The Lost Warship

There's no doubt that the writing in this story is cheesy - and the cheese is Swiss because there are holes all in it. For example: "They were so far away they looked like gnats. Jap bombers. Big fellows. Four-engined jobs." Amazing how you can make out four engines on something the size of a gnat.

Anyway, despite a terribly boring start and all the silly science and immature writing, the story has enough driving force to keep interest up until the end. For this reason I grudgingly give it 3 stars.

Zapped back in time, a WWII battleship crew faces an advanced prehistoric civilization that is determined to extinguish them.

During a Japanese air raid on an American battlefleet, the battleship Idaho slips through a space-time fault and lands a few hundred million years in the past. They find dinosaurs and men fighting (no, their last names weren't Flintstone and Rubble), as well as a deformed race of almost men who have mysterious airplanes and poison gas.

There are two women on board, one pregnant, the other the love interest, and the second smartest man in the world is also along for the cruise.

Having a knowledge of science would be a handicap in enjoying this story.

There is no science fiction in this story. You get the techno-babble that one can find in certain episodes of Star Trek to explain away plot holes (“we fell through a space-time fault in the crust of the Earth!”) but the only real mystery is why the editors of Amazing Stories agreed to publish it in the first place. In theory the story is about time-travel, though even in 1943 we knew dinosaurs and humans weren't living together “100 million years ago,” so I suppose one would categorize it as Lost Worlds. The villains (besides the “dirty Japs,” as the author puts it, who serve no other function than to prove how brave the Americans are by killing them in large numbers) are the Ogrum, a Morlock-like race who've yet to master language or personal hygiene but have somehow figured out how to make plastic airplanes and gas bombs, because, as explained by the author, “through some freak, nature developed a type of life that had the mentality to become excellent chemists but with little or no ability in any other line.” Like the Japanese in the beginning of the story the crew of the Idaho have no problem slaughtering every Ogrum they can lay their hands on and burning their city to the ground, because apparently pre-historic Earth wasn't big enough for a U.S. battleship with unlimited fuel and ammunition (magic!) and a bunch of ape-like chemists too stupid not to build their city of mud huts and airplane hangers on top of an active volcano.

WWII battleship lost in time. Yep, wrong place at the right time, takes you back millions of years. Prehistoric times?, yes, but with a twist.

Dinosaurs, volcano, pretty girl and a trader among them. But wait there's more. A race of bad guys that fly planes.