@@NinjaTyler yeah. If they stay up high relative to the death star, tons of turrets all over the thing can shoot at them. Getting down low in the trench meant that way fewer turrets had line of sight on them.
@@danielkorladis7869 The DS-1 was designed against direct assaults perpendicular (or about as perpendicular as one can be in non-Euclidian geometry) to its surface. It stands to reason that a dive bomb would see the fighters diving into a storm of turbolaser fire that not even a TIE Defender could survive.
@@demi-femme4821 tell that to han solo who appeared out of nowhere above the trench right where luke and vader were flying and scored several hits on tie fighters.
Every explanation I heard "Why don't we have any Y-wings?" "To old, no more parts" "Then refurb the old with new parts" "Can't" "Why not?" "Don't wanna" 😡
Imagine this Y wings with a mix of the republic y wings and the rebellions and its diffrent but it is still a y wing and 1 thing that it has that the y wing rebellion doesn't it has some sort of rydonium bomb( you dont know what rydonium is search rydonium explosion its in clone wars) they launch it to the weakest point and launch the bombs creating a brutiful explosion
In old canon the Y-Wing was, in terms of numbers, the most used ship in the rebel alliance - not because they were necessarily the best ship they had but because they were a versatile rugged multi-role heavy fighter-bomber and were cheap and easy to acquire in large numbers. Even after the B-Wing was developed to replace it, the advanced skill level required to fly it and the added expense, meant that Y-Wings remained in service and in many cases were a more practical option. So after the fall of the Empire you could easily imagine that Konesayr would have seen the potential of the venerable old Y-Wing and brought a new upgraded model to market
Also if they followed the EU the k-wing would have been great to use especially for this particular battle where it’s heavy weapons would be of great use.
If you need that many bombs you shouldn't drop them that way - the explosions from th first ones are between the target an the other bombs, and considering how prone to sympathetic detonations they are... carpet bombing was used to destroy large numbers of unfortified buildings, not a single high reinforced structure. Continueing the tradition of emulating WW2 visuals is on thing, choosing the right ones another matter. So many attacks on warships or dams and bunkers to choose from, and they pick the style that makes about the least sense.
Maybe they just dropped all bombs at once because they didnt have much time to drop them one by one. I also think its possible that they waited until they were on top of some weakspot or something.
Thats the problem: most of the bombs wouldn't have done anything as they get triggered directly on the surface or even outside of the hull. If you just wanted to blast surface details like turrets that might work. But to kill a large ship you'd want to go deep into the vital systems, i.e. punch a single deep hole and explode on the inside instead of damaging lots of surface area. Thats like trying to use a machine gun to wear down the a tank. Sure, with enough persistance it would work eventually, but a regular anti tank missile is by far more promising. Or the british attempts to sink the Bismarck, same problem: all the damage spread over the surface, hadn't she been scuttled by her own crew things would have become really frustrating.
Well even then that raises the point that during WW2, the biggest threat to Destoryers and Aircraft carriers were single prop engine fighters. Just look at what happened to the Yamoto, or the Bismarck.
The real reason, unlike this video tries to argue, isn't that space carpet bombing an armored warship makes sense. It's that the director wants the visual effects. Nothing more, nothing less. You're supposed to suspend your disbelief. People who likes TLJ can't say the obvious real reason because it makes TLJ looks bad, so they make up justifications that are neither needed nor asked for. I don't hate TLJ, but it is what it is.
4:40 Most likely because a diving attack means you're flying almost directly towards surface turbolasers, which then have a much easier time hitting you. The trench run minimised exposure to surface guns and enemy fighters.
If you are entering the trench you are essentially doing the same maneuver as a diving attack. You are just diving into a trench instead. This should make no difference.
@@meaninglesscog in a diving maneuver, you can at least move side to side and arent confined to a single trajectory which the enemy can easily intercept… this is what happens when you take a very situational WWII battle and turn it into a space opera
I thought they said something in IV about the trench being below where the anti-spacecraft guns could fire, so they would have time to line up their shots without dodging blasts.
Yes, to avoid most of the large turbo laser emplacements General dodonna specifically said that they would be required to maneuver in the trench to avoid most of the anti spacecraft fire, and with the understanding that maneuverability would be very limited which is why they needed the best Pilots
@@cakeboss4194 Yeah, but was it in the cinematic release? Without the CG Ronto and the 2D cardboard Stormtrooper on Dewback? That movie got edited so much, the original version isn't even available anymore, only a recreation through fans.
These new bombers are better employed by a military machine backed by a government than a group of resistance fighters. They are slow and lumbering, seemingly lack strong shield to make up for that weakness and are best employed when air or space resistance has been pacified... If I was the Republic, I'd give these things away too and use something either better defended, or smaller and faster that requires less crew and doesn't go up like a Chinese lantern doused in lighter fuel. I mean, we have learnt for years that Ties engage with superior numbers. And these new movies do nothing to remove that impression, so escorting a bomber fleet needs better tactics from the escorts when just a few hits can destroy a bomber. Granted, they were racing against the clock... But the whole engagement reeks of being devised by someone who needs to play the tabletop Star Wars ship combat game.
these bombers are better employed as scrap, when a ships design is to slowly lumber up to your target with no protection of your own, slowly release your over sized unguided payload and then proceed to get destroyed by your own payload because you have to be too close to avoid it in order to land your hits you know something is wrong
@@xxxxCronoxxxx I agree (I know this wouldn't have worked for what the writers wanted but I thought something like the Great Fox from the Star Fox games with some turrets on the back of the ship and something like starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bomblet_generator to generate things which the main guns would fire would be better as a space bomber).
The StarFortress actually makes a lot of sense as a post-Endor, pre-Jakku Rebel/New Republic design that the Resistance has inherited because they take what they can get. After Endor, the Rebels got a bunch of planets to openly side with them, which gives them access to manufacturing and manpower. The StarFortress looks easy to build by shipyards not designed for warships, its primary ammunition (unguided bombs) is presumably easier to make than guided torpedoes, and I don't think the crew require much specialized training like fighter pilots do. Deployed in large numbers with heavy fighter support (the Rebels' specialty), these things could be devastating against Super Star Destroyers, space stations and other extremely durable targets at a time when, for once, the Rebels/Republic could actually afford to take and replace casualties. Now, the Resistance doesn't have most of those advantages, but it seems reasonable that they could get StarFortresses from NR storage, arm them (though that would cost a lot of their budget) and train people to fly them. It's definitely dangerous to use (especially against heavy TIE cover), but I don't see another way for the Resistance to fight battlecruisers. It's kind of like using a suicide truck bomb against tanks - it's no one's Plan A, but may be their only reasonable option.
@@jonathanzentelin2815 "They have dozens of starfighters, and should use them. Oh no, I forgot, the script erased them for no reason." If you are talking about the Resistance, they just got through the Battle of Starkiller Base, where they threw every fighter they had into the fray and lost a bunch of them. Battlefield casualties matter, especially in the short term.
So why did Leia slap Poe and demote him? As noted, Poe's X-wing had been modified and the bombers were already moving to engage the First Order fleet before the dreadnought arrived. Given that Leia and various admirals were present at this battle it would appear that this was their approved strategy all along. Which makes it look like Leia got cold feet once it was already too late for the bombers to disengage and she decided to blame Poe to save her own face.
The plan was obviously in place, but you know that plans like these are constantly being made in the military, right? It's not a guarantee they'll be put in place. The direct objective of the plan was to take down the dreadnought, but the reason, the _main_ objective for the very existence of that plan was to delay the empire long enough for the fleet to run away. Once that higher perspective objective had been accomplished, there was no further reason to attack the dreadnought. Poe was in charge of that mission, and answered to Leia. He finished the mission against the direct orders of Leia, who had a wider perspective on things than him, who was only focused on bringing the dreadnought down. He was correctly demoted not because he didn't see what she saw, but because he didn't obey her orders. Everyone in a military hierarchy has a reason to be there. Poe's reason is he is a fine commander of these sorts of missions. But he should always respond to those who are better than him at seeing the higher picture, or else his really good performances at doing whatever it is he's doing are for nought. They are meaningless. As shown in the movie. And the best part is that in TLJ, he learns this at the end of the movie. He becomes a better commander.
Luis Dias - The problem with that argument is that it means that *Leia* sacrificed the bombers just to teach Poe a lesson about tactics! A lot of people seem hung up on the notion of Poe being "in-command", but he was *not* ! In *any* military operation flag rank officers can overrule people like squadron leaders at *any* time they choose. That switch in Poe's cockpit could not magically turn off the commlinks on all of the bombers! So Leia could have simply given them new orders directly and left Poe to his fate. She didn't. This is part of the larger issue with TLJ where Rian Johnson has the characters behave stupidly because he needs them to in order to conform to his desired plot. It was the same with Hux even bothering to take Poe's call during the middle of a battle instead of just ignoring him. Flag officers do not generally accept direct communications from enemy fighter pilots.
You say all of this, but the movie presents it differently. Poe is the de facto leader of that bombardment, and Leia is only communicating with him. Saying that she did not negate his authority on the spot to "teach him a lesson" is ridiculous in itself, and pure silly speculation. There could be lots of other technical or temporal issues with your solution to the issue, but this is overcomplicating a simple story: Leia told his commander not to do X, he ignores her and does it anyway, is successful at his objective, but fails at the larger scale. She correctly demotes him afterwards, and explains him why. To point out these silly technicalities that you mention is just convoluted over thinking the plot. Most plots are like this, they are simple. Most of them, if you think hard on them, may make little sense. The only reason people are critical of this particular plot point is not because of these technicalities, but because they felt it was off in the emotional sense. That the movie was somewhat berating successful men in a matriarchal nagging way. Not saying you felt this, but this is what a lot of the star wars hatedom is all about.
+Daniel S I agree. The begining of the movie is nonsensical and the movie is filled with forced writing like Rey trying to save Kylo who she knows is a psychopathic killer from the last movie. Abrams decided in The FA that he is a irredeemable villain and creep but Johnson wanted to set up a new dynamic with Rey, and it makes her look stupid. Also at the end Luke tells no one that he is going to distract the First Order, apparently not even Leia, just to force a scene where Poe has to figure this out for himself. Though there is some reason to believe that the movie was heavily altered in reshoots and editing, making it worse.
The entire chain reaction starts after just a few of the bombs hit the weak point. Maybe the first ones got lucky I suppose, but it seems thousands of proton bombs weren't required. Not to mention that a chain of bombs like that is just going to result in a column of explosions, since the lower bombs are liable to trigger the ones above it, making dropping a thousand bombs like that kind of a waste. The other issue I have is simply that the entire plan relied on the First Order just not doing anything. Same issue with the Death Star trench run, where the Empire just throws out a few dozen fighters and calls it a day, except even worse. If the First Order just did a couple of things a tiny bit differently; better positioning, actually launching a defensive screen, firing on the Raddus rather than the base that cannot run away, etc then the Resistance plan falls to pieces. What I think they should have done was use the Ninka. It's far faster and has bunker busting bombs that would go great at penetrating heavy armour and smashing a weak spot underneath. They could have had Poe insist that Y-Wings could get the job done and that the rest of the ships needed to stay back to avoid fire from the other Star Destroyers, while Holdo was adamant that they needed heavier weaponry to ensure the kill and the Ninka could get the job done. Then the Y-Wings could land blow after blow but unable to get past the armour, with the Ninka swooping in and dropping a bunker buster before the dreadnought could fire again. It's a better establishment scene for Holdo than just "This is Vice Admiral Holdo, she's the boss now" and provides a point of contention between Poe and Holdo as he's insistent that the Y-Wings would have worked given a couple more bombing runs and her that they never should have risked it in the first place. That animosity would have at played better on screen as to why Holdo would withhold information from the lead pilot of the fleet as well.
i disagree with your first point, to me looking at the clip it looks like the first couple bombs are only exploding on the surface while its takes about a third of the bombs exploding for any secondary explosions to occur and its debatable if those would be enough to destroy the ship completely. also i dont think the chain of bombs would blow themselves up, again in the clip we can see that doesn't happen, also it doesn't make any sense that anyone would design a weapon system with a flaw like that. carpet bombing is, was, used in the real world and im not aware of anything like that happening. the rest of your points are so good tho. the resistance's plan really feels like it required the first order to have both their feet up their own ass. and holdo having anything to do before her introduction would have made her such a better foil to poe, especially if she shows him up during his own plan.
@@OzyPepper Carpet bombing in the real world don't have the bombs anywhere near that close, outside of the few moments after release. From there they spread out, and even then you do see ones still in the air being detonated from an explosion below if they drop a bunch at once in a cluster rather than drop sequentially. While you're right we don't see the chain of bombs blowing up during the drop, we do see 3 bombers being destroyed by chain reactions of bombs from a single one going off after a collision with a Tie Fighter, and they're not really much closer to each other before being dropped. So we know that they are very prone to chain reacting (also that they don't seem very powerful? The bombs exploded within the bombers, yet were kind of underwhelming when you think about it. We can argue that there's still fail-safes that limit the explosion until they get further away, but that would just mean they're even more likely to chain react after dropping, and will just produce very impressive columns of boom that don't do a lot) As far as when the secondary explosions that destroyed the dreadnought started, they're definitely obvious by ~1/4 to ~1/3 of the bombs have hit. But the secondary explosions also start at the top where the first bombs hit, and it's not like any of the bombs are penetrating. Unless the bombs aren't powerful enough to blow up bombs, so bombs behind can pass through... but I don't think that'll be blasting through the armour especially when most aren't going to be hitting the same hole left by a previous bomb.
@@LordRunty yeah honestly you and i have put more thought into this then the writers did. maybe the bombs are shaped charges, maybe they dont arm until right before impact, maybe the bomber that started the chain reaction had a serious malfunction. in the end this kind of speculation is only going to do so much for a bad scene like this one, just trying to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like they need alot of it lmao
To be fair, the Tight Formation thing makes sense given they’d likely want to maximise the coverage of their weapons. If they were more spread out, they can’t cover each other. This is also something that dates back to the Second World War and why bomber formations were massed and close together.
@@xavi-kun The difference is that the bombers in WW2 didn't get destroyed that easily... For those bombers the likelihood to die was lower when in a tight formation... In this case the opposite is true...
@@ursmersmann6736 Well even if their formation was more spread out, as far as I can tell it makes it even harder since they’d have less coverage with their weapons and thus would be even easier targets for TIE Fighters. This is why Soviet bombers at the start of the war suffered heavy casualties. They were lightly armoured and in spread out formations so they couldn’t cover each other, and thus easy targets for the Germans.
@@ursmersmann6736 "The difference is that the bombers in WW2 didn't get destroyed that easily... " Except they did the bomber formations in WWII suffered massive casualties before the German air-force became incapable of really hitting back at them.
Heavy bombers are massive drains on resources. This argument could also be summed up as "a single B52 can drop a nuke and destroy an entire city, so they should only send out B52's". They took 100% losses prior to even getting on target, since with no pilots that last bomber was damned to be destroyed regardless of success or not. What would have happened if they were 50 meters to far left before the pilots were killed? Complete failure. Notwithstanding any possible Y or B wing advances, a 100% kill ratio is much harder to achieve before they are on target against 50 or 100 targets than it is against 5 or so. On top of this we are talking about a guerrilla war fighting group. Operating doctrines for a ragtag budget generally don't include gigantic craft in any form since that much of a concentration of your resources is dangerous. If they lose a single craft they are talking about a fifth of their total strike power. Craft like that that are designed for an operating environment where they have total space supremacy, in large enough numbers that even losing 5 is less than 10% of available strike power. Honestly these bombers are something the First Order or Empire should have used, NOT any rebel groups. As far as advancements in Y or B wing tech goes, its generally easier to pack more weapons onto any platform especially as tech matures. Kick some of those boosters Poe used onto a Y-wing Mark V, modify the Y gap to hold 50-100 of those bombs in a detachable bombardier box, upgrade the engines and lasers to keep up speed and firepower to decent levels, and now its 20 fighters with a more survivable platform, a more guerilla warfare centric acceptable loss ratio and tactics, the ability to get in quick enough thanks to the booster to drop quickly and minimize needed time on target, and enough spare dogfighting capability to help the escorts make it home as well. Again, super heavy bombers is way too resource intensive to do properly for anyone else but an Imperial faction as far as the established Star Wars universe goes.
1. I wonder the reasoning of the Resistance aquireing the Starfortress in the first place. The Y and B-Wings have been used successfully together with A and X-Wings for hit-and-run tactics. I wonder why they changed that tactic in the first place. One thing about the Starfortress is clear, it is a very slow ship, which limits their use especially against an enemy like the First Order because (see my second point). Given, it might have been the only bomber they had access to, but then they were able to get their hands on new X-Wings. 2. The planning for the attack on the Dreadnought obviously included that the commanding officer of the First Order fleet was a moron, because if the First Order commander had any sense he would have launched all their TIE Fighters from all Star Destroyers. The Starfortresses and their escorts would have been cut to ribbons long before they became a danger to the Dreadnought. 3. Only a few Y-Wings with the Proton Tropedoes would have been enough to at least disable the big guns or the engines of the Dreadnought. The Resistance would have to flee anyway considering the number of Star Destroyers nearby. You know what would have been cool? The following ending for the movie: A desperate space battle, the X-Wings and the other resistance ships luring the TIE Fighters and Star Destroyers away and the Starfortresses launching a surprise attack at the Supremacy, destroying the huge ship and the Resistance survivors fleeing thanks to all their ships having hyperdrives. Yes, the older Star Wars movies had their flaws, but Episode VIII had some many stupid characters and plot holes, that even the suspension of disbelief of a true Star Wars Fan (which I am not, I am just a Fan) begins to evaporate. Consider this, Poe asks for the General to at least give them hope. Just to tell them that she has a plan. And what does she do? Nothing. Had she simply said that she has a plan and asked them to trust her, the plan would have worked. But despite the stupidity of Finn and Rose, I consider every single shuttle that gets destroyed to be her fault. BTW, what drove the Rebellion again? What was the title of Episode IV again? Oh, yes. 'A new Hope'. Because Hope was all they had considering the enemy they faced.
Also want to point out that the entire plan revolved around the fact that the first order didn't deploy a fighter screen which any sane military leader would have done. If these people are supposed to be the first orders best then how in the galaxy are they this powerful. This movie is full of military mistakes. The first order should not have gotten into a scheme with the resistance instead the should have surrounded them. And cut them off they had the ships to do it
Doubly ludicrous given the First Order would have Imperial data pointingtowards a trend for rebellions to field snub fighters that are harder for primary ship weapons to target. Ergo. DEPLOY FIGHTER WINGS.
I'm pretty sure a few Y-wings targeting the main guns on that dreadnought would be sufficient to kill it. I mean look at how the Republic took out the giant subjugator-class with only a few bombing runs at it's main weapon. The dreadnought suffers from that same weakness just like the Xyston-class.
