then think about things like hobbies, nowadays someone knowing how to tune a V8 to 500 hp is so common as to be laughably easy, even with something with a carburetor, but imagine how advantageous it would be to turbocharge your jeeps, boost your tanks, anything miltary that the car hobby coincides with anyway, that you can then manufacture wide scale for implementation with the new more precise manufacturing tech they are pushing out. This also applies to other concepts like someone that knows sloped armor is more effective from some game they played, maybe someone likes to blacksmith so they know modern hardening techniques, gardening or farmers that joined that understand crop rotations, pesticides, and fertilizers.

Note: modern fighters have CCIP targeting. Dumb bombs can be lobbed accurately.

Also the ability to carry out military operations effectively at night would be a huge advantage for a US super carrier group. A majority of the naval conflicts in the Pacific theater were conducted in daytime hours, but a super carrier group has the ability to conduct 'round the clock' missions and sorties. And with the precision weaponry at their disposal, this would not have been a fair fight.

Probably the most useful thing would be a jumpstart on nuclear technology, be able to study the reactor and then the technicians to be able to probably spear head something like the Manhattan project.

Just to add, a CVN would be able to tow 2 Arleigh Burke destroyers or a missile cruiser. It wouldn't be fast, and wouldn't work for modern operations, but for WW2, a CVN would be able to bring it's own support ships using nuclear powerplants.

The US tried to sink one of their own decommissioned carriers as a test. They couldn't sink it with their own missiles or torpedoes, direct hits for hours and it kept floating. The had to scuttle it from the inside using engineers and controlled explosives. I doubt the entire Japanese sub fleet could sink a modern carrier, even if it strolled up to visual distance of Tokyo.

One thing you forget..Modern carrier has nuclear weapons as well as conventional weapons…

Leaving aside the Super Hornets, Arleigh Burke class destroyers are guided missile destroyers, and carry both Harpoons and Tomahawks. 2 of them would have enough firepower to destroy every capital ship the IJN had at the time, although they wouldn't have enough to destroy all the subs and destroyers as well. Just that would be more than enough to cripple the Japanese ability to prosecute the war, though.

Having completed 4 tours on two different carriers with 3 different carrier battlegroups you seem to miss quite a bit about a carrier's combat capability. First, Carriers didn't start using A1B reactors until the Gerald Ford. Nimitz Class (The vast majority) use a different reactor. Okay, every Carrier Strike Group consists of a minimum of the Carrier, an anti-missile cruiser, 2 light support ships (either 2 destroyers or 1 destroyer & 1 frigate), and 2 fast attack submarines. You are wrong on a carrier ONLY having 2.8M gallons because they all CAN carry over 4.5M gallons although usually we leave port with only ~3.5M gallons onboard. F-18 Super Hornets have 11 mounting points and can carry over 18k pounds of external ordinace or fuel pods. Just as an example ... On the first day of the Persian Gulf War (4) FA-18Cs took off from the USS Saratoga to bomb oil fields in Southern Iraq. They each carried (4) Mk-84 2,000lb bombs, (2) AIM-7 Sparrows, (2) AIM-9L Sidewinders, and a central external fuel pod. They also encountered enemy Iraqi MiG fighters, destroyed them, and went on to bomb the oil fields before returning. No Japanese WW2 fighter would stand a chance against an F-18 unless the F-18 pilot made a dumb mistake or the Japanese fighter got winning-lottery-ticket lucky. Another mistake is your assessment of the Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. The Tomahawk Cruise Missile uses an on-board inertial sensor, gyro-stabilizer, and terrain land-navigation. It CAN use GPS to make it more accurate or to hit mobile targets; but the cruise missile is more than capable of striking predetermined non-moving targets by itself just fine. It uses it's on-board gyro and inertial stab to keep level even over water. As long as the cruise missile is pre-loaded with an accurate map it will work perfectly fine. Since Japan had no missile capabilities it didn't need to worry about being intercepted. The list that you showed is about what you could cram into ONE of the ordinace weapons lockers. There are also more than 3 of them as well. The largest problem that you glossed over would be the Japanese Battleships. The heavy armor on a battleship would soak up damage from just a carrier or missiles. This was the point of our own battleships. The 15in guns were designed to punch through any armor and only the strongest armored ships could take more than 1 direct hit and keep going. The USS Enterprise CVN-65 (Ret.) was built on a battleship hull. The areas where you could walk through the armor showed you just how thick the armor plating was. Over 3 inches hardened solid steel battle armor in some places. To combat those battleships the carrier would need to deploy it's submarines with torpedoes. No battlegroup commander would press an attack against an enemy force without it's support ships. It'd be considered if defending US Territory but not attacking Japanese held areas. A modern destroyer could easily find and destroy any WW2 submarine with their active sonar; regardless of weather conditions. If the destroyers didn't catch an enemy submarine then the pair of fast attack submarines constantly scouting for enemies underwater would find them. You mentioned that a problem would be replacement parts? You might not know that each carrier has a fully functioning machine and fabrication shop. With tons and tons of aviation and other types of materials on board. If they don't already have a replacement part in one of the storage rooms then the machine shop can fabricate nearly anything (except stuff having to do with the reactors themselves of course) from raw metal. The nuclear trained technicians on board can either repair or design work-arounds for digital electronics breakdowns. The Crypto-technicians can replace any lost computer programs or guidance programs. Long story short. I've seen firsthand the complete and overwhelming devastation that a single carrier battlegroup can deliver during Operation Iraqi Freedom (which I was involved in). With a constant supply chain that involved a single supply ship rearming and refueling every 3-4 days my carrier was able to sustain 23 hours of flight operations for 3.5 months (it sucked - I developed insomnia). Performing 110-125 sorties per day just my carrier dropped over 125k tons of munitions by itself. That's 1/4th of a BILLION pounds of ruining people's weekends. With minimal support a single modern super-carrier strike group could decimate the entire Japanese Fleet and bomb (with whatever was available) anywhere they wanted with impunity. Even conventional bombs of the WW2 era could be adapted to F-18 hardpoints with minimal effort.

