1# - Travel Speed
Another atmospheric flight feat. This time however, it is not belonging to one of the daikaiju (though they may very well scale to it in the end...).
Rather, it is by the one and only Jet Jaguar, who is more a size-shifting android than a true daikaiju (especially given that his standard size is of adult human height). And it's certainly quite the impressive speed feat, on top of that.
Megalon is en route to cause yet another Tokyo breakdown, lead by the briefly-hijacked Jet Jaguar, before the latter's inventor manages to arrest control back to himself and orders JJ to retrieve Godzilla on Monster Island.
In Monster Island's initial appearance in the Destroy All Monsters film, the islandwas confirmed as constituting a part of the Ogasawara (or Bonin) Islands archipelago. The vs Megalon film further verifies its identity by referencing Monster Island as being located within the South Pacific.
JJ departs before Megalon actually reaches Tokyo itself, but how far en route they are to the capital, or even what direction they're heading from, is almost entirely unknown: Lake Kiriyama is referenced as the area that Megalon intially emerges to the surface from, but I cannot locate any real-world equivalent in any online source, strangely enough. There is a Lake Kuriyama, but it's located all the way up in Hokkaido: while Megalon is indeed capable of high-speed flight, it doesn't display such use during its journey, indicating that they're two different lakes.
So, for now at least, I'm going to simply assume that Megalon is not moving uptowards Tokyo (only 25% probability on that one, so it's kinda in my favour?), and that JJ is flying the distance between Tokyo and the Bonin Islands.
Said distance is exactly 1000 kilometres.
The duration:
45:35 - JJ begins departure for Monster Island.
48:44 - JJ lands on Monster Island.
Timeframe is therefore 3 minutes and 9 seconds (189 seconds).
1000/189 = 5.29 km/s or Mach 15.55
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High hypersonic travel velocity for a Showa Godzilla-era entity while in atmosphere is quite impressive, to say the least.
However, this answer also segues into an even larger question: whether one can scale this speed to the daikaiju participants in this film? Human-sized Jet Jaguar may be this fast, but only Giant-Sized JJ actually squares off against Megalon and Gigan. I'm not sure if the greater physical volume and mass inhibits long-distance travel or not. Human-Sized JJ never gets attacked by either of the two or Godzilla, so one cannot even scale attack speed to this either, necessarily.
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2# - Burrowing Energy
So, Megalon's main gimmick is its ability to quickly drill daikaiju-sized tunnels underground and swim through dirt at Mach speeds. Pretty freaking nifty stuff, right there!
But how much can Megalon excavate in the span of, say, a single second?
>l.
Spoiler:
Megalon launches itself into the ground to evade Jet Jaguar's attacks: in the aforementioned timeframe of 1 second, it has already reached this depth (not the only example of such high-speed diggingin the film either).
The spoilered image above already scaled the height of the lower leg still exposed to the naked eye, so subtracting that away:
55 - 15.4 = 39.60 metres
Treating the shape of the tunnel as cylindrical.
Volume of a cylinder =
3.14*6.60*6.60*39.60 = 5419.17 m^3
The sheer volume of dust generated as a result of Megalon's excavations, plus the absence of even moderate-sized solid debris being kicked up from the drilling, makes me believe that assuming pulverisation is the appropriate energy value for this calc.
Pulverisation of rock is 214.35 J/cm^3
5419.17*1,000,000*214.35 = 1.161599089e+11 joules or 277.63 tons of TNT equivalent.
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That's the energy output of Megalon's drills in 1 second, mind you. It could probably maintain the rotation for minutes at a time if it so pleased.
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3# - Travel Speed
For those who have already read my previous blog entry, this section will appear very familiar to you. Mostly because it's pretty much the same deep space travel feat Gigan had the last time.
For one thing, though, it does seem to either confirm or at least heavily support my previous theory on certain space-faring daikaiju such as Gigan and King Ghidorah possessing some anomalous warp capability to quickly traverse exceedingly long distances:
1. Shimmering blue light blinking in the distance. 2. Blue light seems to get brighter and closer. 3. Suddenly, the crystaline cocoon holding Gigan apparates into physical manifestation.
It definitely appears that the cocoon form(s) are not travelling via traditional kinetic motion, whether it is self-propulsion or via external device projection/ejection.
Anyway, back to the actual calculation...
45:56 - The Seatopian ruler orders an interstellar dispatch call to Nebula M-Space Hunter to request the assistance of Gigan.
54:20 - Seatopian agent returns to his leader with the news that Gigan has departed the NMSH homeworld en route to Earth (uncertain if it left exactly at this time interval).
54:40 - Gigan is at an indiscernible location within Earth's atmosphere (darkened cloudy skies in the background).
With there be something of a timeframe uncertainty due to the lack of precise knowledge of when Gigan departed for Earth, I'm going to stick to 'Ole Faithful on this one: using a low-end to high-end range of values.
Low-End
Assuming that Gigan departed just a few seconds after the transmission was relayed back to NMSH from Seatopia (46:00).
54:40 - 46:00 = 8 minutes and 40 seconds(520 seconds)
Distance between Earth and NMSH was previously established at a minimum of 1340 light-years (1.2677e+16 km).
1.2677e+16/520 = 2.438e+13 km/s or 81,319,000 c
High-End
Assuming that Gigan immediately prior to the Seatopians receiving the response that the NMSH homeworld had consented to the plan (52:10)
54:40 - 52:10 = 2 minutes and 30 seconds(150 seconds)
1.2677e+16/150 = 8.541e+13 km/s or 281,910,000 c
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Speed is surprisingly around the same general range I obtained as last time, though with slightly higher results this time.
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Godzilla vs Megalon (1973) Speed (Jet Jaguar, In Atmosphere): Mach 15.55 Energy Output (Megalon's Drills): 277.63 tons of TNT equivalent. Speed (Gigan, Exo-Atmospheric Travel): 81,319,000 c [low-end] - 281,910,000 c[high-end]