I dont see why they wouldnt be able to. As the original commenter stated, the malevolence’s main ion cannon was destroyed by a few bombing runs from some y-wings, and since the malevolence is much larger than the Mandator, it is safe to assume it had greater power generation and therefore better shields, yet the ion cannon was still taken out. Or, if we want to say that shielding tech has really jumped ahead far enough that it is way more power efficient, then wait until the cannons are getting ready to fire. Those cannons probably require heavy power requirements, so that would be when the shields are weakest. Plus, in TRoS, once the guns on the xyston were destroyed, the rest of the ship went down because big gun need big power nearby, so it was hooked up to the generator, and since the empire/first order isnt the most creative with their designs, I wouldnt be surprised if the Mandator worked under the same type of concept. (Also Im fuly aware that the Xyston in TRoS had their shields down in the atmosphere for some reason… I kind of find that to be bs there for plot convenience, but it doesnt disprove my point about the guns being the weakpoint. I have no doubt that if the shields were penetrated on the Xyston, the cannon would go down just as easily. Not to mention, in TLJ, the Battle of Crait featured an artillery piece which was stated to be miniaturized death star tech. Considering that Finn believed that sending a projectile (i.e. himself) down the barrel would disable the cannon, I feel that the Xyston and Mandator would also work under the same principle)
in the video he says that people are expecting the dreadnaught to have the same weaknesses as other superweapons in star wars. is there any actual evidence that the dreadnaught has the same weakness as the Xystons or the Malevolence other than they all are ships with a big gun on them?
@@OzyPepper well it blew up when people dropped bombs on it, it didn’t even take the full payload only a few bombs land before the chain reaction destroying the ship starts
Okay but what happens when they're using against a competent enemy? "Okay so these ships are coming at us at 2MPH and appear to be bombers, can we get someone to take them out?" "Already done sir!" "Thank you Johnson"
Take them out? What do you mean? Just move ‚up’ a couple hundred of meters… or hyperjump! Wait the bomber had that as well? Why did they start their slow flight that far away?
I don't have an issue with the design of the bombers. I do have one with the plan: have Poe go out ALONE and tell 'yo mamma' jokes to Hux to stall him so he can destroy literally every point defense system the dreadnaught to clear the way. On the other side we have a tragically poor formation (you should always keep important vessels protected, wtf are the other Star Destroyers doing BEHIND the most important ship in the fleet?), an utter lack of timely starfighter deployment, despite knowing that small fighter combat happens to be one of the Resistance's preferred tactics, and falling for probably the most obvious stalling attempt in the books instead of shooting any identified hostiles on sight. The problem with the opening scene isn't that the bombers were in too tight a formation (the reason for that 'freak accident') or that they're extremely slow and clunky (which could actually be expected of a heavy bomber), the problem is that the whole scene reeks of writing (and more specifically, writing of military tactics) which is mediocre at best, and downright laughably bad at worst.
Having the heavy ship lead isn't too much of a issue, until the middle of WWII that was how naval combat formations operated; aside from the scouts the battleships lead the formation. Famously at the Battle of the Denmark Strait one of the British battleships opened fire on the wrong ship when ordered to engage the Bismark, they thought the lead warship had to be Bismark because that's just how you arrange a formation when it was actually Bismark's escort the Prinz Eugen. The reason for such a formation is that first it allows the most powerful ship (which will normally be the flagship) to lead the formation and second if the fleet engages another equally powerful ship having the lighter units in the lead just means the enemy battleship will tear them apart before it gets in to range to engage your battleship. It wasn't till the dangers of air attack became known that formations changed. For the Empire/First Order I can see them operating with a 'battleships lead formation' doctrine, their naval academies likely trained on large scale fleet actions à la the Clone Wars with starfighters and bombers seen as a secondary element since for them the capital ships are what is important because those are what is needed to break through enemy lines and conquer planets.
It's more along the lines of how the FO promote officers. Loyalty and Fanaticism is preferred over Capability, and it shows. Hux is flat out stated by Snoke to be incompetent, but Snoke keeps him in place because of his loyalty. Had the other guy been in charge of the formation, the fighters would've been out of the bays the moment they arrived in system, specifically to prevent this exact scenario.
heaving a heavy ship lead makes sense if its a heavy alrounder like a mon calamari or insurgend class stardestroyer BUT this ship is not a frontline ship its a havy artillery You DONT place your artillery in front and your tanks behind it... especialy if it has poor anti air power and your enemy mainly uses figters we have seen the godlike point defence on the insurgend class ships... sending a shi like this first is as bad writing as having this fance anti air missels systems and dont give it too the ship wich ist most likely too be atacked by figters....
yeah.. it's sure awful when they use a mcguffin in star wars to get a desired result.. that scene in return of the jedi when an A-wing takes out the executor by violently dying? trash.. right? one should never apply a sense of military tactics to a space franchise where vehicles buzz around in a vacuum just like airplanes and building and losing a battle-planet doesn't somehow bankrupt your space government (especially doing it three times in a row) the issue is that several loud 'fans' seem to have outgrown storytelling for the sake of entertainment. if you can't suspend your disbelief at least a little bit, you are not gonna have a good time at the movies.
"A completely unforeseen freak accident", really? Three points I'd like to bring up. First: the entire concept of strategy means to take into account unknown factors, second: they're in a war zone in which explosive projectiles are used to eliminate hostile forces, so you'd think these ships would be given amazing shielding to compensate for being ridiculously slow; but they aren't, and to top it off the Resistance didn't even have the Starfortress' spread farther apart so that one explosion wouldn't destroy the whole fleet of them. A ship with such severe and fundamental inadequacies should not have been used for warfighting purposes. Third and last, a Pyrrhic Victory is not a true victory. Yes these ships managed to pull off the mission, however, it was only done with an astonishing 100% casualty rate with only one Starfortress actually completing its objective before being destroyed. Hardly efficient by any sensible standards. In the immortal words of Sun-Tzu: "What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease."
EC Henry, the freak accident you refer to, regardless if it was an accident or not, still goes to show how inefficient and unprotected these bombers are. When the Resistance should already have enough experience fighting the First Order to know, a swarm of tie fighters is going to have a maneuvering advantage. These were tactically put closer together and the resistance should have had a reason for that. But what it ended up happening was wasting the lives of the crew to a single tie pilot death. Y-wings could instead, maneuver around the ties along with the x-wing escort protecting them, sure time was of the essence, but even Leia agrees it was a too much of a costly battle. The Resistance would have run out of pilots long ago if this was a go-to strategy.
the tight formation is stupid when you said this ( how inefficient and unprotected these bombers are) have you looked at the real b-17 bomber its also very unprotected and where did the inspiration for the starfighter from oh yeah war films
@@minegaming4526 since the bombers had no front shooting turrets they can't really be compared to b17s(the b17s had like 12 guns in total.) not only that but why put fixed guns on a bomber? When again who tf uses carpet bombers in space.
@@Firewordien Presumably these are designed for surface targets and are all the resistance could field given their dire economic straits. Furthermore the tie bomber and Y-Wing has also been seen deploying bombs in this manner while in space.
The tight formation was an unfortunate necessity and risk that must have been taken given the very preciseness of their target. Had they been more spread out they left themselves open to an enumerable number of variables that might have included right turns the craft wouldn’t be able to make or prolonging the engagement and risking the dreadnought firing. The only real call was the brute force approach. Squadrons harry enemy fighters to cover the bombers approach which the Resistance did well but again… freak accident by a wayward burning tie fuselage. No way of accounting for that.
It is better to dock a loaded container with a Corellian YT freighter and drop it on the big ship. Faster and easier. Less casualties. If you do not have such freighters, you hire them.
Get a hammerhead corvette shove as many proton bombs you can fit in there remove unessesary stuff like escape pods and life support remove all weapons like laser cannons add more engines and get a droid to ram the dreadnought at full speed and upgrade the shields
@@Engiduck The problem is the Resistance *DOESN'T HAVE* the fleet the Rebel Alliance did. They had 3 capital ships. Where the hell would the corvette be?
@@deathsinger1192 The Resistance didn't have the funding for that. And if the starfortresses are so useless, nobody would trade them for a corvette. Not to mention, a corvette would be a bigger target and would likely be an easier target for the nearby star destroyers.
It is still very silly for the bombers to fly in a tight formation with each other. They should have attacked from different frontal angles to force the ties to split up, therefore lessen the concentration of fire on all of them, giving each bomber more of a chance to reach their target.
Not only that,, but this is space, all they had to do was tip the bottom to the target and launch the bombs. Heck, why even attack nearly parallel to the target in space? Just is too dumb for me.
Bombers fly close to each other for blanket fire. Due to the fact the bombers had no shields and limited cover except for escorts, they stayed in close formation to give the gunners the best field of fire. Try flying a TIE into a formation that tight where multiple gunners can nail you at once. This was a tactic used by the Air Force during World War II.
Star wars and most sci fi has always had trouble considering space as a 3D battlefield, it was like that in every previous movie, and is considered a trope for the genre, not a flaw.
The trench run makes a lot of sense to me as the fighters would expose themselves to a lot less surface turret fire from a largely covered approach than if they just made a bee-line for their target. It's basicallly like running the last klicks in an assault through city streets using buildings as cover instead of approaching from the exposed highway.
but in the trench run scene, most of the fighters got destroyed because they were easy targets for darth vader and the tie fighters, you see that they did not have any room to dodge or shake the star fighters off their tail but i do see your point
@@darkfishthedestroyer139 but that's because Vader is OP, against regular ties they had no problems doing the run undisturbed, it wasn't til Vader showed up they truly began getting decimated and if they'd attacked from above they'd be attacked by dozens to hundreds of laser towers along with tie fighters , the trench ran out of their firing range save for a small handful of turrets in the trench which is easy to deal with.
The Real world Explanation is ; "Because Rian Johnson wanted it to look like a World War II Movie" The in Universe Explanation is : "What you see is all there is - 'yes really' - it's quite easy to assume the resistance in it's entirety is seen on screen" They can't use Y-Wings, B-Wing (or the new un-used designs developed for The Force Awakens) because they didn't have any other people or ships - it's all on screen. Further more there is a heavy implication that the bombers are only suited to ground attack or lightly defended space targets and that they only used them as it's all they had - and as they were attached to Haldo's former flagship (which was their carrier) then that was the only real reason they were there. Besides they are designed to be useless. - If you want to get all logical about it - then why isn't the bombers attacking from a couple of Kilometres away or more - the Dreadnought is so slow it couldn't get out of the way - and they'd already destroyed the point defences. To get so close you get caught in the explosion is idiotic. Heck they didn't even need to "drop" the bombs down - they could have take multiple angles and pointed their tails at the dreadnought and hit it in a deadly cross fire from miles away. The real reason for every bad thing in this Movie is of course : "Because Rian Johnson".
You realise that making Star Wars look like World War II is..... the most traditional Star Wars thing to do, right? I love how this hating fandom always contradict themselves. First, he blew George Lucas' incredible "vision", then he is just a moron because he tried to put WW2 in a movie.... just like Lucas did. It makes sense if you think about it. It's quite obvious why all of these arguments are silly and contradictory: the fandom that hates this movie is dumb and stupid.
yea, but if the resistance is just all that, why didn't the First Order just surround them with more ships? They have the money and power to shit star destroyers like creamed corn
Luis Dias, maybe you should think about it: You are calling the people who disliked TLJ hating fandom, the same time you are calling them dumb and stupid. You are hating people, they are explaining why theu disliked the movie. Can you see that, maybe, they are not so hateful as you think? That they can maybe, not even being the bad guys?
Hating a movie this much for this long, with so many "videos" patreonized talking why it's shit and how person x, y and zed are "destroying" the industry, and perhaps something should be done about it is, at the very least, dumb and stupid. At its worst, it's dreadful and despicable. Yes, I share no love for these people. They are morons who should move on, but are unable to. The movie happened half a year ago, and this shit is still "trending". I am commenting on these shitty things that are still happening. Today. About a movie done half a year ago. That wasn't that bad. Get a life.
"40%of the fleet is taken out by a freak, unforeseeable accident." What is either freakish or unforeseeable about flying your bomber squadron so close together that when one is taken out it takes out the surrounding ships? The term 'clusterfuck' was coined for just that situation. Taking your large, incredibly slow, densely loaded with hi-ex munitions and flying them directly along the main fire axis of a very well-armed capital ship and not even flying any kind of evasive pattern is begging to die. Poe Dameron is a moron if this tactic was his idea. The fact that the payload from one of these useless crates did the job shows that, not only could waves of Y-Wings etc have done the job but that the concentration of ships was not required, either. If all you need is one to get through then spread them out. Have them come in from all angles. Make them harder to hit. DON'T gather them up in a tightly packed ball and then act all surprised when they get shot and then take each other out in the explosion. Stupid ships, moron-level tactics. Unjustifiable from the perspective of the movie reality and easily fixed with a moment's thought in the writing of the scene by anyone who bothered to do a moment's research into aerial combat tactics.
It was an unforseen accident. As much as I hate the sequels as the next guy, I think the hate of the star fortress is overboard. They did design the star fortress around the flying fortress bomber, which has had stories told of it landing even without a cockpit, which the final star fortress did complete the objective without a cockpit. They couldn't have predicted a TIE would crash into the bomb bay, which set off a chain reaction. Yes, could argue spread them out a bit more, but would you say the same to Lando with the rebel fleet during the Battle of Endor?
Trust me, I don't like the sequels either. But technically, this kind of accident happened to irl B-17's over early in their deployments over Europe. Bombers flew in tight, staggered formations just like in TLJ. The idea was to maximize their turrets' fields of fire, protecting themselves and the rest of the squadron. Instead, it made them fodder for flak and fighters who could get collateral kills on fortresses. There were also instances of German pilots colliding with (accidentally or intentionally) with bombers, causing heavy damage or even killing the plane. Formations like the "Standard Combat Box" could lead to multiple bomber or even multiple squadron losses. The "Piggyback Flight" for example, a b-17 took fire and collided with a second b-17 in the formation, granted they both survived and crashed in Germany. On top of that if you assume that this is the first time these star fortresses are seeing real combat, given this is the first time they were seen on screen, they might be applying the same fatal tactics the allies did. Realistically, only 1 or 2 flying fortresses ever had to make it to the target because of their capable payload. But bomber casualties were so high early-war due to shit tactics and lacking fighter escorts that allied command saturated formations to ensure that at least one made it to the target, even if none of them made it home. Edit: B-17's were also notoriously shit anti-ship bombers, which does play out accurately here
It's easy to explain this stuff by saying the characters in the movie know stuff we don't, but that's a lazy excuse for what I ultimately felt was a lackluster action sequence. It's a movie remember, and it comes down to whether it was entertaining, and when I was watching it in the cinema I felt disappointed, I was hoping for a more dynamic fleet battle, something like what Rogue One managed to pull off and it didn't match up. The trench run happened because it was entertaining, not because it made sense, did the TLJ scene make sense considering the Resistance's astoundingly sparse resources? Yes. Was it an entertaining space battle? To me no, it felt slow, clumsy and everyone involved seemed incompetent.
"In what kind of world do we expect the resistance" I'm still trying to figure out how, in Episode 7, they went from being the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT to being The Resistance, especially since, by virtue of opposing the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT, the First Order is, in fact, The Resistance, or The Rebellion. The better question is how the First Order has the money to make things like the Dreadnaught, or Starkiller Base when they're living off the scraps of the Empire, having had a sizable chunk of their power and resources stripped away when the Rebellion became THE LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT. I cannot stress those two words enough. Note how in the Original Trilogy, the Rebels were barely able to scrape anything together, and had to steal things from the Empire? While the First Order had a lot more to work with (not EVERYTHING in the Empire was retaken), they shouldn't have the resources they have, and I don't buy the idea that, with the Empire becoming the First Order and rebuilding its military that the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT would leave its defense to a ragtag group, given that some of the people in charge (Ackbar, Mon Mothma...) had lived through both the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War.
I feel this way too. Whatever problems I may have with the new movies themselves (and I do still enjoy them) those things pale in comparison with my puzzlement at the political backdrop to them. In the real world, our world, over seventy years have passed since the last global war, and only just now do some believe we are starting to forget the lessons of history. In contrast, the New Republic seems to have allowed itself to be destroyed in half that time, both by ignoring the advice of its veterans, and by having its entire fleet gathered in one location. Admittedly, I've not read the novel that provides background on all this, but I doubt I would find the explanations very compelling. On the other hand, we've only seen two thirds of an ongoing story, and who knows what could happen next. I'd be satisfied if the distress call sent by Leia is answered by a massive convergence of forces, from planetary governments to privateers, showing that the Galaxy is not really as empty nor as asleep at the wheel as it so far seems.
Every time someone says that this movie is a franchise killer, I remind them that the fans HATED Empire when it came out. RotJ picked up what Empire knocked over, and now Empire is the most veloved movie in Star Wars. I don't think Last Jedi will get to THAT point...but let's at least see how this ends, yes?
The Resistance was never the legitimate government, the resistance was a faction separate from the New Republic who in turn was the actual legitimate government, The resistance was fighting the First Order Because The New Republic didn't see the First Order as threat.
the reason the fleet was relatively small was because the New Republic was largely Demilitarized thanks to Mon Mothma who saw this as a way to make true peace in the galaxy,however this was seen as a stupid decision by many of the OT characters, in fact Leia actively tried to convince the New Republic this because of the growing threat of the first order, however it was leaked that she was the daughter of Darth Vader which completely destroyed her political career, which in turn forced her to create the Resistance.
i think they just cut to the scene of them getting destroyed, just like how in A New Hope you can see fighters taking multiple shots in the backround (death star trench run scene) just to make the movie shorter
@@QuestionableObject tissue paper? More like gun cotton (cellulous infused with nitro glycerin) man. The wreckage of ONE TIE fighter took out 3 star fortresdes
I wondered about the Death Star trench run before. Why not just fly straight in? But playing the PC game X-Wing illustrated the problem. In the trench, you are protected from the surface cannons outside the trench, which were more numerous than inside the trench. During a bombing run, it was good to have the terrain provide extra cover. Also, the B-Wing was awesome in that game.
The basis of all of these arguments is giving Disney "the benefit of the doubt", or otherwise trying to prove their side. When you do this your not really looking for a real explanation, just one that fits a mindset. The audience shouldn't have to do these kind of mental gymnastics to explain their lazy mistakes. I will admit that this issue plagues both sides of the argument, since many people who don't like it will find anyway to make it look bad, and anyone who does will find anyways to make it look good and make sense. But when we work backwards from a conclusion to our reasoning instead of reasoning to conclusion, we never find a real solution, and no real discussion can occur. I feel like a lot of times we play puppet to Disney, explaining their errors for the stuff they didn't care to even think about or get right.
Reminder: Modern military heavy bombers are actually quite fast. The B-1B Lancer is capable of traveling at Mach 1.25, and many bombing bombing missions are undertaken by fighter aircraft since they can deliver warheads onto foreheads in appropriate proportions much quicker than bombers. I find it hard to imagine that in the time the First Order found a way to utilize Keiber crystals in their standard naval vessel armaments that the New Republic just did not put any money into funding anti-capital ship weaponry since that is literally what got them to be the ruling body of the galaxy. Not to mention that the X-wing which was a new and untested star fighter at the beginning of the Galactic Civil War had no improvements made to it over the course of 40 ish years except Poe's which had an almighty afterburner put onto it. In that same time frame the US Air Force moved from the F-15 to the F-22, the latter of which is one of the most advanced aircraft in the world in terms of air-to-air and air superiority mission capabilities, if not the world's best. The fact that Y-wings have been known to take down formidable ships when working in unison and not just with their firepower alone, but with ion torpedoes that can disable star destroyers (which happened in Rogue One) shows that Rian Johnson and his writing team did not actually care about the lore of Star Wars in the slightest. He wanted to throw together whatever seemed right on a whim and let it play out on the screen with any real thought or effort put into many of the decisions. It does not make sense to justify his raping and pillaging of such a strong and loved franchise with his misguided and unfettered thoughts and whims. He could have been able to make it a great movie but he did not have a solid voice of reason or even someone with a deep and intimate understanding of the lore of Star Wars so as to avoid a writing blunder of this caliber. I can guarantee you if he assembled a panel of absolute Star Wars lore fanatics with a few people with a military background (particularly in naval combat and in air combat) then interesting an dynamics battles could have been crafted. If he wanted to subvert the expectations of fans in a meaningful way, then he could have made a statement that space wizards do not have to define galactic politics. Make the driving force of the movie centered around the non-force sensitives battling it out with fleet combat in a way that had yet to be seen on screen. Give me Admirals making unorthodox maneuvers that take advantage of the micro gravity environments of space, make interesting use of the three dimensional space and not just ships fighting as if on a 2 dimensional plane like ships on an ocean. I have always longed for some form of media to actually make me appreciate the creativity and ingenuity of the writers in regards to sci-fi space battles and with the current technology at the disposal of Lucasfilms they should have delivered on this. They had a great opportunity but relied too much on nostalgia to drive profits instead of actually providing some real depth into their stories. Rogue One showed show much promise in this regard with the use of the hammerhead corvette that was able to take advantage of the mass and armor placement of the Imperial ships to an extreme tactical advantage. How does one film series deliver that much promise then fall flat on its face immediately afterwards? Also if you look closely 0:42 , you can see that that first ten to twenty bombs start the chain reaction which is much less than what a squadron of Y-wings can carry. Long story short, you have to put some heavy blinders on to think that those models of useless space junk are actually viable bomber craft. Disappointment induced rant over.