This is actually a pretty cool video. Just like the film "The Final Countdown" How about doing another scenario where modern U.S. Marines storming the beach on D-Day with some supports (maybe one or two MEU) and how it played out?

“Guys what if we got a group of caveman to fight the terminator” that’s my response to whenever people ask these questions 💀

He forgot to mention that also the strike group would have advanced knowledge of each attack from history class

Someone saw the old 80's movie the Final Countdown where a super carrier went back to 1941 through a time portal.

It would be a turkey shoot. - Wouldnt even be a match. Thats not to disparage ships of that era. 80 years have passed. The same could be said of a WW2 battleship vs. a civil war naval task force. And the same would be true of a carrier task force 80 years from now vs. one from today. It is because of those earlier ship that we have what we have now.

TLDR USA would win the defensive war, but couldn't push forward due to lack of fuel.

Main US issue would be amount of ammunition.

You say fuel was a limitation, it wouldn't. Fuel oil (crude kerosene) was used in WW2 to power most warships at that time. This same fuel could be used to fuel modern day warships and aircraft.

Well, a US carrier group can destory the entire military of many smaller countries today, so I doubt they would have any trouble with a navy frim almost a century ago

One F-18 or F-35 could devastate the entire Japanese fleet. All it needs are 4 modern bombs and it's speed to catch the Japanese by surprise and sink all of their carriers. The entire carrier is like a chess Grandmaster bullying a 9 year old who only has a pawn while the Grandmaster has the entire chess set.

They made this a movie already.

Very interesting scenario, but two things not modelled are the modern sailors' knowledge of history and what effect the modern sailors' knowledge of technology would have on the rebuilding of the WW2 era fleet. Things like possible lithium-ion batteries for subs, homing torpedoes, radar, night vision, the fundamentals of helicopters, etc. That might be something for another video, maybe by a KZfaqr specializing in alternate history.

A carrier group outfitted with modern aircraft: absolutely. Without modern aircraft probably yes. Just a carrier, I don't think so. As far as I'm aware they are quite vulnerable without escorts. (Though I doubt their defenses are common knowledge)

In a scenario where the 1942 United States works in conjunction with their futuristic forces, there'd be very little need for the modern weapon systems to do much more than the preliminary or "tip of the spear" confrontation with the IJN. A devastated Japanese Navy suddenly without its Carrier forces would absolutely be forced to skulking back to home waters, and contemporary US forces would have little trouble setting up forward bases for bombers and fighters from Midway to Iwo Jima with only corollary assistance from the advanced systems and weapons acting as a shepherding force. Emergency retrofitting of contemporary weapon systems (flying F4F's off the modern carrier, for example) and bodging of modern supplies (ie. jet fuel) would certainly be a tactic, and while the modern equipment would have to be preserved and carefully stewarded, the overwhelming advantage it provides in conjunction with the remaining capabilities of 1942 America would be plenty to tip the war of the Pacific in the Allies' favor far earlier than in reality. I doubt that America would have attempted an invasion of Okinawa or the main islands without first rebuilding their Navy to its full force, but with such a tide-turning advantage, I have no doubt the IJN could've been bottled up and hamstrung for the few years that level of coordination and infrastructure it would take.

The real power of a carrier 50 years after WW2 is not her firepower. It is her power in information gathering, electronic warfare, computing power, and crew expertise in science and engineering. She can be a god mobile command center and research lab for US in an entire WW2 battlefield. EACH of her planes can serve as an AWACS for a WW2 strike group.