EXECUTOR - Ship Of The Week #20 4/30/2015
- Thread starter Admiral2
- Start date
One of my favorite ships of all time. Absolutely fantastic.
It's not the Executor, but the remains of a crashed super star destroyer are also visibly seen in the new Star Wars trailer:
http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/starwarstheforceawakens_teaser_trailer2_17.jpg
http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/starwarstheforceawakens_teaser_trailer2_17.jpg
Neat that the Empire went large even without the Death Star, was what I thought in the theater on May 21, 1980. This was a total surprise. Awesome.
But that was only after another ship had taken out the bridge shield generators.
Though in most ofther shows etc when it would have collided with the Death Star II and both explode. Of course then we wouldn't have had Lando's run through the superstructure to take out the reactor core.
which make it an ideal fit for the mentality of the galactic empire.
Agreed. It seemed like overkill and detracted from the original Star Destroyer, which was a better design IMO. Never did much for me, so meh.
The only I time I wasn't impressed by the Executor/super star destroyer was when it was destroyed in Jedi. The fireball leaping up from the Death Star was too small, too fast and belied the scope and size of the ship as being the filming model it actually is vs. some gigantic spacecraft.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW_hGOFukMQ[/yt]
It also begs the question -- what the hell kind of redundant systems does the Empire have in it's starships? I get that a ship crashing through the bridge would be a catastrophic hit, but it seems like it would be something the Empire would have an auxiliary contingency for.
It's called "over-confidence" - something the Empire had in abundance!
That sucker must have taken decades to build, it's so damn huge...
The destruction of the Executor was, among other things, I didn't like about "Return of the Jedi".
I have been reading about naval combat. Ships weren't taken out of action when the bridge was destroyed. In many cases, the ship still had motive power and firepower. When ships were destroyed, it was because the damage was greater than the ability of the crew to compensate.
So, the Executor would have been disabled, then destroyed, by a convergence of firepower from the Rebel capital ships. The SSD would have shaken off the impact of a single fighter into its bridge. And, if the ship did go off course, automatic systems would have corrected the flight plan.
I don't think the crashed ship the Millennium Falcon flies into is of the same class as the Executor. The arrangement of engines is different.
I have been reading about naval combat. Ships weren't taken out of action when the bridge was destroyed. In many cases, the ship still had motive power and firepower. When ships were destroyed, it was because the damage was greater than the ability of the crew to compensate.
So, the Executor would have been disabled, then destroyed, by a convergence of firepower from the Rebel capital ships. The SSD would have shaken off the impact of a single fighter into its bridge. And, if the ship did go off course, automatic systems would have corrected the flight plan.
I don't think the crashed ship the Millennium Falcon flies into is of the same class as the Executor. The arrangement of engines is different.
Something to note about the destruction of the Executor.
Prior to its bridge deflector shield being knocked out it was under heavy bombardment from all avalible rebel ships. Admiral Akbar had ordered all firepower to focus on the super star destroyer.
Both sensor domes on top of the tower were destroyed. This might have caused the bridge deflector to fail or was the first indication to the ship's crew that the deflector had failed. The A-wing that smashed thougth the bridge exploding somewhere inside the superstucture as the whole tower starts to blow and the underside of the ship opposite the bridge tower is also spewing fire (in fact the plume on the underside is far larger than the one from the bridge tower). That would likely mean that engineering was also hit, or the blast traveled down the tower and took out more sytems than just the bridge. Likely it was the additional firepower of the Rebel fleet into the opening the A-wing provided finished her off.
Executor, and the Imperial fleet had followed the Rebels into low orbit of the Death Star. With its systems compromised the giant super star destroyers was caught in the gravity well and pulled into it, there seems to have not been enough time for secondary systems to kick in, or perhaps the crew was trying to get orders, not knowning the bridge was gone. Whatever the case, they were unable to solve the problem in time and she impacted with the surface of the Death Star II.
Prior to its bridge deflector shield being knocked out it was under heavy bombardment from all avalible rebel ships. Admiral Akbar had ordered all firepower to focus on the super star destroyer.
Both sensor domes on top of the tower were destroyed. This might have caused the bridge deflector to fail or was the first indication to the ship's crew that the deflector had failed. The A-wing that smashed thougth the bridge exploding somewhere inside the superstucture as the whole tower starts to blow and the underside of the ship opposite the bridge tower is also spewing fire (in fact the plume on the underside is far larger than the one from the bridge tower). That would likely mean that engineering was also hit, or the blast traveled down the tower and took out more sytems than just the bridge. Likely it was the additional firepower of the Rebel fleet into the opening the A-wing provided finished her off.
Executor, and the Imperial fleet had followed the Rebels into low orbit of the Death Star. With its systems compromised the giant super star destroyers was caught in the gravity well and pulled into it, there seems to have not been enough time for secondary systems to kick in, or perhaps the crew was trying to get orders, not knowning the bridge was gone. Whatever the case, they were unable to solve the problem in time and she impacted with the surface of the Death Star II.
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But you're thinking of terms in of naval combat on this planet which doesn't involve massive starships with massive power and computer systems.
The crash of the A-wing combined (As mentioned above) with damage already inflicted could easly have set of a casscade failure.
Possibly one other factor - it's possible the Death Star II was exerting a gravitation pull and with no helm control it's possible that the Executor was pulled towards it.
But it's funny you mention a hit to the bridge taking out a ship. In 1941 the light cruiser HMAS Sydney was sunk following a battle with the German Raider Kormerant. The wreck wasn't discovered until 2008 and it's only recently they've discovered what probably lead to her loss - a shell hit the bridger which is believe to have left her disabled and an easy target.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-01/new-photos-provide-evidence-of-why-hmas-sydney-sank/6438496
Great use of the word 'ridonkulously'
It was one of the few bits of shoddy effects work in an otherwise almost flawless performance from ILM. That final battle has yet to be topped in terms of space battles for me, and for a film that's thirty-two years old, that's some going.
The Executor was over-the-top - big time. But so was the Death Star - a lot more in fact. I love most of the ships in SW.
That itself would not fully explain the loss, though. Standard action stations in a RN cruiser I believe were for the captain to be on the bridge, the commander (XO) in the aft control station, fully able to take over and give orders to the alternate steering station, engines and gun directors. If Sydney was not at action stations, as some have long speculated, a single bridge hit could well have caught her without alternate control and unable to defend herself. But that's still a missing piece of the puzzle.
Get Lucas must have been happy with given he's never seen fit to have to it redone in any of the update versions.
The money would have been better spent updating this over some of the dumb CGI they did put in Return of the Jedi and the other two movies (though Empire was generally spared it).