The Starfortress is junk, yes. However first look at the Starfortress crew total (I say 15) VS 50 Y-Wings (50 pilots). Less casualties and the hunk of junk kept going after losing the cockpit and succeeded, let alone rear facing coverage from ambushes from behind. But I'll play Devil's Advocate here and say they used 50 NR Y-Wings. The NR Y-Wings couldn't even do a bombing run because the NR Y-Wing *WERE DESIGNED WITHOUT BOMBING CAPABILITIES.* Yes, the NR Y-Wing was just a starfighter and no longer a bomber. So, it's just Soviet Union tactics of "throw a bunch of people in the line of fire and maybe they'll die."
not even to mention the ridiculous bomb dropping method, if they really were expecting heavy casualties of the bombers, then why the fuck did they not just make a bounch of big unmanned missiles capable of way faster flight and shoot em straight into it
@@ZackarySchejbalCODBO2RGM2 and easy starfortress has at least 4 crew members as opposed to the one crew member of the rebel modified y wings. 15 times 4 is 60, and at least 30 and of them are pilots
"We are looking at an organization with maybe 2 squadrons of fighters at their disposal" ... and apparently bombers (by your reasoning) tailor-made for the task at hand with multiple thousands of proton bombs just stashed away.
Star Wars Rebels shows us that B-Wings have a mega death beam that can one shot Imperial capital ships. While I personally think it's stupid, with it being Canon, the Rebels might better have just mass produced B-Wings and swarmed First Order capital ships.
@Blitzwing2011 which still makes little sense, as the B-Wing depicted was an insane return on investment, as one prototype was able to quickly destroy an imperial light cruiser by itself in 2 swift shots. It doesn't make sense that the Rebels wouldn't save such a design for later use.
A couple problems with your argument: 1. The BSF/17 Starfortress is also a much larger craft than the Y-Wing, and thus likely costs more to produce and maintain. In addition, they require specialized carriers which further increases operating costs compared to the Y-wing, which is completely self-sufficient. 2. While both the B-Wing and Y-Wing aren't exactly dogfighters, they can still at least keep up with their escorts which improves survivability for both the bombers and their escorts. 3. There's also the option of converting YT-series light freighters into bombers. The Millennium Falcon is a bit of a special case in terms of cargo capacity since it's been modified into a sort of freighter/luxury yacht hybrid, but a stock YT-1300F is about 70% cargo space split into multiple compartments. You could fit just as many bombs in a YT-1300 as you can in a Starfortress, aboard a MUCH more durable and maneuverable ship with better point defense coverage. 4. You also have to keep in mind that EVERY fighter available to the resistance is capable of carrying ordinance in the form of Proton Torpedoes. 5. Regardless, the Starfortress, like its namesake the B-17 Flying Fortress, is a strategic bomber. Strategic bombers are designed to be used against _strategic_ targets like production facilities, airfields and emplacements AFTER the airspace has been secured. Against a target like a Mandator IV without air/space superiority, you need lighter, faster tactical bombers and attack craft. Further reinforcing this: as shown in the very footage you used, a single Starfortress could take out a Mandator IV, and critical damage was already dealt long before the entire payload impacted. Essentially, they set a B-17 into a mission that's far more suited to a B-25.
They can afford thousands of proton bombs, but can't afford 50 y-wings? or 50 B-wings? or a captured Star dreadnought of their own? The resistance, like the rebellion was funded by someone. But then, I think it would have made a better movie for the New Republic to have to put down this little insurgency from the backwaters.
Even if they could have afforded 50 y- or b- wings could they have found 50 pilots and 50 astromech droid to put them in the sky? However, I agree with you that the First Order was something the New Republic let get out of hand
Nobody makes y wings anymore. Those things were 20s out of date during the rebellion, 30 years before the last Jedi. B wings probably have a similar story
John Lavery B-Wings were brand new as of RotJ. Those were first generation production fighters. Given 30 years to refine the design, they could be beastly.
okay this is stretching. No military force is that capable of being close to omnipotent in understanding what they would fight against. (I.e Allied Military Intelligence knew of the German Build up on the Rhine in 1944; they just thought it was to bolster the German Defenses rather than a last gasp attack as the former made far more logical sense than the later; especially considering Germany was lacking crucial resources like oil). Also, this is really stupid. Other than Tirpitz, which was a Battleship that sat in one area and survived a single Tallboy bomb (12,000 lb bomb) before being capsizing by 3 more in another raid (those 3 hitting near it, not on it since it Capsized from a sand platform it sat on). No Battleship has ever been sunk by a strategic bomber, and if any were it was with radar guided bombs. Most Naval ships had been sunk by fast single engine fighters in large swarms. Also the Resistance was ... actually I don't know what it is suppose to be. The French Foreign Legion is better armed than them. And yet their funding was from the Republic Government; which is now gone. They are more screwed in Episode 9 then I initially thought. And the level of screwed was still very High. Also, this battle was freaking one-sided. The First Order should have had their Resurgent-class Star Destroyers near that Dreadnought in a defensive screen to defend it with their own CIWS, if it really was that crucial to their plan; like any Naval Military would. But they didn't and sat behind it for some reason, nor did they launch their fighters to defend it. The Dreadnought didn't launch theirs until Poe had one CIWS left to destroy. Nor did the Dreadnought perform evasive maneuvers to try and limit the damage it would take. Their CIWS were taken out by Poe, not their steering and propulsion systems; so why sit still when you are under attack; having heavy armor or not. If the First Order truly learned from the Empire, these would have been the tactics they would have used; and thus these bombers would have failed their mission if these tactic were employed. Let alone that I had said before, German and Japanese Pilots would ram a bomber intentionally if they couldn't take it down with their guns, as a last resort. Why didn't a Tie Pilot see this bomber still going and not sacrifice his 1 life to save the dreadnought by ramming the bomber? It lost its pilot, its gunners, and is badly damaged, but it is still flying on its course. So why didn't 1 Tie break-off from his dogfighting to finish it off? 3 Ties chasing 1 X-wing is a waste and not true to actual Dogfights. Also I really hate the Starfortress' design, 3 defensive guns, 1 on the dorsal, and two at the rear: 1 at top and 1 at the bottom. Yeah, that is great defensive coverage. For something that is suppose to be the Star Wars version of the B-17, its defensive coverage really sucks. This thing is dead in head one attacks, and any fighter that wants to attack it from below, or the sides from an angle where the rear guns can't reach; let alone any of the laser cannons hitting the obvious looking bomb bay to detonate those bombs within the bomber before they are released. Also, the entire concept of a Strategic Bomber in the Star Wars Universe, is unneeded. Capital Ships could do the job of a Strategic Bomber more effectively and efficiently without needing to sacrifice human lives and other resources. I accept that you do try to find some justification, but anyone with basic engineering concepts and military understanding, will keep pointing out the flaws with things like this.
I did mention Radar Guided bombs, though do remind me, Were Roma and Italia attacked by He-111s (twin engine Tactical Bombers) or He-177s (Germany's only Strategic bomber that would had four engines, but it had 2 by forcing 2 engines into one engine cowl; which led to a lot of overheating problems, among other issues)? Also I just looked, the G3M is a Twin Engine Bomber. Strategic Bombers are mostly identified by having 4 engines. The G3M was also meant to be a long range torpedo bomber, so its contribution to sinking the Repulse and Prince of Wales fit in its design principle being a land based bomber.
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What you are missing is these things are armoured and shielded pretty well made that they can survive multiple shots. Yes first order is contuniation of empire but they lack the experiance empire had. Empire had top brass(ship captains up) that fought clone wars and after that counqured galaxy they knew what they were doing especialy in battle of yavin but after that you can see that they jump down a bit on tactics wich happaned because they lost some experienced people to war and others retired. It gets worse in every major battle. On the other hand first order did not really fought anything they were trained but not experienced that is the main reason they act stupid. And the real reason why you need heavy bombers in star wars when you can have capital ships you might not be able to have capital ships. They are expensive to produce and keep. You need a lot of crew wich you might not have and as resistance you dont have. What is the next best thing having a payload equal or even better than a capital ship in a small 6 men crew ship. As for the swarm tactics it worked in real world beacuse we dont have ships size of cities. In star wars fighters doesnt really damage capital ships. light bombers (y-wings) used to do well aganist ships in clone wars but when it got the rebellion era or even end of the clone wars they were obslete and being replaced. And you can see this in movies y-wings gets destroyed in battle of yavin
@ "these things are armoured and shielded pretty well made that they can survive multiple shots." Yeah, so armored that an out of control TIE fighter rammed one, and detonated its payload to knock out 2 more. I think your definition of armored is different from mine, and one of those would be NOT being destroyed so easily by shrapnel. Which also doesn't justify the slow speed and the really poor defensive armament placement; the actual B-17 bomber would be a better bomber than this, the B-17 be faster, it had better defensive armament positions, and the 50 cals fired faster. Not to mention the idiocy of being so close as they were. Our bombers used a Combat Box formation that utilized cross fires better while still being separate enough to prevent incidents such as the one in that scene from happening. "Yes first order is contuniation of empire but they lack the experiance empire had. Empire had top brass(ship captains up) that fought clone wars and after that counqured galaxy they knew what they were doing especialy in battle of yavin but after that you can see that they jump down a bit on tactics wich happaned because they lost some experienced people to war and others retired. It gets worse in every major battle. On the other hand first order did not really fought anything they were trained but not experienced that is the main reason they act stupid." Trained with no experience does not equal stupid. Basic Naval doctrine for Carrier Fleets is to always have a fighter screen on duty, mostly to prevent exactly what happened in this scene with Poe. Trained crew would do exactly as they were trained, as one American tanker once put it upon his leading of his shermans being exactly what would get him an A at Fort Knox in a Tactics Course, before getting ambushed by Jadtigers during the Battle of the Bulge. This battle is not natural, it is beyond unnatural to consider it as something the First Order forces could not handle outside of a controlled Tactics Course. Also how are the retired officers who left to create and foster this First Order not teaching these new ones how to fight? That be worth while experience to have, even in a training scenario. "And the real reason why you need heavy bombers in star wars when you can have capital ships you might not be able to have capital ships. They are expensive to produce and keep. You need a lot of crew wich you might not have and as resistance you dont have. What is the next best thing having a payload equal or even better than a capital ship in a small 6 men crew ship. " Gee that would make sense, in any other setting but sci-fi. If ships were as big as Cities they would have thick armor, than they be laughing at your heavy bomber as they eat those rounds better than Tirpitz did to the one 12,000 lb Tallboy Bomb she did eat. At that point the cost and expenses pay off more than the "cheaper alternative" because how many of those bombers are you going to need to take out one capital ship while braving its escorts of fighters and smaller ships that would be defending it in an ACTUAL battle scenario and not a scripted one made by a Director who needed a solid crash course of naval strategy before he put pen to paper if he wanted it to be taken as seriously as he wanted? In case you didn't know, most Armored ships were made to withstand a Ship Equal to them. And no small Heavy bomber is ever going to have the payload equal to a capital ship 258 times its size Because I still call bullshit with even the armament being rounded, rather than shaped like something that actually was going to penetrate that armor and detonate within the decks like a bomb should. Otherwise you'd just be dropping High Explosive rounds that do nothing but scratch the paint. Something shaped like a 20 sided dice is not a good shape if your intent is to penetrate the armor to get at the important stuff like the crew and the ships systems. Also your claim of the Y-Wing being easily destroyed at the battle of Yavin proves how out of date it is, you do know the X-Wings were destroyed the same way too? Does that make the X-Wing a bad fighter, despite it being newer? By your logic, it sounds like it.
@@strategicperson95 To add to the G3M argument, the only time the G3M was ever used in a stratgic bombing mission was the firebombing of the chinese heartland. Strategic bombers would never waste their bombload on a Battleship. To attain the accuracy necessary to make that accurate of a strike on a Battleship would open the bomber to the entire AA firepower of the Battleship and the support fleet with it, which would end up with a dead bomber since it would be too large and unweildly to dodge the incoming fire. And even if they did somehow make it to their target, their bomb load would be over kill as three or four bombs of that size would guarantee death or crippling of anything from that time. Remember folks, strategic bombers are used to target large objects that don't tend to move like manufacturing structures and warehouses. Anything with the ability to move or dodge would increase the chances of that payload hitting diddly squat exponentially.
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@@strategicperson95 A tie fighter is not a weapon that is fired it a ship a solid object and it is clear to me that you dont know anything about star wars lore shields cannot stop solid objects they are not desingned for it so yeah a hull can destroy these things tell me one bomber that wouldnt. Even Executor got destroyed by a ramming action. as for the formation you might not be able to keep formation all the time and just one ship got close to another one does not mean they were not in formation 3rd one was pretty far away when it got destroyed. Also ı dont know where you got informed but allied bombing runs did not had very high survival rates. what you are missing is they did not see the danger there was just one fighter that could not pose a therat to any of the ships there why send entire fighter screen out aganist one fighter and waste fuel at this point First Order does not have endless resources that Empire had (also this is the main reason destroying that ship is a big victory for resistance because FO cannot replace it) wich means doctorine says do not waste resources for not a threat. Here comes the experince part an experienced officer would see the ruse or even know what a single fighter do but unexperienced FO officers never saw it. As ı told you dont know anything about star wars lore. THERE IS NO ARMOUR IN SHIPS IN STAR WARS. They have windows for gods sake how well of a armour is that and yes ther are as strong as steel glass but even than it is not really well armour is it? They have shields wich is enough because everything in star wars uses energy based weapons exept for bombers that is why bombers are so effective. No writer or director needs to know naval combat they need to know star wars space combat. An for anythin else you said after this point ı just say There is no armour in star wars. Y-wing supposed to the thrench run but not even one made it that far on the other hand a X-wing destroyed the deathstar so you are just stupid for not understanding what am ı saying
The deployment of the Starfortress bomb payload reeks of improper design. These bombers are clearly orbital bombardment/high altitude bombardment ships judging by the spread alone, and they're being used for close range bombing. Most of those bombs were rendered useless due to the other bombs destroying them in their own blasts, and thus only about 5-10% of those bombs were effectively used on the ship that actually pulled off surviving long enough to deploy. What they needed was simply a few well placed bombs by maybe 2 Y-wing bombers, with the proton bomb spacing being enough to keep the bombs from destroying eachother as they fall one at a time on the same spot. Yes, I am a geek with military tactics, and I know how explosives work (generally, especially with nuclear style ordinance). Swarms of explosives in a radius that small are ineffective at best, and strategically terrible at worst. It's cringe worthy writing. Also, with how technology had advanced within the Star Wars universe post endor, it makes sense they would make a new model of Y-wing bomber that is faster, more durable, and better defended.
I do actually agree with you, the may be a possibility of the Y-wing getting an upgraded model post battle of Endor but In the expanded novels and canon, the new Republic was De-militarised and only had a small Navel force, and we learn that the Resistance had to salvage most of its gear from old Rebel gear or loaned my Sympathizers The T-70 X-wing for example, the Majority of the Resistance fighter Squadron is old and outdated, Replaced by the T-85 X-wing and i think was donated to Leia Organa by Sympathetic Senators. Also the MG-100 Starfortress is an old design by TLJ. They were created by the end of the Galactic Civil War and were re-purposed by Civilians until being adsorbed into the Resistance organisation with Cobalt and Crimson Squadron being the users of the bombers. I agree the tactics are off and very bad in this film, i cannot find an explanation for this other than plot reasons, its why sometimes i cannot explain the logic of the Battle of hoth where snowspeeders were flying in direct lines of sight of the AT-AT's rather than the sides or back where they won't be shot from or the Empire at the Battle of Endor keeping the Death Star exposed and the main bulk of the Fleet behind the Rebels, but hey if its an enjoyable film it can be forgiven. But to answer the question of why isn't there a new model of Y-wing, I hopefully have answered it but in summery: there most likely is an Upgraded Y-wing but might have been affected by the Demilitarisation and it is likely that The Resistance cannot afford a newer model, seems apparent as they cannot afford the T-85 X-Wing.
Is that the point? The scene was made to depict a shitty, desperate situation where the resistance is a shoddily held together group with inferior resources. To have newer, better technology that puts them on par with the first order would be contrary to the image of the group
I agree, these things would domintate at orbital carpet bombing. Imagine if just one of these was above Crait, the FO would have gotten annihilated while the Resistance just chilled inside the mine. But like Henry said, these ships were only used to take down the Dreadnought because they were the only equipment the Resistance had in the timespan they were given that could get the job done
Just as an audience member (ignoring my Lore Nerd side entirely), I wouldn't have bought the scene if one or two Y-wings just shot the dreadnought in the weak spot and it exploded. That would be a declaration that the First Order's most powerful ships are all giant time bombs can be easily defeated by a moderately well-equipped air force, which would damage their credibility as villains far more than the fact that one of their leaders can get trolled for a little bit. Now the StarFortress? My brain was instantly convinced that that ludicrous number of bombs dropped on the midsection would wreck the ship, and it actually seemed fitting for the Resistance - they lack sophisticated weapons systems, so they found a way to brute-force the issue in a way that made visual sense (the physics of dropping that many explosives on top of each other says that would be ineffective, but this IS Star Wars). Something George Lucas told his art teams a lot during the prequels was that the most important thing in a Star Wars design was that the audience be able to figure out what it does in a couple of seconds at most, and I feel that the StarFortress met that bar.
The problem is what we a shown is that these bombers are made of tissue paper until the plot requires one to be alive. I dig the design of these bombers but they're subject to a horribly directed action sequence. I don't want to hate too much on TLJ as I did like it. But what could have been a cool ship was ruined by shoddy writing. You talk about a freak accident that no one could have accounted for but flying debris in a space battle can't honestly be a minor thing. And if one being destroyed can result in the entire formation being taken out then yes that is poor writing as they should've been spaced apart further. Considering that this an action sequence where all the anti strike craft weapons can be taken out by a single strike craft and the captain of the dreadnought moans about not launching his own fighters soon enough as though it isn't his job to do that we can chalk this up to abysmal writing. There really is no defence for this scene.
"The problem is what we a shown is that these bombers are made of tissue paper until the plot requires one to be alive." Just like the X-Wings do during the Death Star scene where multiple are shown to be taken down with a only a few hits whereas Luke's isn't.
