The philosophical questions raised in this movie involve whether it would be copesetic to engage the Japanese while "out of time." At last the Captain agreed to do so...the reason being the USS Nimitz was a US naval ship, whose job it was to protect the US. The return of the storm rendered the situation moot; the Tomcats and A-6's returned to the carrier.
Seems like the Capt. did so reluctantly though due to the idea of what could happen if the time continuem was distorted somehow. It boggles the mind to think about these things, and that is why this is such a good movie.
This is meant as an example to illustrate a time continuem distortion, though it's probably not a very good one, and is only presented as a possible example:
The Japanese attack fails and one particular US soldier is not killed. This US soldier is married and has a child. Soldier returns to US after the war and the child grows up under the guidence of the father to become a successful lawyer, businessman, etc... Suppose the father had been killed during the Japanese attack, and the mother re-married and the child somehow became involved with carrier design as a naval architect under his step father's guidence. One of his designs was the USS Nimitz.
If the former situation was the case, with the Nimitz stopping the attack, it could be that the Nimitz would never have been built, and the Nimitz, along with the Japanese fleet, would have gone into oblivion.
It presents quite a conundrum.
Les