| Starships All the text was taken from the official Star Wars Encyclopedia |
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| A-wing Starfighter: This small, wedge-shaped craft has been the Alliance's main starfighter since it first saw full-scale deployment at the Battle of Endor. The lightweight A-wing, codesigned by General Jan Dodonna and Alliance engineer Walex Blissex to outrun any ship in the Imperial Navy, has especially strong avionics, including a powerful jamming system that disrupts sensor readings and lets pilots blind enemy targets prior to attack. Originally designed for escort duty, the A-wing has proved more suited to hit-and-run missions, blasting enemy sites and spacecraft with twin wing-mounted pivoting blaster cannons and concussion missiles. The downside of the A-wing's speed and agility is its relatively high vulnerability in dog-fights; the position of the cockpit leaves pilots exposed to enemy fire, making the craft's speed even more important. |
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| Death Star: It was the ultimate weapon, the decisive force that, once and for all, would quiet any remaining opposition. The Empire developed and constructed this top-secret battle station the size of a small moon, with more destructive power than the Imperial fleet. The Death Star had the horrifying ability to destroy an entire planet teeming with billions of people with a relatively short burst of its superlaser. Emperor Palpatine hoped it would instill the terror needed to keep thousands of star systems in line. It was rule by fear or force. That doctrine, and the development of the super waepon, came from the mind of Grand Moff Tarkin, a cold and calculating evil genius. A prototype Death Star was first built at a research facility that Tarkin kept secret even from the Emperor, the Maw Installation. Many of its systems were concieved and designed by famed starship engineer Bevel Lemelisk under the direction of Tol Sivron, the Twi'lek chief scientist. The Death Star's main weapon was the planet-annihilating superlaser, which was used twice. As a test, it destroyed the penal colony planet of Despayre, where it was built. Later it was used to destroy Princess Leia Organa's home planet, Alderaan, causing the instant deaths of billions of sentient creatures. The first Death Star was huge, some 120 kilometers in diameter. It had a crew of more than 265,000 soldiers. The total personnel soared to more than one million with the addition of gunners, ground troops, and starship support crews and pilots. In addition to the superlaser, the battle station had 15,000 turbolasers, 700 tractor beam projectors, 7,000 TIE fighters, 4 strike cruisers, and some 20,000 military and trasport vessels, and more than 11,000 combat vehicles. Yet simple errors doomed the station. Its defenses were built around repelling a capital ship attack; starfighters were considered insignificant. When the Alliance mounted its assault over Yavin, Tarkin considered the attack inconsequential; only the TIE fighters under Darth Vader's direct command were deployed. So, guided by the Force, Luke Skywalker was able to destroy this powerful weapon by firing simple proton torpedoed down and unshielded exhaust shaft. But four years later, a second Death Star neared completion, larger than the original. It was about 160 kilometers in diameter and armed with a superlaser even more powerful than its predecessor's and so accurate that it could be trained on capital ships. At its north pole was a heavily armored 100-story tower topped by the Emperor's private observation chamber. More than a weapon of terror, the second Death Star was part of an elaborate trap to lure the Rebels out of hiding by providing a tempting target. Emperor Palpatine allowed the Alliance's Bothan spies to learn the location of the Death Star, but never revealed that the superlaser was fully operational on the incomplete station. A small team of Rebel commandos on the forest moon of Endor, assisted by the native Ewoks, destroyed the shield generator protecting the Death Star, allowing the Millennium Falcon and a starfighter to fly inside and destroy its power core. Within a month, Rebel leader Mon Mothma declared the end of the Rebellion and the birth of the New Republic. Years later, the prototype Death Star - never intended as a practical weapon of war - was activated by Tol Sivron after the Maw Installation was attacked by a New Republic task force. The prototype was finally destroyed when Kyp Durron, piloting the Sun Crusher, lured the Imperial weapon into one of the Maw's black holes, where it was smashed by gravitational forces. In the end, nothing symbolized the Empire's oppression more than the Death Star. But it also came to represent the Empire's greatest weakness: the belief that technology was supreme and all foes insignificant. |