Little does he know... In Star Wars Rebels we are shown a prototype B-Wing that has decent speed, good shielding (it's shown to deflect many shots from Imperial Light Cruisers) and we see that one of these are able to take out said Imperial Light cruiser in two swift shots. Such B-Wings would have been an incredible investment for the Rebel Alliance, as its only major downside would be its inability to utilize hyperspace, relying on being carried to battle in a cruiser or as an attachment to a shuttle, which in most situations would be quite negligible. A squadron of such B-Wings would be able to take out the Dreadnought far faster and with far less casualties than the Star Fortresses, and quite frankly it's a mystery to me as to why these bombers weren't ever utilized again.
Imperial light cruisers were basically clone wars relics rather than true warships and presumably the unique armament wasn't practical to produce en-masse.
Did you watch Eckharts Ladder's video on the battle? I tell you now to watch it before reading the rest of this comment, he fixed what the First Order did with his tactic. I would have removed the point defense guns on the Dreadnought and made Poe's mission along with in this version the rest of the X-wings as well to disable the cannons on the Star Destroyer that would be in front of the Dreadnought in this situation by attacking the three generators inside it's open bow (as seen in Battlefront II) which would then leave it open for the bombers to come through and have an epic battle with the A-wings and X-wings desperately holding off the TIEs from the Destroyer and maybe even have Kylo Ren come in with his Silencer and dogfight Poe or Tally in her A-wing. Then maybe when the Dreadnought goes down, one of the Auto Cannons right before it blows up gets knocked out of place and ends up shooting at the Star Destroyer in front of the Dreadnought instead of the fleet. Tell me that wouldn't make this scene badass!
For the sake of the argument, let assume that the Y-Wings can't carry enough firepower to really do damage and that one of the Bombers was enough to make the kill. The tactics the Resistance uses are insane, it's an inferior force in a tight formation of slow moving targets. The only reason one bomber was even able to succeed is due to the ABSOLUTE incompetence of the First Order. No one saw the fleet of slow moving space zeppelins leaving the atmosphere while a lone X-Wing crank calls the "Admiral"???? The whole scene adds to why the movie and ultimately the sequel trilogy is absolute crap.
The one mistake you made was that Hux's rank (for some reason) is general, rather than admiral. (Perhaps that is why he is so bad at space combat as by his rank, he should be commanding ground troops.) Everything else I fully agree with.
The reason why using these bombers exclusively for the mission was a horrible idea is the same reason you don't send unassisted fleets of Kirov Airships into battle in Red Alert. The fighter support and overall defense of the bombers was completely incapable of defending them from TIE Fighters, which seem to be the most dangerous enemies to these things. Many have pointed out other design flaws that are clearly seen in the movie, so what I'd like to add is that operating on the base presumption that the Resistance's high command is intelligent is one thing, but doing it in a movie where a vice-admiral willingly withholds necessary information from her most combative, aggressive and influential subordinate, which ends up blowing up in her face, is another.
To be fair, the odd thing about the Starfortress is why they were created. In a period of relative peace someone thought it was a great idea to manufacture a ship that would only really see service in war, and not just any war, but one in which total collateral damage was acceptable. Even during the Galactic Civil War such tactics weren't used (the Death Star et al. don't count, Alderaan wasn't collateral damage, it was the target).
@@DerpaTure9503 Oh I meant why they were created in universe, the reasons for having them in the film is obviously for cinematic and stylistic purposes.
The problem I have with the Starfortresses is the fact a resistance group, which survives on mobility would take something as slow and cumbersome as a bomber that big. Arming the thing and keeping its upkeep just seems foolish for such a small force.
It doesn't make it any less stupid as while one could destroy a warship, if the First Order was more competent, they would not have make it to kill the enemy warship. Also, in lore, the B-Wing had the highest count of bombs/torpedoes of any bomber of its time, bar none, and it was designed specifically to destroy capital ships, so your argument is not valid.
raw666 The B-Wing model was discontinued specifically because of the large payload it needed to carry, thereby warranting higher construction parameters that The Resistance simply cannot afford. Also, you're referring to Legends, yes, there is a difference.
No, I don't deny the idea is partially sound, but the overall execution and reasoning are still too questioning. For partially the argument that the Y-Wing carries a heavier payload when many different cannon material states otherwise, and it stated cannonically the B-Wing was designed specifically to kill heavier warships better than the Y-Wing and an upgraded version like the X-Wing and A-Wing would probably do better. And if we are going with the B-52 Bomber argument, then it is severely flawed since they were never designed to kill warships, they were used to hit long areas of land to destroy enemy strongholds and targets. Which seems to match the Star Fortress design with its slower speeds and high dispersal of heavy payloads seems more like something to hit and destroy enemy bases when orbital bombardment would not be precise enough, aka destroy the based but not the city next to to it. In fact, to kill warships, it was often used warships or faster and more maneuverable torpedo bomber fighters like the Douglas DTB. So it still does not take away it like it is the wrong craft for the wrong job and only reinforce it to what the craft is based off of. Hell, you could make the argument that it would be safer to use a heavy warship to fire payloads into the ship since most warships appear to be faster then the star fortress, and would be better shielded and carry heavier payloads if the amount of payload is an issue for a bomber.
". And if we are going with the B-52 Bomber argument, then it is severely flawed since they were never designed to kill warships, they were used to hit long areas of land to destroy enemy strongholds and targets." So the four-kilometer long Dreadnought counts as a ship, not a long area of land and/or stronghold. Compare that to the 29 metre long Resistance Bomber. Welcome to Star Wars where the ships are big.
@@SilverStarHeggisist That is not how it works...a gun (it is not even a gun) designed for one thing doesn't automatically mean it can do another thing.
The problem isn't the answer, the problem is that we're left with the question. Repeatedly throughout the new series we see unexplained and unprecedented (at least on the films) scenes without any of the narrative devices that could aid our suspension of disbelief. I'm talking about a lack of foreshadowing, or even hanging a lampshade on it. These problems leave us unsatisfied with the questions raised, and no amount of off-screen apologia makes up for that.
4:08 oh my gosh! that's one of the key things missing from the Prequels and new Trilogy! i didn't realize how important those short briefing scenes were fixing before this.
This scene as a whole has a lot of problems, in both sides, not just the resistance one... #1 Why send Poe in a modified Xwing, could putting him in an Awing be a smarter choice (you save the time and resources of modifying an Xwing) #2 If the resistance has the luxury of upgrading their X-wings to completely redesigned T-70 and their A-wings to RZ-2, couldn't they design a new bomber fighter to replace the B-wing or the Y-wing? #3 How did the hell did the combat style change so drastically, specially considering that the empire didn't used to have heavy non-fighter bombers either. #4 why the hell does a capital ship lack anti fighter weaponry... even the death star had some....HUMONGOUS FLAW FOR A SHIP THAT SIZE.... #5 With bombers that size, why didnt the escort star destroyers target them, they're bigger and slower than fighters so higher size cannons should be able to shoot them down #6 your momma joke... #7 why are you hesitating to shoot them from long range way after committing to rout them (planetary bombardment of their base not considered hostile enough?)
An A-wing lacks the firepower of an X wing. A wings amount to being a pure air superiority fighter. I agree with everything else that movie was a disaster
I mean, I just assumed they were bad because they had a 100% loss rate but ok Also all it took was the first few bombs to cause a ship to explode, so yes a y wing could have done it
Ok I'm watching this video with current information available in my head. And from what I know now, this scene is still dumb. We now know that not only does the resistance have Y-wings but improved models along with all the other alphabet craft. Biggest thing I've noticed (in the clip provided) is that all it took to cause a critical reaction was the first rails payload, (about a 6th of 1k) so like 166 bombs. So now with that information, let's look at the Y-wings again and maybe even be less forgiving and say they can only carry 20 bombs a piece. All you need is 8 Y-wings a totally realistic amount. Well that's all from me being late to this.
As far as i can remember, in ancient times, when legends were lore and expanded universe was vast and diverse, those of us fortunate enough to become a pilot on an X-wing or Tie Fighter, knew about such pieces of equipment as concussion missiles, Proton Torpedoes (both with an advanced version), heavy rockets and proton bombs . We all knew that four rockets or a couple of bombs would take out a corvette, and that a tie bomber would carry at most four of them, but also we knew that both bombs and rockets would have some kind of propulsion system, and in the case of the bombs, that propulsion system was so weak that it was better to drop them at full speed (the bomb would follow the path and speed of the finghter that launched it) so they were inertia based devices. Now this new bombs seems like they fall (gravity based, on space) and are somewhat less powerful... hardly an advancement.
4:27 Because Turbolasers. Try a perfect little dive boom run on a pinpoint target like that and you can have a very fun, very short time of it with the artillery that has you dialed in. The point of the treanch run was to avoid as much fire as possible, trading threat from fixed defenses for danger from mobile forces.
Despite their short onscreen lifespan, I actually love the MG-100 StarFortress bombers. Being an aviation nut, there's nothing more impressive than the medium and heavy bombers.
"A freak accident". But said accident was caused by a TIE solar panel hitting, and not being deflected by the shields, not blocked by any armor- but a flimsy solar panel slicing through the hull of the ship, igniting the bombs (which had not only been armed, but apparently their fuses set to "blow the hell up at any moment", instead of proximity, speed, distance, time- any of the real world fuse setting that bombs/shells have...) No, it was a poor designed ship for the starfighter field, (if the X-Wings could have actually done THEIR JOBS, maybe it would work), and a pretty lousy plan- a staggered attempt, or even (presuming the bombers were hyperspace capable) a microjump to the "target window" would have been a much better plan instead of "fly slowly forward and get chewed up". It was the rule of cool- and like way too much in TLJ, showed neither the First Order nor the Resistance had a competent military commander.
I don't care who you are, anyone can identify that the bombers used in TLJ are far inferior to already seen established bombers (eg, Y-Wings, X-Wings, the new TIE fighters, old tie bombers, etc). It is a poor excuse you have to come up with a vehicle that instantly can destroy another one just to advance the plot, because anyone with even the glimmer of a tactical mind understands that is not the point of combat. The most effective strategy (and one used by the rebellion I may add, but not the resistance?), is to disable or disarm the enemy BEFORE taking out their assets. One COULD argue that was what Poe performed in the opening shots, but these new crappy bombers were so useless against enemy fighters that they all went down with a lone fighter screen from 1 ship. In WHAT SCENARIO does that even remotely sound like a feasible vessel to employ!?!?!?! Let's just get our facts straight. Ruin Johnson simply wanted to insert a WWIIesque scene into his crap movie because he thought it would pay homage to how the original movie used scenes borrowed from old WWII fighter plane scenes. Here's the rub though, he never took into account that it may LOOK pretty, but it had no substance because the immediate question that follows is, "Why don't they use any other ship to do the same thing?" Honestly, a better tactic (and more likely a much better scene), would have been to have squadrons of the new Xwings attack key points on the ship to disable it from being able to attack and not have the other 2 star destroyers accompany (since they contributed absolutely nothing to this scene but questions as to why they didn't act in the first place). Have those squadrons target the ships engines and the power generator for their main weapon. Once both of those are removed, the vehicle is a tactical paperweight (unless you count the new lightspeed ramming technique pioneered by this hack...). A better, and far more relatable scene, and you could still give it the feel of a "battle of midway" scene, and accomplish all your same goals, but you wouldn't get that sweet sweet merch from "adding a new vehicle to the roster"...
Light or medium bombers would have been a much better idea. For WWII examples, the B-25, or A-26/B-26. The StarFortresses getting annihilated was bound to happen as it was based off the B-24, for one. Of course these are different type of bombers, but for comparison, the B-25 performed more effectively in its role compared to the B-24 in its role. Don't believe me? Look it up. A bomber based off one or both of the WWII bombers would be the best decision the Resistance would've took. It would've supplanted the Y-Wing during the New Republic era. Still baffles me as to why the Resistance bought this POS anyways. The construction and design is severely flawed as a heavy bomber despite its massive armaments.
The Y-Wing is a generally better bomber than the Star fortress, since he Y-Wing could maneuver and likely get out of the engagement, and the Star Fortresses were incredibly vulnerable to fire to tie fire, and one tie wing hitting the side of a bomber. Also, it is Canon that they pulled the bombers from a *second* fleet, as opposed to being in the same area. The Y-Wing is, generally, easier to maneuver and fight in, and the Star fortress is incredibly vulnerable to the sides, since the ball guns couldn't protect the flanks as easily. The Star Fortress also needed an escort, and all the point-defense weapons eliminated in order for a successful run to be completed
So I just watched the video about the photon torpedoes and he mentions that it was weird that something that small could destroy the Death Star, which it did. Unless the dreadnaught had shield which it appeared not to the photon torpedoes dropped by the Y- Wings would be enough. If the resistance used Y-wings they would also receive far less casualties. The y-wing has a crew of 1 and an Astromech pmeanwhile those stupid bombers carry 9 or 10. No to mention how much faster the y-wing is.
it still does not explain why they shot the bombs at them with little engines attach to them. or why they don't spread out the bomber so if one explodes, weather from a freak accident or a normal attack, it does not take out other bombers.
You should be a Resistance General. Yeah, anybody with an ounce of sense would have sent the bombers in one-at-a-time and keep them spread out, just to increase your odds of success.
A well-stated video, I can't agree more in regard to the sudden rise of nitpicking when the Star Wars universe has always had much weirder things going on that everyone was fine with. Another thing that everyone seems to have either missed or is willingly ignoring about this battle is that the movie acknowledges that the tactics that the Resistance uses are flawed, and that the battle is a needless waste of life and ships. The Resistance is throwing together what limited resources it has to stall for time to evacuate their base, the plan is to slow the First Order down until the fleet can jump to safety (remember, they are unaware of hyperspace tracking at this time). Big, slow ships make sense for this, they are clearly bluffing, but bringing enough firepower with them to do some damage should the bluff fail. Before the attack begins, the fleet becomes ready to make the jump, and Poe is directly ordered to call off the attack. He ignores this order, and after everyone dies he is berated by his commanding officer and demoted. This is the starting point of Poe's character arc. He's only had like 15 minutes of screen time in the last movie, so at this point in the trilogy we're still being introduced to him. So far we have seen that he is a cocky, arrogant flyboy who doesn't spend much time outside of the present moment or thinking about the consequences of his actions, and this battle is the inciting incident in his path to becoming a better leader. How well this arc is handled is a separate discussion, but the point remains that the opening battle is flawed on purpose. TL;DR, If you think that the battle tactics are stupid, you are correct, and the film is agreeing with you.
The thing I find hilariously unthinkable about this scene is how close the formation is ; yeah, it would make sense if they were starfighters. But they are practically bombs waiting to go off. One tie fighter wing taking out three bombers? Really Rian? That's the dogfight scene you come up with?
I tried to be positive about TLJ. I really did. After I watched it for the first time in theaters, I just had a couple quibbles about it. Over the next couple days, my feelings about it deteriorated until my brother asked me to go watch it with him and I just had zero interest in rewatching it. The entire plot of that movie was to repeatedly pretend it was setting up some cool and fun thing, then call you ridiculous for wanting it. Then I have to deal with people assuming I'm toxic or coming at the movie in bad faith. It's soul crushing.
Same here bro, but from the other side - I was shouted down and almost convinced tha TLJ was the devil itself. Then I rewatched it and rediscovered I had a blast. So now you have a Star Wars movie that you dislike - and what's worst of it, it is someone else's favourite movie - happened to all of us. Welcome to the club. The fandom manace works from bothe sides of this argument. All we can do is be reasonable aboput it all and accept reality - we might disagree, but that's not the reason to be an arse about it.
I think I would like them more if they had more going for them than just ordinance. like mounting boosters on them too. Its also easier to poke holes in their design because they had somewhat of a disappointing outing compared to ships like the snow-speeder, despite them both only appearing in one scene, and they were basically the only new rebel fighter in the entire sequel trilogy. When previously the rebels were defined by their interesting and diverse fleet now the designs are hampered by the studio executives thinking that the main mistake of the prequels was their ships, when in fact that was the main thing many people liked about them alongside the memes. I know the resistance aren't the rebels but they might as well be. Its like the only new republic ship being the v wing.
All this is assuming anyone at Lucasfilm is following any rules for space combat. No rules means "creative freedom", which means any ship can do anything for no reason whatsoever.
"Chose thier crafts carefully" which is why the one they chose Got killed. Instantly also "freak accident"? That shit happens in war surprisingly often enough for people to factor it in
Ok but I have some things to add, the Starforts were anti-planet fortification carpet bombers, aside from potentially being ill suited to this task, how the fuck would you store these things? where on gods glorious space hanger could you store them? would they be docked outside of a ship? They certainly don't have the tech or internals to land sideways. They have most of their payload in an extremely large cross section on the bomber that is vulnerable to straffing fire. Who built these things.
They keep trying to replace the Y-Wing and they keep failing. The B-Wing, the K-Wing, the confusion that was the H-Wing, now this Resistance bomber monstrosity, the Y-Wing is already perfect the way it is. It can't be hit from behind, it's tough and maneuverable, it's not that slow and has strong shields, the laser cannons are positioned right where they need to be to make it accurate at long range and it has a working defensive ion cannon turret. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Yeah, because TLJ is doing so good at moving merch. (/sarcasm off) It was a goal, one they failed at. I remember when a toy B-Wing was the hot toy to have, the Starfort doesn't even have the visual flair to make a cool toy. How many more ways can this bomber fail?
The only weapons on the ventral hull are the massive cannons. My argument: Are you telling me that a couple of proton torpedoes fired into the barrel of those things WON'T cause a large explosion?
jets in real life fly low in mountain ranges (trenches). avoiding SAM missiles and detection. perfectly reasonable and makes for a better scene. this is a movie after-all
Because Rian Johnson wanted a "12 O'clock High IN SPACE!" scene, instead of writing the action around the ships in canon. It's a justification of a bad story choice, as Last Jedi kind of sucks about 65% of the time. Also, fire coverage. A Starfighter going down the trench only has to cope with the weapons and other fighters in the trench. But if a fighter is approaching the Death Star from a distance directly at the surface, the entire surface can see they're going for a certain target and mass fire against them. I would also argue that a few Tie fighters massing fire against the bombers in coordination would have taken them all out easily, due to their flimsiness, and because bad writing.
It's stated in the movie, why they had to make the trench run, to exploit the fact that the Death Star had such a spread defense designed against large vessels. Also, the exhaust ports where facing sideways, not outward, so a dive would not have lined up the torpedo shot. They had to make a run of some length down the trench, because that's where the ports were. DUH. Maybe you should go watch the movie before making crap up. Many people criticize the scene because it was a stupid tactical attack full of errors and moronic exchanges. I've never heard of the "Why Not Y-Wings" argument, but Y-Wings weren't used, because they would have worked, as we see in Rogue One, and the point of the scene is a foreshadowing of future events and the condition of the Resistance, so in order for that to happen, it had to be poorly executed and at great sacrifice, succeed, because the Resistance and First Order are full of idiots who care more about virtue signaling, rank and ego than actual combat.
