MovieChat Forums > UFO (1972) Discussion > Why bother hiding the interceptors in cr...

Why bother hiding the interceptors in craters


Moonbase sat there in plain sight but the Intercepters were hidden in fake craters. I know it looked good for the traditional Anderson launch sequence but was it really necessary in reality?

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Could be camouflage in case a UFO got close. No point having them sitting on the surface asking to be targeted.

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they need to be protected from lunar hurricanes.

also, they might want to be able to have them in an environment that's pressurizable for maintenance.

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Same reason why military aircraft were placed in hardened bunkers at about that same time. Survivability in case of overwhelming or sneak attack. 

Luke Skywalker, your Mom was hawt! Darth Vader

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by phantom2-2 » they need to be protected from lunar hurricanes.

I wouldn't say hurricanes. Meteorites, on the other hand...

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They also wouldn't want them visible to "civilians" in the area - going to and from Dalotek, for example, or the Russian miners - or perhaps even visible from Earth with a powerful enough telescope. It was at least theoretically supposed to be secret, despite the SSTs marked SHADAIR and the Mobiles marked SHADO in great big letters.

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Plus, what about the security mens running after an alien through the woods with SHADO uniforms on, hana!?

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Good question but take a lesson from history from us Americans. On Pearl Harbor day, December 7, 1941, fearing sabotage, Lieutenant-General Short had ordered all of the U.S. Army Air Force fighter planes staged out in the open, wingtip to wingtip, ostensibly to make it easier to guard and harder for would-be saboteurs to sneak around. The attacking Japanese navy dive-bombers and Zero fighters found easy pickings as all the American fighter planes were lined up in plain sight. The Japanese destroyed over 140 American fighter planes, and other types.

SHADO moonbase did not rely on quantity but quality. It seems to me that there were only three interceptors. Bear in mind that SHADO moonbase was the first line of Earth defense. SHADO did not have any near space or deep space defense perimeter as in STAR TREK. In my military mind there should have been dozens of SHADO interceptors available for rapid sortie because by the time the main detection automated space station detected incoming UFO space ships, those were almost on top of moonbase. Well, I say almost because there was precious little warning time. The incoming UFOs were traveling at one-million miles per hour.

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Well, remember that they installed that faster-than-light scanning system in the first episode. And later it was said at least once that I remember, that it would take from about 30 minutes to something like 45 minutes for an incoming UFO to be in range of one of the already-launched interceptors.

On the whole, though, it was a mistake that the aliens never sent a large number of ships at the same time. But that's got the same old reason as when that kind of thing happens in other shows, including Star Trek: because then they would have won. And we couldn't have THAT!

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Interestingly, the UFOs did attempt a massive attack in the episode, REFLECTIONS IN THE WATER. For some reason not explained in the episode, the UFOs abandon their typical, one-spaceship infiltration tactic and instead launch a two-wave assault on SHADO moon base, each wave consisting of four or more space ships. Despite the few SHADO interceptors and the even fewer, surface SHADO rocket launcher vehicles, the mass attack is repelled with heavy UFO casualties. SHADO takes its own casualties, too, losing an interceptor or two and one of the rocket launcher vehicles.

The SHADO moon base space interceptors are interesting. The ships are completely operated and directed from moon base central control. The SHADO space pilots are almost redundant, just needing to sit there with their hands in their laps. All I see them do is press the trigger to launch their only weapon, a one-off nuclear rocket missile bomb. The SHADO spaceships do not appear to have secondary or backup weapons. There is one episode where a SHADO pilot sits helplessly in his cockpit awaiting instructions from SHADO moon base where to move his spaceship while another SHADO interceptor is heading on a collision course. Somehow the pilot cannot see the oncoming interceptor and doesn't attempt to move his interceptor while the other interceptor collides with him, destroying both space ships.

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I'm not so sure that's so hard to believe. Near-misses and even collisions occur fairly regularly between airplanes within the atmosphere. In space they would be moving much faster and you can't just swoop and change direction like you can with air and wings.

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But the simplest answer might be that it was the easiest way to hide circular "doors," without standing out.

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