Every word of what you just said is wrong. You should probably watch the film before you criticize someone by telling them to go watch the film. It is not stated in ANH that that the trench run is necessitated by the Death Star's loose defense, only that this defense can only be because the Empire does not consider a small one-man fighter to be a threat. When General Dodana explains this in response to Gold Leader, he is explicitly reiterating his previous statement about the Death Star's outer defensive perimeter. His briefing then proceeds into the Death Star itself and the objective of the mission, which is where the trench run is stated to be necessary. This is an entirely separate topic from the previous statement about the defense grid, and why they have to run the trench is never explocitly stated. As for the location of the exhaust port, it is a vertical shaft perpendicular to the trench. Luke using the force to curve his torpedoes into the vent is clearly shown on screen. We see the torpedoes firing straight out from Red 5, parallel to the base of the trench, and then making a 90 degree turn into the vent, next to the scorch marks left by Red Leader's torpedoes that impacted on the surface. As for the poor tactical decisions in the opening battle of TLJ, everyone seems to forget that the movie literally states this during and after the battle. Poe is directly ordered to call off the attack, he ignores this order, and after everyone dies he is berated by his commanding officer and demoted. If you think that the battle tactics are stupid, you are correct, and the film is agreeing with you. Additionally, Y-Wings may not necessarily have been the most strategic option. We do see a squadron of them using ion bombs disable an ISD in Rogue One, but the opening scene of TLJ is a different circumstance. In the first place, 30 years have passed since the OT, the Y-Wing was already a pretty old and slow vessel at that time. It is entirely possible, and based on descriptions of their performance from Legends material, very likely that new technology and tactics of the past 3 decades have rendered the craft an obsolete death trap. Secondly, the First Order dreadnought is quite a bit larger and more technologically advanced than an ISD, and as stated in the video, the Resistance does not appear to have enough pilots, let alone strike craft, to take out something of that scale using only one-man fighters.
The purpose of the bombers wasn't to actually bomb anything, it was "designed" to kill its pilot and to add more drama to the movie. That scene where the switch nearly fell out of the ship but was caught at the last second...
Exactly. It was a ship built around a WWII bomb dropping cut Rian put in some rough edit of the film to direct special effects, and a few dramatic flairs. Let's stop trying to make it fit in the universe. It was written by someone who didn't care about the technology of the universe and didn't bother to do the homework or detail someone like EC Henry does.
My problem stems from the desire of Johnson to make this feel like WW2. With that logic, why use a B-17 to attack a Battleship when a group of TBM Avengers (Torpedo Bombers) would be more than sufficient? Keep in mind, I love the design of the Starfortress, but they should not have been used in this instance. Instead, use them to attack Starkiller and save your X-Wings and Proton torpedoes for the Dreadnought. It was obvious the AAA Guns were incapable of hitting a fast moving target. There wasn't even TIES covering the Fleet until the last second.
I think this is the best critique of this scene. In a lot of ways the scene is “fine” but a torpedo bomber sequence would have been more appropriate and potentially cooler
I think it's perfectly valid to assume that the Resistance just threw whatever ships they had at the FO. I find it very unfortunate that they failed to more clearly state it in the movies themselves, but if you look at the supplemental materials just a bit, it becomes clear that the Resistance is even worse than the Rebel Alliance regarding equipment. The Rebel Alliance at least had some new-ish ships (U-Wings, B-Wings) and they modified old Y-Wings to make them more speedy. But the Resistance? All their tech is obsolete or crafted seemingly on the spot. ALL their X-Wings are older models, no longer in use in the New Republic Navy. The shuttle that Leia arrives in on Takodana seems to be welded together from a B-Wing cockpit, a laser gun and an armoured brick. P. S. I've looked Starfortress up at Wookiepedia. That ship was designed soon after the Battle at Endor. The design is almost 30 YEARS OLD! Of course it's slow and clunky.
They had newer model X-Wings. Newer model TIE fighters. Why not newer model Y-Wings? It will be like the other ships, everything has an upgrade; including proton bombs.
you make a good point; even without a cockpit and half the crew, it delivered the payload; Y wings, in comparison, were a bit more fragile, did require escort, and well, can't carry enough payload..
Here's where your wrong. The star fortress may carry more bombs, but a large unit of Y wings with proton torpedoes can also make up the amount needed AND are maneuverable
so you expect that the y-wing did,t get picked off and that it's harder to escort a small fighter unlike the starfortress (not saying that i really like the design, it's ok)
@@minegaming4526 y-wings are capable of moving faster and wouldn't be picked off as easily, they are also faster and typically escorted by x-wings, which also shoot proton torpedoes and can assist in the bombing run
I see the Y-wing as the light moblie bomber compared to the star fortress and have weaker bombs being used for hit and run tatics and can be used for specific spots. And the star fortress as a heavier, and not as moblie, but can do more damage and can be sure to do the job in a short amount of time. And just the fact that the Y-wing is what I'm guessing more than 50 years old. I don't know. There's probably more reasons and upgrades could be used.
By the time the Clone Wars, the Y-Wings were nearing the the end of their production runs, with maybe a few hundred more units left to produce *at best*. By the time of SWFA, the Y-Wings are looooooooong out of date, and were barely holding together as it was. Also, the Y-Wings being more nimble only means that they'd have to stay in the fight longer when engaging a Dreadnought, which they would have to basically pick apart piece by piece. Think of it like using a TBM Avenger, SBD Dauntless, and SB2C Helldiver against the Yamato. Each craft is small, fairly nimble, and are harder to hit, but it still took 13 torpedo hits, and dozens of bomb hits from over 300 aircraft to sink her, and she didn't even have a fighter screen.
Jonathon Davonger all of that is true. I see the outdate tech being a a major factor of not being used for combat( I don't know how far upgrades will go). I still say hit and run tatics can go far enough for the target(depending on the target or specific target) to take damage and lead the way for a major attack, which I kinda see is a counter for the lack of damage for the bombs, while the star fortess' bombs do more. But the Y- wings have variety such as ion torpedos. Yet the Y-wing still won't be fit for combat.
I'd compare the Y-Wing more to the A-6 than an F-14. After all, the Y-Wing is virtually helpless in a a dogfight, as is an A-6 Intruder. As for variety of ordinance, remember that by the time of this attack, the Star Fortresses had only just gotten back, and were likely being loaded up with whatever bombs were available to them for another raid when the evacuation order came. It'd be like getting rearmed on the deck when a sudden attack comes. You're not gonna sit around on the deck and wait for the right weapons to be loaded, you're gonna be moved to the catapult, and launched as fast as the crew can load you to it.
Another thing I see is that the Y-Wing I think functions more like a torpedo bomber than a standard bomber, at least in canon. In the Clone Wars, Rebels, and the films, we mostly see them using torpedoes (both proton and ion) as opposed to bombs. The one time I can think of in canon when they actually drop standard bombs is the first episode with the Zillo Beast in Clone Wars when they drop those “electro-proton bombs”
They didn't use Y-wings or B-wings because they would have worked. Rian Johnston needed most of the Assault ships to die in order to progress the stupid story line where Poe gets reprimanded for completing the assigned mission. BTW the Y-wing was obsolete in A New Hope, they just didn't have anything which could replace it. That's why the Rebellion designed the B-wing, There's one scene in Jedi, during the final space battle, where you see a Star Destroyer blow up in the background. That was destroyed by, IIRC, a trio of B-wings so they have MORE than enough fire power. That scene was shot but never included in the movie because the B-wing's Wings disappeared when filmed from behind. Given that, in the intervening decades, the New Republic designed an upgraded X-wing, the T-70 model, AND an upgraded A-wing, the RZ=2, It's surprising that they didn't upgrade the B-wing, especially with that little monsters' Bang for Buck! You say the B-wing wasn't a good dog fighter, I disagree. It was better than the Y-wing, far more maneuverable and had much stronger shields and weapons. It also didn't NEED to be as good as the X-wing, given that it was almost the same speed X-wing and a much harder to hit target than the Y-wing, It just needs to be fast and maneuverable enough to fly alongside the X-wings. The scene would have been VERY different if some one with a little Star Wars knowledge and no agenda to push had been in charge, but you could say the same of the whole movie!
One major flaw in your assessment. Only ONE star fortress reached its target & delivered its payload of 100 proton bombs. So we know it only took 100 proton bombs to destroy the dreadnaught... a feat easily achieved with just 5 Y-wing bombers carrying 20 proton bombs each. Now imagine sending in just 2 or 3 squadrons of Y-wings. That would be 20 or 30 fast moving bombers totaling 400 or 600 proton bombs. Given the length of time it took the Tie fighters to destroy all the star fortresses, before just ONE reached & successfully bombed the dreadnught... more than half of those 20 or 30 Y-wings would have made it through if not damn near all of them. You are also forgetting the fact that Y-wings were abundant, cheap, easy to repair, & maintain, which is why the Rebel Alliance had so damn many of them, being their 2nd most common fighter. They literally had one Y-wing for every two X-wings. The Resistance was just stupid... like the rest of the plot in this movie.
@@thijmenhermelink1874 , the Starfortresses suck. The Y-Wings and B-Wings would've destroyed that dreadnaught and outflank it with ease plus there should've been more X-Wings and A-Wings for the escort. They could've used the old T-65s to tear up those Tie Fighters.
The question I have is how the Star Fortresses even came to be. Their design is abysmal after all, big slow unmanoeuvrable targets that go up like fireworks when hit. I mean, even the Tie Bomber only used 50% of its volume for bombs, where this uses something like 75%.
The star fortress would be seen as a decent craft if it was used correctly, you don't need to fly over the ship, this is space, you just have to draw a straight line from you to the target, have the plan be to at medium range to turn around and release the bombs in a wall of bombs, tearing through tie fighters trying to join the fight, while also being able to threaten the dreadnought
They were indeed old, probably around 90 years old, at the time of TLJ. THe problem is that there were really no designs that were created in the 90 years to take its place? Not only that, but a question I had was why the resistance even needed bombers like the ones they had? In all the cannon I am aware of, they never took actions against the First Order that they would be useful. (unless, you know, trying to destroy a massive superweapon, where they needed heavy ordinance to break through the armor of an installation on the ground. You know, the perfect situation for what the bombers were made for. Too bad that scenario never happened....)
The Y-wing design may be old, but the Hammerhead corvettes have been around since around 5-6k BBY, and are still used in the Rogue One movie as a valid ship design. The age of a design isn't the key problem here, the design itself is, and these new bombers are worse all around than either the B-wing or the Y-wing.
Gotta disagree man, that wasn't a "freak accident." They didn't have to fly in tight formation like that. This is space warfare, they could've adopted any number of wide formations and still been in good positions to drop their payloads. Now if the intent was to show the Resistance as incompetent, then that would be a success. But to be quite frank, that doesn't really do much for the plot.
@@omarbaba9892 you’re totally right. I hadn’t learned that at the time, but I did do some more digging after posting the comment. Thanks for correcting me
I blame bad writing. The ship's very use was created by RJ, he could have easily put better shielding on them, and faster engines to show them to be more competant. But instead, we have to try and jump hoops to "explain it away" when it was fully in RJ's control as a content creator in the first place on how to have them function. It was for an attempted emotional impact, which was poorly executed. "How do I make them die? I guess I'll make them weak and really slow" - RJ Could have had them shown to be taking all the impacts, bombing well, but then getting taken down by other captial ships that were side supports as they try to turn around with Poe after getting the job down. Something more feasable, and still gets the job done of the emotional impact of loss.
That was one of the more irritating things about TLJ, the level of incompetence of both groups would've led to them killing themselves off long before they ran into each other. And then the epic holdo maneuver that annihilates the universal laws established in 7 previous movies for a pretty scene, which I freely admit it looked great but hurt the franchise. God I hate that movie
TIE Bomber: I’m the slowest, bulkiest, less maneuverable, easiest to destroy bomber in the franchise.
Starfortress: Hold my oil . . .
JediDanD more like coaxium
Hold my tylium
Hold my bombs- oh wait, I need those
@Grant Huddy [Student] then why did they blow up like Dominoes?
@Grant Huddy [Student] oh I thought it was that TIE FO
The Starfortress looks like the B-wing would look after retirement and it's been sitting on the couch watching the Price Is Right!
Oh kriff i cant unsee it now...
Great work man, thank you.
For the Death Star run, they flew through the trench to avoid laser fire.
@@o...o4144 no they stated in the film it's below most of the turret arrays giving them the best run at the exhaust port.
@@NinjaTyler yeah. If they stay up high relative to the death star, tons of turrets all over the thing can shoot at them. Getting down low in the trench meant that way fewer turrets had line of sight on them.
@@danielkorladis7869 exactly, otherwise they would've gone straight at the exhaust port from above
@@danielkorladis7869 The DS-1 was designed against direct assaults perpendicular (or about as perpendicular as one can be in non-Euclidian geometry) to its surface. It stands to reason that a dive bomb would see the fighters diving into a storm of turbolaser fire that not even a TIE Defender could survive.
@@demi-femme4821 tell that to han solo who appeared out of nowhere above the trench right where luke and vader were flying and scored several hits on tie fighters.
Credit where credit is due: the star fortress is the only new unique ship design in the Disney trilogy.
Supremacy too
That's just wrong but okay
Chef Pigardorito not really
Supremacy is easily one of the more unique designs that is content to do its own thing design wise
So what? Even if that were true it doesn't justify the incompetent writing around how they were used.
James Fleming writing and design is a separate issue tho???
"why don't we use Y-Wings?"
"We don't have 50 Y-Wings"
"Oh, Okay thanks."
that cracked me up. lol
Understandable, have a great day.
Every explanation I heard
"Why don't we have any Y-wings?"
"To old, no more parts"
"Then refurb the old with new parts"
"Can't"
"Why not?"
"Don't wanna"
😡
I think more of the Star Fortress craft were destroyed by proximity explosions than enemy fire.
Jean-Wesley New "keep that tight formation"
Would have loved to see some upgraded Y-Wings. Always thought they were underrated.
Imagine this Y wings with a mix of the republic y wings and the rebellions and its diffrent but it is still a y wing and 1 thing that it has that the y wing rebellion doesn't it has some sort of rydonium bomb( you dont know what rydonium is search rydonium explosion its in clone wars) they launch it to the weakest point and launch the bombs creating a brutiful explosion
In old canon the Y-Wing was, in terms of numbers, the most used ship in the rebel alliance - not because they were necessarily the best ship they had but because they were a versatile rugged multi-role heavy fighter-bomber and were cheap and easy to acquire in large numbers.
Even after the B-Wing was developed to replace it, the advanced skill level required to fly it and the added expense, meant that Y-Wings remained in service and in many cases were a more practical option.
So after the fall of the Empire you could easily imagine that Konesayr would have seen the potential of the venerable old Y-Wing and brought a new upgraded model to market
@@5ynthesizerpatel not to mention it was possibly a smaller target, and had the ability to carry bombs.
Also if they followed the EU the k-wing would have been great to use especially for this particular battle where it’s heavy weapons would be of great use.
They’re so cool!
If you need that many bombs you shouldn't drop them that way - the explosions from th first ones are between the target an the other bombs, and considering how prone to sympathetic detonations they are... carpet bombing was used to destroy large numbers of unfortified buildings, not a single high reinforced structure. Continueing the tradition of emulating WW2 visuals is on thing, choosing the right ones another matter. So many attacks on warships or dams and bunkers to choose from, and they pick the style that makes about the least sense.
Maybe they just dropped all bombs at once because they didnt have much time to drop them one by one.
I also think its possible that they waited until they were on top of some weakspot or something.
Thats the problem: most of the bombs wouldn't have done anything as they get triggered directly on the surface or even outside of the hull. If you just wanted to blast surface details like turrets that might work. But to kill a large ship you'd want to go deep into the vital systems, i.e. punch a single deep hole and explode on the inside instead of damaging lots of surface area. Thats like trying to use a machine gun to wear down the a tank. Sure, with enough persistance it would work eventually, but a regular anti tank missile is by far more promising. Or the british attempts to sink the Bismarck, same problem: all the damage spread over the surface, hadn't she been scuttled by her own crew things would have become really frustrating.
Robert Martinu They should have used some form of bomber that looked more realistic with HUGE torpedos to simulate WW2 torpedo runs done by bombers.
Well even then that raises the point that during WW2, the biggest threat to Destoryers and Aircraft carriers were single prop engine fighters. Just look at what happened to the Yamoto, or the Bismarck.
The real reason, unlike this video tries to argue, isn't that space carpet bombing an armored warship makes sense. It's that the director wants the visual effects. Nothing more, nothing less. You're supposed to suspend your disbelief.
People who likes TLJ can't say the obvious real reason because it makes TLJ looks bad, so they make up justifications that are neither needed nor asked for. I don't hate TLJ, but it is what it is.
4:40 Most likely because a diving attack means you're flying almost directly towards surface turbolasers, which then have a much easier time hitting you. The trench run minimised exposure to surface guns and enemy fighters.
Proton Torpedoes are meant to be fired in a straight line though so wouldn't using the trench make it literally impossible to hit?
If youre flying in a trench, you have no ability to maneuver to the sides to avoid enemy fighters. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel
If you are entering the trench you are essentially doing the same maneuver as a diving attack. You are just diving into a trench instead. This should make no difference.
@@meaninglesscog in a diving maneuver, you can at least move side to side and arent confined to a single trajectory which the enemy can easily intercept… this is what happens when you take a very situational WWII battle and turn it into a space opera
Plus, they're turbolasers, so even a glancing hit will take you out. The more you can minimize fire and dodge the turbolasers, the better.
For years, I thought the Y-Wing was the slowest fighter in the Star Wars universe. Then, I saw the bombers in Last Jedi.
At least the Y Wing looks cool
Fighters and bombers are a different thing m8
Anakin Skywalker the Y-wing is a bomber
Y-wing isn't that slow. It can reach about 80 MGLT.
@@antaridae it is something between fighter and a bomber. It can be used in both roles.
I thought they said something in IV about the trench being below where the anti-spacecraft guns could fire, so they would have time to line up their shots without dodging blasts.
Yes, to avoid most of the large turbo laser emplacements General dodonna specifically said that they would be required to maneuver in the trench to avoid most of the anti spacecraft fire, and with the understanding that maneuverability would be very limited which is why they needed the best Pilots
yeah. this guys kinda needs to go rewatch the whole series.
That explanation wasn't in the original release if I remember right. It came in subsequent releases of The New Hope.
It was in the briefing, right before the death star rolled in. Go rewatch the film.
@@cakeboss4194 Yeah, but was it in the cinematic release? Without the CG Ronto and the 2D cardboard Stormtrooper on Dewback? That movie got edited so much, the original version isn't even available anymore, only a recreation through fans.
These new bombers are better employed by a military machine backed by a government than a group of resistance fighters. They are slow and lumbering, seemingly lack strong shield to make up for that weakness and are best employed when air or space resistance has been pacified... If I was the Republic, I'd give these things away too and use something either better defended, or smaller and faster that requires less crew and doesn't go up like a Chinese lantern doused in lighter fuel.
I mean, we have learnt for years that Ties engage with superior numbers. And these new movies do nothing to remove that impression, so escorting a bomber fleet needs better tactics from the escorts when just a few hits can destroy a bomber. Granted, they were racing against the clock... But the whole engagement reeks of being devised by someone who needs to play the tabletop Star Wars ship combat game.
Too true. A heavy payload and hyperdrive doesn't compensate for its shortcomings if it's gonna go up in flames with ease. And hyperdrive you say? ;)
these bombers are better employed as scrap, when a ships design is to slowly lumber up to your target with no protection of your own, slowly release your over sized unguided payload and then proceed to get destroyed by your own payload because you have to be too close to avoid it in order to land your hits you know something is wrong
@@xxxxCronoxxxx I agree (I know this wouldn't have worked for what the writers wanted but I thought something like the Great Fox from the Star Fox games with some turrets on the back of the ship and something like starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bomblet_generator to generate things which the main guns would fire would be better as a space bomber).
The StarFortress actually makes a lot of sense as a post-Endor, pre-Jakku Rebel/New Republic design that the Resistance has inherited because they take what they can get. After Endor, the Rebels got a bunch of planets to openly side with them, which gives them access to manufacturing and manpower. The StarFortress looks easy to build by shipyards not designed for warships, its primary ammunition (unguided bombs) is presumably easier to make than guided torpedoes, and I don't think the crew require much specialized training like fighter pilots do. Deployed in large numbers with heavy fighter support (the Rebels' specialty), these things could be devastating against Super Star Destroyers, space stations and other extremely durable targets at a time when, for once, the Rebels/Republic could actually afford to take and replace casualties.
Now, the Resistance doesn't have most of those advantages, but it seems reasonable that they could get StarFortresses from NR storage, arm them (though that would cost a lot of their budget) and train people to fly them. It's definitely dangerous to use (especially against heavy TIE cover), but I don't see another way for the Resistance to fight battlecruisers. It's kind of like using a suicide truck bomb against tanks - it's no one's Plan A, but may be their only reasonable option.
@@jonathanzentelin2815 "They have dozens of starfighters, and should use them. Oh no, I forgot, the script erased them for no reason."
If you are talking about the Resistance, they just got through the Battle of Starkiller Base, where they threw every fighter they had into the fray and lost a bunch of them. Battlefield casualties matter, especially in the short term.
So why did Leia slap Poe and demote him? As noted, Poe's X-wing had been modified and the bombers were already moving to engage the First Order fleet before the dreadnought arrived. Given that Leia and various admirals were present at this battle it would appear that this was their approved strategy all along. Which makes it look like Leia got cold feet once it was already too late for the bombers to disengage and she decided to blame Poe to save her own face.
And why didn't she stop the attack?
The plan was obviously in place, but you know that plans like these are constantly being made in the military, right? It's not a guarantee they'll be put in place. The direct objective of the plan was to take down the dreadnought, but the reason, the _main_ objective for the very existence of that plan was to delay the empire long enough for the fleet to run away. Once that higher perspective objective had been accomplished, there was no further reason to attack the dreadnought.
Poe was in charge of that mission, and answered to Leia. He finished the mission against the direct orders of Leia, who had a wider perspective on things than him, who was only focused on bringing the dreadnought down. He was correctly demoted not because he didn't see what she saw, but because he didn't obey her orders. Everyone in a military hierarchy has a reason to be there. Poe's reason is he is a fine commander of these sorts of missions. But he should always respond to those who are better than him at seeing the higher picture, or else his really good performances at doing whatever it is he's doing are for nought. They are meaningless. As shown in the movie.
And the best part is that in TLJ, he learns this at the end of the movie. He becomes a better commander.
Luis Dias - The problem with that argument is that it means that *Leia* sacrificed the bombers just to teach Poe a lesson about tactics! A lot of people seem hung up on the notion of Poe being "in-command", but he was *not* ! In *any* military operation flag rank officers can overrule people like squadron leaders at *any* time they choose. That switch in Poe's cockpit could not magically turn off the commlinks on all of the bombers! So Leia could have simply given them new orders directly and left Poe to his fate. She didn't.
This is part of the larger issue with TLJ where Rian Johnson has the characters behave stupidly because he needs them to in order to conform to his desired plot. It was the same with Hux even bothering to take Poe's call during the middle of a battle instead of just ignoring him. Flag officers do not generally accept direct communications from enemy fighter pilots.
You say all of this, but the movie presents it differently. Poe is the de facto leader of that bombardment, and Leia is only communicating with him. Saying that she did not negate his authority on the spot to "teach him a lesson" is ridiculous in itself, and pure silly speculation. There could be lots of other technical or temporal issues with your solution to the issue, but this is overcomplicating a simple story: Leia told his commander not to do X, he ignores her and does it anyway, is successful at his objective, but fails at the larger scale.
She correctly demotes him afterwards, and explains him why. To point out these silly technicalities that you mention is just convoluted over thinking the plot. Most plots are like this, they are simple. Most of them, if you think hard on them, may make little sense. The only reason people are critical of this particular plot point is not because of these technicalities, but because they felt it was off in the emotional sense. That the movie was somewhat berating successful men in a matriarchal nagging way. Not saying you felt this, but this is what a lot of the star wars hatedom is all about.
+Daniel S I agree. The begining of the movie is nonsensical and the movie is filled with forced writing like Rey trying to save Kylo who she knows is a psychopathic killer from the last movie. Abrams decided in The FA that he is a irredeemable villain and creep but Johnson wanted to set up a new dynamic with Rey, and it makes her look stupid. Also at the end Luke tells no one that he is going to distract the First Order, apparently not even Leia, just to force a scene where Poe has to figure this out for himself. Though there is some reason to believe that the movie was heavily altered in reshoots and editing, making it worse.
The entire chain reaction starts after just a few of the bombs hit the weak point. Maybe the first ones got lucky I suppose, but it seems thousands of proton bombs weren't required. Not to mention that a chain of bombs like that is just going to result in a column of explosions, since the lower bombs are liable to trigger the ones above it, making dropping a thousand bombs like that kind of a waste.
The other issue I have is simply that the entire plan relied on the First Order just not doing anything. Same issue with the Death Star trench run, where the Empire just throws out a few dozen fighters and calls it a day, except even worse. If the First Order just did a couple of things a tiny bit differently; better positioning, actually launching a defensive screen, firing on the Raddus rather than the base that cannot run away, etc then the Resistance plan falls to pieces.
What I think they should have done was use the Ninka. It's far faster and has bunker busting bombs that would go great at penetrating heavy armour and smashing a weak spot underneath. They could have had Poe insist that Y-Wings could get the job done and that the rest of the ships needed to stay back to avoid fire from the other Star Destroyers, while Holdo was adamant that they needed heavier weaponry to ensure the kill and the Ninka could get the job done. Then the Y-Wings could land blow after blow but unable to get past the armour, with the Ninka swooping in and dropping a bunker buster before the dreadnought could fire again. It's a better establishment scene for Holdo than just "This is Vice Admiral Holdo, she's the boss now" and provides a point of contention between Poe and Holdo as he's insistent that the Y-Wings would have worked given a couple more bombing runs and her that they never should have risked it in the first place. That animosity would have at played better on screen as to why Holdo would withhold information from the lead pilot of the fleet as well.
YES! THIS!
Disney needs to hire you
i disagree with your first point, to me looking at the clip it looks like the first couple bombs are only exploding on the surface while its takes about a third of the bombs exploding for any secondary explosions to occur and its debatable if those would be enough to destroy the ship completely. also i dont think the chain of bombs would blow themselves up, again in the clip we can see that doesn't happen, also it doesn't make any sense that anyone would design a weapon system with a flaw like that. carpet bombing is, was, used in the real world and im not aware of anything like that happening.
the rest of your points are so good tho. the resistance's plan really feels like it required the first order to have both their feet up their own ass. and holdo having anything to do before her introduction would have made her such a better foil to poe, especially if she shows him up during his own plan.
@@OzyPepper Carpet bombing in the real world don't have the bombs anywhere near that close, outside of the few moments after release. From there they spread out, and even then you do see ones still in the air being detonated from an explosion below if they drop a bunch at once in a cluster rather than drop sequentially. While you're right we don't see the chain of bombs blowing up during the drop, we do see 3 bombers being destroyed by chain reactions of bombs from a single one going off after a collision with a Tie Fighter, and they're not really much closer to each other before being dropped. So we know that they are very prone to chain reacting (also that they don't seem very powerful? The bombs exploded within the bombers, yet were kind of underwhelming when you think about it. We can argue that there's still fail-safes that limit the explosion until they get further away, but that would just mean they're even more likely to chain react after dropping, and will just produce very impressive columns of boom that don't do a lot)
As far as when the secondary explosions that destroyed the dreadnought started, they're definitely obvious by ~1/4 to ~1/3 of the bombs have hit. But the secondary explosions also start at the top where the first bombs hit, and it's not like any of the bombs are penetrating. Unless the bombs aren't powerful enough to blow up bombs, so bombs behind can pass through... but I don't think that'll be blasting through the armour especially when most aren't going to be hitting the same hole left by a previous bomb.
@@LordRunty yeah honestly you and i have put more thought into this then the writers did. maybe the bombs are shaped charges, maybe they dont arm until right before impact, maybe the bomber that started the chain reaction had a serious malfunction. in the end this kind of speculation is only going to do so much for a bad scene like this one, just trying to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like they need alot of it lmao
half a TIE-fighter=4 dead starfortress...
And just remember: "keep that tight formation"
To be fair, the Tight Formation thing makes sense given they’d likely want to maximise the coverage of their weapons. If they were more spread out, they can’t cover each other. This is also something that dates back to the Second World War and why bomber formations were massed and close together.
@@xavi-kun The difference is that the bombers in WW2 didn't get destroyed that easily... For those bombers the likelihood to die was lower when in a tight formation... In this case the opposite is true...
@@ursmersmann6736 Well even if their formation was more spread out, as far as I can tell it makes it even harder since they’d have less coverage with their weapons and thus would be even easier targets for TIE Fighters. This is why Soviet bombers at the start of the war suffered heavy casualties. They were lightly armoured and in spread out formations so they couldn’t cover each other, and thus easy targets for the Germans.
@@ursmersmann6736 "The difference is that the bombers in WW2 didn't get destroyed that easily... "
Except they did the bomber formations in WWII suffered massive casualties before the German air-force became incapable of really hitting back at them.
Heavy bombers are massive drains on resources. This argument could also be summed up as "a single B52 can drop a nuke and destroy an entire city, so they should only send out B52's". They took 100% losses prior to even getting on target, since with no pilots that last bomber was damned to be destroyed regardless of success or not. What would have happened if they were 50 meters to far left before the pilots were killed? Complete failure. Notwithstanding any possible Y or B wing advances, a 100% kill ratio is much harder to achieve before they are on target against 50 or 100 targets than it is against 5 or so. On top of this we are talking about a guerrilla war fighting group. Operating doctrines for a ragtag budget generally don't include gigantic craft in any form since that much of a concentration of your resources is dangerous. If they lose a single craft they are talking about a fifth of their total strike power. Craft like that that are designed for an operating environment where they have total space supremacy, in large enough numbers that even losing 5 is less than 10% of available strike power. Honestly these bombers are something the First Order or Empire should have used, NOT any rebel groups. As far as advancements in Y or B wing tech goes, its generally easier to pack more weapons onto any platform especially as tech matures. Kick some of those boosters Poe used onto a Y-wing Mark V, modify the Y gap to hold 50-100 of those bombs in a detachable bombardier box, upgrade the engines and lasers to keep up speed and firepower to decent levels, and now its 20 fighters with a more survivable platform, a more guerilla warfare centric acceptable loss ratio and tactics, the ability to get in quick enough thanks to the booster to drop quickly and minimize needed time on target, and enough spare dogfighting capability to help the escorts make it home as well. Again, super heavy bombers is way too resource intensive to do properly for anyone else but an Imperial faction as far as the established Star Wars universe goes.
The entire bombing scene was written by people without a tactical bone in their bodies. They sacrificed common sense for dramatic images.
You could buy brand new Y-wings from a company that made them in that period of time. They were better, faster, stronger.
It would've made more sense to equip the Star Fortresses with missiles.
@@Helldiver96788 With the added bonus of modification you'd want. (Armoured covers etc.)
@@danielolsson7134 of course
1. I wonder the reasoning of the Resistance aquireing the Starfortress in the first place. The Y and B-Wings have been used successfully together with A and X-Wings for hit-and-run tactics. I wonder why they changed that tactic in the first place. One thing about the Starfortress is clear, it is a very slow ship, which limits their use especially against an enemy like the First Order because (see my second point). Given, it might have been the only bomber they had access to, but then they were able to get their hands on new X-Wings.
2. The planning for the attack on the Dreadnought obviously included that the commanding officer of the First Order fleet was a moron, because if the First Order commander had any sense he would have launched all their TIE Fighters from all Star Destroyers. The Starfortresses and their escorts would have been cut to ribbons long before they became a danger to the Dreadnought.
3. Only a few Y-Wings with the Proton Tropedoes would have been enough to at least disable the big guns or the engines of the Dreadnought. The Resistance would have to flee anyway considering the number of Star Destroyers nearby.
You know what would have been cool? The following ending for the movie: A desperate space battle, the X-Wings and the other resistance ships luring the TIE Fighters and Star Destroyers away and the Starfortresses launching a surprise attack at the Supremacy, destroying the huge ship and the Resistance survivors fleeing thanks to all their ships having hyperdrives.
Yes, the older Star Wars movies had their flaws, but Episode VIII had some many stupid characters and plot holes, that even the suspension of disbelief of a true Star Wars Fan (which I am not, I am just a Fan) begins to evaporate. Consider this, Poe asks for the General to at least give them hope. Just to tell them that she has a plan. And what does she do? Nothing. Had she simply said that she has a plan and asked them to trust her, the plan would have worked. But despite the stupidity of Finn and Rose, I consider every single shuttle that gets destroyed to be her fault.
BTW, what drove the Rebellion again? What was the title of Episode IV again? Oh, yes. 'A new Hope'. Because Hope was all they had considering the enemy they faced.
Also want to point out that the entire plan revolved around the fact that the first order didn't deploy a fighter screen which any sane military leader would have done. If these people are supposed to be the first orders best then how in the galaxy are they this powerful. This movie is full of military mistakes. The first order should not have gotten into a scheme with the resistance instead the should have surrounded them. And cut them off they had the ships to do it
Doubly ludicrous given the First Order would have Imperial data pointingtowards a trend for rebellions to field snub fighters that are harder for primary ship weapons to target. Ergo. DEPLOY FIGHTER WINGS.
Wanna talk military strategie in star wars ? Really ?
Star Fortress is so slow and big, they can use turbo laser to blow it up. Why a ship as big as Dreadnought don't have any turbolaser? That's so dumb.
@@darkfunewolfcoop6768 At least deploy all of your forces on the table. Why holding them back? Stupid arrogance ?
@@kennantjessavi4241 Maybe, idk, possibly they don’t had it at the time
I guess you can call them “Why-Wings”.
The Bastard ship, made of a tie-cockpit and Y-Wing engines wears that name in legends.
lmao
I'm pretty sure a few Y-wings targeting the main guns on that dreadnought would be sufficient to kill it. I mean look at how the Republic took out the giant subjugator-class with only a few bombing runs at it's main weapon. The dreadnought suffers from that same weakness just like the Xyston-class.
Yeah because those’ll definitely get through the shields
I dont see why they wouldnt be able to. As the original commenter stated, the malevolence’s main ion cannon was destroyed by a few bombing runs from some y-wings, and since the malevolence is much larger than the Mandator, it is safe to assume it had greater power generation and therefore better shields, yet the ion cannon was still taken out. Or, if we want to say that shielding tech has really jumped ahead far enough that it is way more power efficient, then wait until the cannons are getting ready to fire. Those cannons probably require heavy power requirements, so that would be when the shields are weakest. Plus, in TRoS, once the guns on the xyston were destroyed, the rest of the ship went down because big gun need big power nearby, so it was hooked up to the generator, and since the empire/first order isnt the most creative with their designs, I wouldnt be surprised if the Mandator worked under the same type of concept. (Also Im fuly aware that the Xyston in TRoS had their shields down in the atmosphere for some reason… I kind of find that to be bs there for plot convenience, but it doesnt disprove my point about the guns being the weakpoint. I have no doubt that if the shields were penetrated on the Xyston, the cannon would go down just as easily. Not to mention, in TLJ, the Battle of Crait featured an artillery piece which was stated to be miniaturized death star tech. Considering that Finn believed that sending a projectile (i.e. himself) down the barrel would disable the cannon, I feel that the Xyston and Mandator would also work under the same principle)
in the video he says that people are expecting the dreadnaught to have the same weaknesses as other superweapons in star wars. is there any actual evidence that the dreadnaught has the same weakness as the Xystons or the Malevolence other than they all are ships with a big gun on them?
@@OzyPepper well until we have evidence to the contrary...
@@OzyPepper well it blew up when people dropped bombs on it, it didn’t even take the full payload only a few bombs land before the chain reaction destroying the ship starts
Okay but what happens when they're using against a competent enemy? "Okay so these ships are coming at us at 2MPH and appear to be bombers, can we get someone to take them out?" "Already done sir!" "Thank you Johnson"
Johnson got a promotion that day
Take them out? What do you mean? Just move ‚up’ a couple hundred of meters… or hyperjump! Wait the bomber had that as well? Why did they start their slow flight that far away?
I don't have an issue with the design of the bombers. I do have one with the plan: have Poe go out ALONE and tell 'yo mamma' jokes to Hux to stall him so he can destroy literally every point defense system the dreadnaught to clear the way. On the other side we have a tragically poor formation (you should always keep important vessels protected, wtf are the other Star Destroyers doing BEHIND the most important ship in the fleet?), an utter lack of timely starfighter deployment, despite knowing that small fighter combat happens to be one of the Resistance's preferred tactics, and falling for probably the most obvious stalling attempt in the books instead of shooting any identified hostiles on sight. The problem with the opening scene isn't that the bombers were in too tight a formation (the reason for that 'freak accident') or that they're extremely slow and clunky (which could actually be expected of a heavy bomber), the problem is that the whole scene reeks of writing (and more specifically, writing of military tactics) which is mediocre at best, and downright laughably bad at worst.
Having the heavy ship lead isn't too much of a issue, until the middle of WWII that was how naval combat formations operated; aside from the scouts the battleships lead the formation. Famously at the Battle of the Denmark Strait one of the British battleships opened fire on the wrong ship when ordered to engage the Bismark, they thought the lead warship had to be Bismark because that's just how you arrange a formation when it was actually Bismark's escort the Prinz Eugen.
The reason for such a formation is that first it allows the most powerful ship (which will normally be the flagship) to lead the formation and second if the fleet engages another equally powerful ship having the lighter units in the lead just means the enemy battleship will tear them apart before it gets in to range to engage your battleship.
It wasn't till the dangers of air attack became known that formations changed.
For the Empire/First Order I can see them operating with a 'battleships lead formation' doctrine, their naval academies likely trained on large scale fleet actions à la the Clone Wars with starfighters and bombers seen as a secondary element since for them the capital ships are what is important because those are what is needed to break through enemy lines and conquer planets.
Harbinger1997 its hardly fair to criticize imperial tactics NOW, they have been insanely incompetent from literally the beginning of the first film.
It's more along the lines of how the FO promote officers. Loyalty and Fanaticism is preferred over Capability, and it shows. Hux is flat out stated by Snoke to be incompetent, but Snoke keeps him in place because of his loyalty. Had the other guy been in charge of the formation, the fighters would've been out of the bays the moment they arrived in system, specifically to prevent this exact scenario.
heaving a heavy ship lead makes sense if its a heavy alrounder like a mon calamari or insurgend class stardestroyer BUT this ship is not a frontline ship its a havy artillery
You DONT place your artillery in front and your tanks behind it... especialy if it has poor anti air power and your enemy mainly uses figters
we have seen the godlike point defence on the insurgend class ships...
sending a shi like this first is as bad writing as having this fance anti air missels systems and dont give it too the ship wich ist most likely too be atacked by figters....
yeah.. it's sure awful when they use a mcguffin in star wars to get a desired result.. that scene in return of the jedi when an A-wing takes out the executor by violently dying? trash.. right? one should never apply a sense of military tactics to a space franchise where vehicles buzz around in a vacuum just like airplanes and building and losing a battle-planet doesn't somehow bankrupt your space government (especially doing it three times in a row) the issue is that several loud 'fans' seem to have outgrown storytelling for the sake of entertainment. if you can't suspend your disbelief at least a little bit, you are not gonna have a good time at the movies.
"A completely unforeseen freak accident", really? Three points I'd like to bring up. First: the entire concept of strategy means to take into account unknown factors, second: they're in a war zone in which explosive projectiles are used to eliminate hostile forces, so you'd think these ships would be given amazing shielding to compensate for being ridiculously slow; but they aren't, and to top it off the Resistance didn't even have the Starfortress' spread farther apart so that one explosion wouldn't destroy the whole fleet of them. A ship with such severe and fundamental inadequacies should not have been used for warfighting purposes. Third and last, a Pyrrhic Victory is not a true victory. Yes these ships managed to pull off the mission, however, it was only done with an astonishing 100% casualty rate with only one Starfortress actually completing its objective before being destroyed. Hardly efficient by any sensible standards.
In the immortal words of Sun-Tzu: "What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease."
*I F F I G H T I N G I S S U R E T O R E S U L T I N V I C T O R Y T H E N Y O U M U S T F I G H T*
isn't there like a campaign in BF2 where iden search information about the dreadnought and they did manage to do that
EC Henry, the freak accident you refer to, regardless if it was an accident or not, still goes to show how inefficient and unprotected these bombers are. When the Resistance should already have enough experience fighting the First Order to know, a swarm of tie fighters is going to have a maneuvering advantage. These were tactically put closer together and the resistance should have had a reason for that. But what it ended up happening was wasting the lives of the crew to a single tie pilot death. Y-wings could instead, maneuver around the ties along with the x-wing escort protecting them, sure time was of the essence, but even Leia agrees it was a too much of a costly battle. The Resistance would have run out of pilots long ago if this was a go-to strategy.
the tight formation is stupid when you said this ( how inefficient and unprotected these bombers are) have you looked at the real b-17 bomber its also very unprotected and where did the inspiration for the starfighter from oh yeah war films
@@minegaming4526 since the bombers had no front shooting turrets they can't really be compared to b17s(the b17s had like 12 guns in total.) not only that but why put fixed guns on a bomber? When again who tf uses carpet bombers in space.
@@Firewordien planetary bombardment idiot
@@Firewordien Presumably these are designed for surface targets and are all the resistance could field given their dire economic straits. Furthermore the tie bomber and Y-Wing has also been seen deploying bombs in this manner while in space.
The tight formation was an unfortunate necessity and risk that must have been taken given the very preciseness of their target. Had they been more spread out they left themselves open to an enumerable number of variables that might have included right turns the craft wouldn’t be able to make or prolonging the engagement and risking the dreadnought firing. The only real call was the brute force approach. Squadrons harry enemy fighters to cover the bombers approach which the Resistance did well but again… freak accident by a wayward burning tie fuselage. No way of accounting for that.
It is better to dock a loaded container with a Corellian YT freighter and drop it on the big ship. Faster and easier. Less casualties. If you do not have such freighters, you hire them.
Get a hammerhead corvette shove as many proton bombs you can fit in there remove unessesary stuff like escape pods and life support remove all weapons like laser cannons add more engines and get a droid to ram the dreadnought at full speed and upgrade the shields
@@Engiduck The problem is the Resistance *DOESN'T HAVE* the fleet the Rebel Alliance did. They had 3 capital ships. Where the hell would the corvette be?
@@ZackarySchejbalCODBO2RGM2 hired? bought? maybe from money earned through the selling of some absolutely combat useless starfortresses
@@Engiduck easy win
@@deathsinger1192 The Resistance didn't have the funding for that. And if the starfortresses are so useless, nobody would trade them for a corvette. Not to mention, a corvette would be a bigger target and would likely be an easier target for the nearby star destroyers.
It is still very silly for the bombers to fly in a tight formation with each other. They should have attacked from different frontal angles to force the ties to split up, therefore lessen the concentration of fire on all of them, giving each bomber more of a chance to reach their target.
Not only that,, but this is space, all they had to do was tip the bottom to the target and launch the bombs. Heck, why even attack nearly parallel to the target in space? Just is too dumb for me.
Yes, as the bombs were "magnetically" accelerated the wouldn't even need to come as close!
Bombers fly close to each other for blanket fire. Due to the fact the bombers had no shields and limited cover except for escorts, they stayed in close formation to give the gunners the best field of fire. Try flying a TIE into a formation that tight where multiple gunners can nail you at once. This was a tactic used by the Air Force during World War II.
Star wars and most sci fi has always had trouble considering space as a 3D battlefield, it was like that in every previous movie, and is considered a trope for the genre, not a flaw.
@@fraziergrandel6062 If I was a TIE fighter pilot, I could. I'll get shot, but I'll down 3 Star Fortresses too lol
The trench run makes a lot of sense to me as the fighters would expose themselves to a lot less surface turret fire from a largely covered approach than if they just made a bee-line for their target. It's basicallly like running the last klicks in an assault through city streets using buildings as cover instead of approaching from the exposed highway.
but in the trench run scene, most of the fighters got destroyed because they were easy targets for darth vader and the tie fighters, you see that they did not have any room to dodge or shake the star fighters off their tail but i do see your point
@@darkfishthedestroyer139 I'd rather take my chances with vader than thousands of turbo lasers
@@darkfishthedestroyer139 but that's because Vader is OP, against regular ties they had no problems doing the run undisturbed, it wasn't til Vader showed up they truly began getting decimated and if they'd attacked from above they'd be attacked by dozens to hundreds of laser towers along with tie fighters , the trench ran out of their firing range save for a small handful of turrets in the trench which is easy to deal with.
The Real world Explanation is ; "Because Rian Johnson wanted it to look like a World War II Movie"
The in Universe Explanation is : "What you see is all there is - 'yes really' - it's quite easy to assume the resistance in it's entirety is seen on screen"
They can't use Y-Wings, B-Wing (or the new un-used designs developed for The Force Awakens) because they didn't have any other people or ships - it's all on screen.
Further more there is a heavy implication that the bombers are only suited to ground attack or lightly defended space targets and that they only used them as it's all they had - and as they were attached to Haldo's former flagship (which was their carrier) then that was the only real reason they were there.
Besides they are designed to be useless. - If you want to get all logical about it - then why isn't the bombers attacking from a couple of Kilometres away or more - the Dreadnought is so slow it couldn't get out of the way - and they'd already destroyed the point defences.
To get so close you get caught in the explosion is idiotic.
Heck they didn't even need to "drop" the bombs down - they could have take multiple angles and pointed their tails at the dreadnought and hit it in a deadly cross fire from miles away.
The real reason for every bad thing in this Movie is of course : "Because Rian Johnson".
You realise that making Star Wars look like World War II is..... the most traditional Star Wars thing to do, right? I love how this hating fandom always contradict themselves. First, he blew George Lucas' incredible "vision", then he is just a moron because he tried to put WW2 in a movie.... just like Lucas did.
It makes sense if you think about it. It's quite obvious why all of these arguments are silly and contradictory: the fandom that hates this movie is dumb and stupid.
yea, but if the resistance is just all that, why didn't the First Order just surround them with more ships? They have the money and power to shit star destroyers like creamed corn
Luis Dias, maybe you should think about it:
You are calling the people who disliked TLJ hating fandom, the same time you are calling them dumb and stupid. You are hating people, they are explaining why theu disliked the movie.
Can you see that, maybe, they are not so hateful as you think?
That they can maybe, not even being the bad guys?
Hating a movie this much for this long, with so many "videos" patreonized talking why it's shit and how person x, y and zed are "destroying" the industry, and perhaps something should be done about it is, at the very least, dumb and stupid. At its worst, it's dreadful and despicable.
Yes, I share no love for these people. They are morons who should move on, but are unable to. The movie happened half a year ago, and this shit is still "trending". I am commenting on these shitty things that are still happening. Today. About a movie done half a year ago. That wasn't that bad.
Get a life.
So the first order is german then?
"40%of the fleet is taken out by a freak, unforeseeable accident." What is either freakish or unforeseeable about flying your bomber squadron so close together that when one is taken out it takes out the surrounding ships? The term 'clusterfuck' was coined for just that situation.
Taking your large, incredibly slow, densely loaded with hi-ex munitions and flying them directly along the main fire axis of a very well-armed capital ship and not even flying any kind of evasive pattern is begging to die. Poe Dameron is a moron if this tactic was his idea.
The fact that the payload from one of these useless crates did the job shows that, not only could waves of Y-Wings etc have done the job but that the concentration of ships was not required, either. If all you need is one to get through then spread them out. Have them come in from all angles. Make them harder to hit. DON'T gather them up in a tightly packed ball and then act all surprised when they get shot and then take each other out in the explosion.
Stupid ships, moron-level tactics. Unjustifiable from the perspective of the movie reality and easily fixed with a moment's thought in the writing of the scene by anyone who bothered to do a moment's research into aerial combat tactics.
It was an unforseen accident. As much as I hate the sequels as the next guy, I think the hate of the star fortress is overboard. They did design the star fortress around the flying fortress bomber, which has had stories told of it landing even without a cockpit, which the final star fortress did complete the objective without a cockpit.
They couldn't have predicted a TIE would crash into the bomb bay, which set off a chain reaction. Yes, could argue spread them out a bit more, but would you say the same to Lando with the rebel fleet during the Battle of Endor?
Trust me, I don't like the sequels either. But technically, this kind of accident happened to irl B-17's over early in their deployments over Europe. Bombers flew in tight, staggered formations just like in TLJ. The idea was to maximize their turrets' fields of fire, protecting themselves and the rest of the squadron. Instead, it made them fodder for flak and fighters who could get collateral kills on fortresses. There were also instances of German pilots colliding with (accidentally or intentionally) with bombers, causing heavy damage or even killing the plane. Formations like the "Standard Combat Box" could lead to multiple bomber or even multiple squadron losses. The "Piggyback Flight" for example, a b-17 took fire and collided with a second b-17 in the formation, granted they both survived and crashed in Germany. On top of that if you assume that this is the first time these star fortresses are seeing real combat, given this is the first time they were seen on screen, they might be applying the same fatal tactics the allies did. Realistically, only 1 or 2 flying fortresses ever had to make it to the target because of their capable payload. But bomber casualties were so high early-war due to shit tactics and lacking fighter escorts that allied command saturated formations to ensure that at least one made it to the target, even if none of them made it home.
Edit: B-17's were also notoriously shit anti-ship bombers, which does play out accurately here
It's easy to explain this stuff by saying the characters in the movie know stuff we don't, but that's a lazy excuse for what I ultimately felt was a lackluster action sequence. It's a movie remember, and it comes down to whether it was entertaining, and when I was watching it in the cinema I felt disappointed, I was hoping for a more dynamic fleet battle, something like what Rogue One managed to pull off and it didn't match up. The trench run happened because it was entertaining, not because it made sense, did the TLJ scene make sense considering the Resistance's astoundingly sparse resources? Yes. Was it an entertaining space battle? To me no, it felt slow, clumsy and everyone involved seemed incompetent.
Agreed, I went from so hyped to spending the entire fight groaning and rolling my eyes at every poor bit of storytelling and shoddy direction :/
"In what kind of world do we expect the resistance"
I'm still trying to figure out how, in Episode 7, they went from being the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT to being The Resistance, especially since, by virtue of opposing the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT, the First Order is, in fact, The Resistance, or The Rebellion. The better question is how the First Order has the money to make things like the Dreadnaught, or Starkiller Base when they're living off the scraps of the Empire, having had a sizable chunk of their power and resources stripped away when the Rebellion became THE LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT. I cannot stress those two words enough. Note how in the Original Trilogy, the Rebels were barely able to scrape anything together, and had to steal things from the Empire? While the First Order had a lot more to work with (not EVERYTHING in the Empire was retaken), they shouldn't have the resources they have, and I don't buy the idea that, with the Empire becoming the First Order and rebuilding its military that the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT would leave its defense to a ragtag group, given that some of the people in charge (Ackbar, Mon Mothma...) had lived through both the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War.
I feel this way too. Whatever problems I may have with the new movies themselves (and I do still enjoy them) those things pale in comparison with my puzzlement at the political backdrop to them.
In the real world, our world, over seventy years have passed since the last global war, and only just now do some believe we are starting to forget the lessons of history. In contrast, the New Republic seems to have allowed itself to be destroyed in half that time, both by ignoring the advice of its veterans, and by having its entire fleet gathered in one location. Admittedly, I've not read the novel that provides background on all this, but I doubt I would find the explanations very compelling.
On the other hand, we've only seen two thirds of an ongoing story, and who knows what could happen next. I'd be satisfied if the distress call sent by Leia is answered by a massive convergence of forces, from planetary governments to privateers, showing that the Galaxy is not really as empty nor as asleep at the wheel as it so far seems.
Every time someone says that this movie is a franchise killer, I remind them that the fans HATED Empire when it came out. RotJ picked up what Empire knocked over, and now Empire is the most veloved movie in Star Wars. I don't think Last Jedi will get to THAT point...but let's at least see how this ends, yes?
The Resistance was never the legitimate government, the resistance was a faction separate from the New Republic who in turn was the actual legitimate government, The resistance was fighting the First Order Because The New Republic didn't see the First Order as threat.
the reason the fleet was relatively small was because the New Republic was largely Demilitarized thanks to Mon Mothma who saw this as a way to make true peace in the galaxy,however this was seen as a stupid decision by many of the OT characters, in fact Leia actively tried to convince the New Republic this because of the growing threat of the first order, however it was leaked that she was the daughter of Darth Vader which completely destroyed her political career, which in turn forced her to create the Resistance.
To be fair, I've since read Aftermath, where they cover that. Which is why I get mad that so many people don't realize how BIG the canon is
“Star fortress”
Those things were destroyed from 1 or 2 shots for a tie fighter.
i think they just cut to the scene of them getting destroyed, just like how in A New Hope you can see fighters taking multiple shots in the backround (death star trench run scene) just to make the movie shorter
People wouldn't be so frustrated with the design of these ships if they didn't fall apart like tissue paper in the movie.
Actually half a tie fighter took out 3
oh except for the last one, that one can get hit 7 times and not even get dented
@@QuestionableObject tissue paper? More like gun cotton (cellulous infused with nitro glycerin) man. The wreckage of ONE TIE fighter took out 3 star fortresdes
I wondered about the Death Star trench run before. Why not just fly straight in? But playing the PC game X-Wing illustrated the problem. In the trench, you are protected from the surface cannons outside the trench, which were more numerous than inside the trench. During a bombing run, it was good to have the terrain provide extra cover.
Also, the B-Wing was awesome in that game.
The basis of all of these arguments is giving Disney "the benefit of the doubt", or otherwise trying to prove their side. When you do this your not really looking for a real explanation, just one that fits a mindset. The audience shouldn't have to do these kind of mental gymnastics to explain their lazy mistakes. I will admit that this issue plagues both sides of the argument, since many people who don't like it will find anyway to make it look bad, and anyone who does will find anyways to make it look good and make sense. But when we work backwards from a conclusion to our reasoning instead of reasoning to conclusion, we never find a real solution, and no real discussion can occur. I feel like a lot of times we play puppet to Disney, explaining their errors for the stuff they didn't care to even think about or get right.
Reminder: Modern military heavy bombers are actually quite fast. The B-1B Lancer is capable of traveling at Mach 1.25, and many bombing bombing missions are undertaken by fighter aircraft since they can deliver warheads onto foreheads in appropriate proportions much quicker than bombers.
I find it hard to imagine that in the time the First Order found a way to utilize Keiber crystals in their standard naval vessel armaments that the New Republic just did not put any money into funding anti-capital ship weaponry since that is literally what got them to be the ruling body of the galaxy. Not to mention that the X-wing which was a new and untested star fighter at the beginning of the Galactic Civil War had no improvements made to it over the course of 40 ish years except Poe's which had an almighty afterburner put onto it. In that same time frame the US Air Force moved from the F-15 to the F-22, the latter of which is one of the most advanced aircraft in the world in terms of air-to-air and air superiority mission capabilities, if not the world's best.
The fact that Y-wings have been known to take down formidable ships when working in unison and not just with their firepower alone, but with ion torpedoes that can disable star destroyers (which happened in Rogue One) shows that Rian Johnson and his writing team did not actually care about the lore of Star Wars in the slightest. He wanted to throw together whatever seemed right on a whim and let it play out on the screen with any real thought or effort put into many of the decisions. It does not make sense to justify his raping and pillaging of such a strong and loved franchise with his misguided and unfettered thoughts and whims. He could have been able to make it a great movie but he did not have a solid voice of reason or even someone with a deep and intimate understanding of the lore of Star Wars so as to avoid a writing blunder of this caliber. I can guarantee you if he assembled a panel of absolute Star Wars lore fanatics with a few people with a military background (particularly in naval combat and in air combat) then interesting an dynamics battles could have been crafted.
If he wanted to subvert the expectations of fans in a meaningful way, then he could have made a statement that space wizards do not have to define galactic politics. Make the driving force of the movie centered around the non-force sensitives battling it out with fleet combat in a way that had yet to be seen on screen. Give me Admirals making unorthodox maneuvers that take advantage of the micro gravity environments of space, make interesting use of the three dimensional space and not just ships fighting as if on a 2 dimensional plane like ships on an ocean. I have always longed for some form of media to actually make me appreciate the creativity and ingenuity of the writers in regards to sci-fi space battles and with the current technology at the disposal of Lucasfilms they should have delivered on this. They had a great opportunity but relied too much on nostalgia to drive profits instead of actually providing some real depth into their stories. Rogue One showed show much promise in this regard with the use of the hammerhead corvette that was able to take advantage of the mass and armor placement of the Imperial ships to an extreme tactical advantage. How does one film series deliver that much promise then fall flat on its face immediately afterwards?
Also if you look closely 0:42 , you can see that that first ten to twenty bombs start the chain reaction which is much less than what a squadron of Y-wings can carry.
Long story short, you have to put some heavy blinders on to think that those models of useless space junk are actually viable bomber craft.
Disappointment induced rant over.
The Starfortress is junk, yes. However first look at the Starfortress crew total (I say 15) VS 50 Y-Wings (50 pilots). Less casualties and the hunk of junk kept going after losing the cockpit and succeeded, let alone rear facing coverage from ambushes from behind.
But I'll play Devil's Advocate here and say they used 50 NR Y-Wings. The NR Y-Wings couldn't even do a bombing run because the NR Y-Wing *WERE DESIGNED WITHOUT BOMBING CAPABILITIES.* Yes, the NR Y-Wing was just a starfighter and no longer a bomber. So, it's just Soviet Union tactics of "throw a bunch of people in the line of fire and maybe they'll die."
not even to mention the ridiculous bomb dropping method, if they really were expecting heavy casualties of the bombers, then why the fuck did they not just make a bounch of big unmanned missiles capable of way faster flight and shoot em straight into it
@@ZackarySchejbalCODBO2RGM2 and easy starfortress has at least 4 crew members as opposed to the one crew member of the rebel modified y wings. 15 times 4 is 60, and at least 30 and of them are pilots
"We are looking at an organization with maybe 2 squadrons of fighters at their disposal" ... and apparently bombers (by your reasoning) tailor-made for the task at hand with multiple thousands of proton bombs just stashed away.
You work witth what you have, not what is thematic
Star Wars Rebels shows us that B-Wings have a mega death beam that can one shot Imperial capital ships. While I personally think it's stupid, with it being Canon, the Rebels might better have just mass produced B-Wings and swarmed First Order capital ships.
@Blitzwing2011 which still makes little sense, as the B-Wing depicted was an insane return on investment, as one prototype was able to quickly destroy an imperial light cruiser by itself in 2 swift shots. It doesn't make sense that the Rebels wouldn't save such a design for later use.
A couple problems with your argument:
1. The BSF/17 Starfortress is also a much larger craft than the Y-Wing, and thus likely costs more to produce and maintain. In addition, they require specialized carriers which further increases operating costs compared to the Y-wing, which is completely self-sufficient.
2. While both the B-Wing and Y-Wing aren't exactly dogfighters, they can still at least keep up with their escorts which improves survivability for both the bombers and their escorts.
3. There's also the option of converting YT-series light freighters into bombers. The Millennium Falcon is a bit of a special case in terms of cargo capacity since it's been modified into a sort of freighter/luxury yacht hybrid, but a stock YT-1300F is about 70% cargo space split into multiple compartments. You could fit just as many bombs in a YT-1300 as you can in a Starfortress, aboard a MUCH more durable and maneuverable ship with better point defense coverage.
4. You also have to keep in mind that EVERY fighter available to the resistance is capable of carrying ordinance in the form of Proton Torpedoes.
5. Regardless, the Starfortress, like its namesake the B-17 Flying Fortress, is a strategic bomber. Strategic bombers are designed to be used against _strategic_ targets like production facilities, airfields and emplacements AFTER the airspace has been secured. Against a target like a Mandator IV without air/space superiority, you need lighter, faster tactical bombers and attack craft. Further reinforcing this: as shown in the very footage you used, a single Starfortress could take out a Mandator IV, and critical damage was already dealt long before the entire payload impacted. Essentially, they set a B-17 into a mission that's far more suited to a B-25.
If half the fleet is taken out due to a freak accident, that kinda makes them look worse tbh
They can afford thousands of proton bombs, but can't afford 50 y-wings? or 50 B-wings? or a captured Star dreadnought of their own? The resistance, like the rebellion was funded by someone. But then, I think it would have made a better movie for the New Republic to have to put down this little insurgency from the backwaters.
Even if they could have afforded 50 y- or b- wings could they have found 50 pilots and 50 astromech droid to put them in the sky?
However, I agree with you that the First Order was something the New Republic let get out of hand
Andrew Lawrence B-Wings don't need astromechs
Nobody makes y wings anymore. Those things were 20s out of date during the rebellion, 30 years before the last Jedi. B wings probably have a similar story
John Lavery B-Wings were brand new as of RotJ. Those were first generation production fighters. Given 30 years to refine the design, they could be beastly.
Except the star fortresses were the b wings replacement.
okay this is stretching. No military force is that capable of being close to omnipotent in understanding what they would fight against. (I.e Allied Military Intelligence knew of the German Build up on the Rhine in 1944; they just thought it was to bolster the German Defenses rather than a last gasp attack as the former made far more logical sense than the later; especially considering Germany was lacking crucial resources like oil).
Also, this is really stupid. Other than Tirpitz, which was a Battleship that sat in one area and survived a single Tallboy bomb (12,000 lb bomb) before being capsizing by 3 more in another raid (those 3 hitting near it, not on it since it Capsized from a sand platform it sat on). No Battleship has ever been sunk by a strategic bomber, and if any were it was with radar guided bombs. Most Naval ships had been sunk by fast single engine fighters in large swarms.
Also the Resistance was ... actually I don't know what it is suppose to be. The French Foreign Legion is better armed than them. And yet their funding was from the Republic Government; which is now gone. They are more screwed in Episode 9 then I initially thought. And the level of screwed was still very High.
Also, this battle was freaking one-sided. The First Order should have had their Resurgent-class Star Destroyers near that Dreadnought in a defensive screen to defend it with their own CIWS, if it really was that crucial to their plan; like any Naval Military would. But they didn't and sat behind it for some reason, nor did they launch their fighters to defend it. The Dreadnought didn't launch theirs until Poe had one CIWS left to destroy. Nor did the Dreadnought perform evasive maneuvers to try and limit the damage it would take. Their CIWS were taken out by Poe, not their steering and propulsion systems; so why sit still when you are under attack; having heavy armor or not. If the First Order truly learned from the Empire, these would have been the tactics they would have used; and thus these bombers would have failed their mission if these tactic were employed.
Let alone that I had said before, German and Japanese Pilots would ram a bomber intentionally if they couldn't take it down with their guns, as a last resort. Why didn't a Tie Pilot see this bomber still going and not sacrifice his 1 life to save the dreadnought by ramming the bomber? It lost its pilot, its gunners, and is badly damaged, but it is still flying on its course. So why didn't 1 Tie break-off from his dogfighting to finish it off? 3 Ties chasing 1 X-wing is a waste and not true to actual Dogfights.
Also I really hate the Starfortress' design, 3 defensive guns, 1 on the dorsal, and two at the rear: 1 at top and 1 at the bottom. Yeah, that is great defensive coverage. For something that is suppose to be the Star Wars version of the B-17, its defensive coverage really sucks. This thing is dead in head one attacks, and any fighter that wants to attack it from below, or the sides from an angle where the rear guns can't reach; let alone any of the laser cannons hitting the obvious looking bomb bay to detonate those bombs within the bomber before they are released. Also, the entire concept of a Strategic Bomber in the Star Wars Universe, is unneeded. Capital Ships could do the job of a Strategic Bomber more effectively and efficiently without needing to sacrifice human lives and other resources.
I accept that you do try to find some justification, but anyone with basic engineering concepts and military understanding, will keep pointing out the flaws with things like this.
I did mention Radar Guided bombs, though do remind me, Were Roma and Italia attacked by He-111s (twin engine Tactical Bombers) or He-177s (Germany's only Strategic bomber that would had four engines, but it had 2 by forcing 2 engines into one engine cowl; which led to a lot of overheating problems, among other issues)?
Also I just looked, the G3M is a Twin Engine Bomber. Strategic Bombers are mostly identified by having 4 engines. The G3M was also meant to be a long range torpedo bomber, so its contribution to sinking the Repulse and Prince of Wales fit in its design principle being a land based bomber.
What you are missing is these things are armoured and shielded pretty well made that they can survive multiple shots.
Yes first order is contuniation of empire but they lack the experiance empire had. Empire had top brass(ship captains up) that fought clone wars and after that counqured galaxy they knew what they were doing especialy in battle of yavin but after that you can see that they jump down a bit on tactics wich happaned because they lost some experienced people to war and others retired. It gets worse in every major battle. On the other hand first order did not really fought anything they were trained but not experienced that is the main reason they act stupid.
And the real reason why you need heavy bombers in star wars when you can have capital ships you might not be able to have capital ships. They are expensive to produce and keep. You need a lot of crew wich you might not have and as resistance you dont have. What is the next best thing having a payload equal or even better than a capital ship in a small 6 men crew ship.
As for the swarm tactics it worked in real world beacuse we dont have ships size of cities. In star wars fighters doesnt really damage capital ships. light bombers (y-wings) used to do well aganist ships in clone wars but when it got the rebellion era or even end of the clone wars they were obslete and being replaced. And you can see this in movies y-wings gets destroyed in battle of yavin
@
"these things are armoured and shielded pretty well made that they can survive multiple shots."
Yeah, so armored that an out of control TIE fighter rammed one, and detonated its payload to knock out 2 more. I think your definition of armored is different from mine, and one of those would be NOT being destroyed so easily by shrapnel. Which also doesn't justify the slow speed and the really poor defensive armament placement; the actual B-17 bomber would be a better bomber than this, the B-17 be faster, it had better defensive armament positions, and the 50 cals fired faster. Not to mention the idiocy of being so close as they were. Our bombers used a Combat Box formation that utilized cross fires better while still being separate enough to prevent incidents such as the one in that scene from happening.
"Yes first order is contuniation of empire but they lack the experiance empire had. Empire had top brass(ship captains up) that fought clone wars and after that counqured galaxy they knew what they were doing especialy in battle of yavin but after that you can see that they jump down a bit on tactics wich happaned because they lost some experienced people to war and others retired. It gets worse in every major battle. On the other hand first order did not really fought anything they were trained but not experienced that is the main reason they act stupid."
Trained with no experience does not equal stupid. Basic Naval doctrine for Carrier Fleets is to always have a fighter screen on duty, mostly to prevent exactly what happened in this scene with Poe. Trained crew would do exactly as they were trained, as one American tanker once put it upon his leading of his shermans being exactly what would get him an A at Fort Knox in a Tactics Course, before getting ambushed by Jadtigers during the Battle of the Bulge. This battle is not natural, it is beyond unnatural to consider it as something the First Order forces could not handle outside of a controlled Tactics Course. Also how are the retired officers who left to create and foster this First Order not teaching these new ones how to fight? That be worth while experience to have, even in a training scenario.
"And the real reason why you need heavy bombers in star wars when you can have capital ships you might not be able to have capital ships. They are expensive to produce and keep. You need a lot of crew wich you might not have and as resistance you dont have. What is the next best thing having a payload equal or even better than a capital ship in a small 6 men crew ship. "
Gee that would make sense, in any other setting but sci-fi. If ships were as big as Cities they would have thick armor, than they be laughing at your heavy bomber as they eat those rounds better than Tirpitz did to the one 12,000 lb Tallboy Bomb she did eat. At that point the cost and expenses pay off more than the "cheaper alternative" because how many of those bombers are you going to need to take out one capital ship while braving its escorts of fighters and smaller ships that would be defending it in an ACTUAL battle scenario and not a scripted one made by a Director who needed a solid crash course of naval strategy before he put pen to paper if he wanted it to be taken as seriously as he wanted? In case you didn't know, most Armored ships were made to withstand a Ship Equal to them. And no small Heavy bomber is ever going to have the payload equal to a capital ship 258 times its size
Because I still call bullshit with even the armament being rounded, rather than shaped like something that actually was going to penetrate that armor and detonate within the decks like a bomb should. Otherwise you'd just be dropping High Explosive rounds that do nothing but scratch the paint. Something shaped like a 20 sided dice is not a good shape if your intent is to penetrate the armor to get at the important stuff like the crew and the ships systems.
Also your claim of the Y-Wing being easily destroyed at the battle of Yavin proves how out of date it is, you do know the X-Wings were destroyed the same way too? Does that make the X-Wing a bad fighter, despite it being newer?
By your logic, it sounds like it.
@@strategicperson95 To add to the G3M argument, the only time the G3M was ever used in a stratgic bombing mission was the firebombing of the chinese heartland. Strategic bombers would never waste their bombload on a Battleship. To attain the accuracy necessary to make that accurate of a strike on a Battleship would open the bomber to the entire AA firepower of the Battleship and the support fleet with it, which would end up with a dead bomber since it would be too large and unweildly to dodge the incoming fire. And even if they did somehow make it to their target, their bomb load would be over kill as three or four bombs of that size would guarantee death or crippling of anything from that time. Remember folks, strategic bombers are used to target large objects that don't tend to move like manufacturing structures and warehouses. Anything with the ability to move or dodge would increase the chances of that payload hitting diddly squat exponentially.
@@strategicperson95 A tie fighter is not a weapon that is fired it a ship a solid object and it is clear to me that you dont know anything about star wars lore shields cannot stop solid objects they are not desingned for it so yeah a hull can destroy these things tell me one bomber that wouldnt. Even Executor got destroyed by a ramming action. as for the formation you might not be able to keep formation all the time and just one ship got close to another one does not mean they were not in formation 3rd one was pretty far away when it got destroyed. Also ı dont know where you got informed but allied bombing runs did not had very high survival rates.
what you are missing is they did not see the danger there was just one fighter that could not pose a therat to any of the ships there why send entire fighter screen out aganist one fighter and waste fuel at this point First Order does not have endless resources that Empire had (also this is the main reason destroying that ship is a big victory for resistance because FO cannot replace it) wich means doctorine says do not waste resources for not a threat. Here comes the experince part an experienced officer would see the ruse or even know what a single fighter do but unexperienced FO officers never saw it.
As ı told you dont know anything about star wars lore. THERE IS NO ARMOUR IN SHIPS IN STAR WARS. They have windows for gods sake how well of a armour is that and yes ther are as strong as steel glass but even than it is not really well armour is it? They have shields wich is enough because everything in star wars uses energy based weapons exept for bombers that is why bombers are so effective. No writer or director needs to know naval combat they need to know star wars space combat. An for anythin else you said after this point ı just say There is no armour in star wars.
Y-wing supposed to the thrench run but not even one made it that far on the other hand a X-wing destroyed the deathstar so you are just stupid for not understanding what am ı saying
The deployment of the Starfortress bomb payload reeks of improper design. These bombers are clearly orbital bombardment/high altitude bombardment ships judging by the spread alone, and they're being used for close range bombing. Most of those bombs were rendered useless due to the other bombs destroying them in their own blasts, and thus only about 5-10% of those bombs were effectively used on the ship that actually pulled off surviving long enough to deploy. What they needed was simply a few well placed bombs by maybe 2 Y-wing bombers, with the proton bomb spacing being enough to keep the bombs from destroying eachother as they fall one at a time on the same spot.
Yes, I am a geek with military tactics, and I know how explosives work (generally, especially with nuclear style ordinance). Swarms of explosives in a radius that small are ineffective at best, and strategically terrible at worst. It's cringe worthy writing. Also, with how technology had advanced within the Star Wars universe post endor, it makes sense they would make a new model of Y-wing bomber that is faster, more durable, and better defended.
I do actually agree with you, the may be a possibility of the Y-wing getting an upgraded model post battle of Endor but In the expanded novels and canon, the new Republic was De-militarised and only had a small Navel force, and we learn that the Resistance had to salvage most of its gear from old Rebel gear or loaned my Sympathizers
The T-70 X-wing for example, the Majority of the Resistance fighter Squadron is old and outdated, Replaced by the T-85 X-wing and i think was donated to Leia Organa by Sympathetic Senators.
Also the MG-100 Starfortress is an old design by TLJ. They were created by the end of the Galactic Civil War and were re-purposed by Civilians until being adsorbed into the Resistance organisation with Cobalt and Crimson Squadron being the users of the bombers.
I agree the tactics are off and very bad in this film, i cannot find an explanation for this other than plot reasons, its why sometimes i cannot explain the logic of the Battle of hoth where snowspeeders were flying in direct lines of sight of the AT-AT's rather than the sides or back where they won't be shot from or the Empire at the Battle of Endor keeping the Death Star exposed and the main bulk of the Fleet behind the Rebels, but hey if its an enjoyable film it can be forgiven. But to answer the question of why isn't there a new model of Y-wing, I hopefully have answered it but in summery: there most likely is an Upgraded Y-wing but might have been affected by the Demilitarisation and it is likely that The Resistance cannot afford a newer model, seems apparent as they cannot afford the T-85 X-Wing.
Is that the point?
The scene was made to depict a shitty, desperate situation where the resistance is a shoddily held together group with inferior resources. To have newer, better technology that puts them on par with the first order would be contrary to the image of the group
I agree, these things would domintate at orbital carpet bombing. Imagine if just one of these was above Crait, the FO would have gotten annihilated while the Resistance just chilled inside the mine. But like Henry said, these ships were only used to take down the Dreadnought because they were the only equipment the Resistance had in the timespan they were given that could get the job done
Just as an audience member (ignoring my Lore Nerd side entirely), I wouldn't have bought the scene if one or two Y-wings just shot the dreadnought in the weak spot and it exploded. That would be a declaration that the First Order's most powerful ships are all giant time bombs can be easily defeated by a moderately well-equipped air force, which would damage their credibility as villains far more than the fact that one of their leaders can get trolled for a little bit.
Now the StarFortress? My brain was instantly convinced that that ludicrous number of bombs dropped on the midsection would wreck the ship, and it actually seemed fitting for the Resistance - they lack sophisticated weapons systems, so they found a way to brute-force the issue in a way that made visual sense (the physics of dropping that many explosives on top of each other says that would be ineffective, but this IS Star Wars). Something George Lucas told his art teams a lot during the prequels was that the most important thing in a Star Wars design was that the audience be able to figure out what it does in a couple of seconds at most, and I feel that the StarFortress met that bar.
Michael Ramon well said
The problem is what we a shown is that these bombers are made of tissue paper until the plot requires one to be alive. I dig the design of these bombers but they're subject to a horribly directed action sequence. I don't want to hate too much on TLJ as I did like it. But what could have been a cool ship was ruined by shoddy writing.
You talk about a freak accident that no one could have accounted for but flying debris in a space battle can't honestly be a minor thing. And if one being destroyed can result in the entire formation being taken out then yes that is poor writing as they should've been spaced apart further. Considering that this an action sequence where all the anti strike craft weapons can be taken out by a single strike craft and the captain of the dreadnought moans about not launching his own fighters soon enough as though it isn't his job to do that we can chalk this up to abysmal writing.
There really is no defence for this scene.
"The problem is what we a shown is that these bombers are made of tissue paper until the plot requires one to be alive."
Just like the X-Wings do during the Death Star scene where multiple are shown to be taken down with a only a few hits whereas Luke's isn't.
Little does he know...
In Star Wars Rebels we are shown a prototype B-Wing that has decent speed, good shielding (it's shown to deflect many shots from Imperial Light Cruisers) and we see that one of these are able to take out said Imperial Light cruiser in two swift shots. Such B-Wings would have been an incredible investment for the Rebel Alliance, as its only major downside would be its inability to utilize hyperspace, relying on being carried to battle in a cruiser or as an attachment to a shuttle, which in most situations would be quite negligible. A squadron of such B-Wings would be able to take out the Dreadnought far faster and with far less casualties than the Star Fortresses, and quite frankly it's a mystery to me as to why these bombers weren't ever utilized again.
Imperial light cruisers were basically clone wars relics rather than true warships and presumably the unique armament wasn't practical to produce en-masse.
I like this scene, but i do not understand why the First Order just didn't used their Resugent class to protect their ship ?
Because the fleet commander lacks experience, General Hux is not a naval officer, they should have find an admiral to oversee the mission.
Yes indeed, if Hux is quite competent to develop and build weapons, he is extremely incompetent about warfare. I suppose it is a fine explanation.
Let Hux carry out planetary invasions instead.
Did you watch Eckharts Ladder's video on the battle? I tell you now to watch it before reading the rest of this comment, he fixed what the First Order did with his tactic. I would have removed the point defense guns on the Dreadnought and made Poe's mission along with in this version the rest of the X-wings as well to disable the cannons on the Star Destroyer that would be in front of the Dreadnought in this situation by attacking the three generators inside it's open bow (as seen in Battlefront II) which would then leave it open for the bombers to come through and have an epic battle with the A-wings and X-wings desperately holding off the TIEs from the Destroyer and maybe even have Kylo Ren come in with his Silencer and dogfight Poe or Tally in her A-wing. Then maybe when the Dreadnought goes down, one of the Auto Cannons right before it blows up gets knocked out of place and ends up shooting at the Star Destroyer in front of the Dreadnought instead of the fleet.
Tell me that wouldn't make this scene badass!
Because of crappy writing.
For the sake of the argument, let assume that the Y-Wings can't carry enough firepower to really do damage and that one of the Bombers was enough to make the kill. The tactics the Resistance uses are insane, it's an inferior force in a tight formation of slow moving targets. The only reason one bomber was even able to succeed is due to the ABSOLUTE incompetence of the First Order. No one saw the fleet of slow moving space zeppelins leaving the atmosphere while a lone X-Wing crank calls the "Admiral"???? The whole scene adds to why the movie and ultimately the sequel trilogy is absolute crap.
The one mistake you made was that Hux's rank (for some reason) is general, rather than admiral. (Perhaps that is why he is so bad at space combat as by his rank, he should be commanding ground troops.) Everything else I fully agree with.
The reason why using these bombers exclusively for the mission was a horrible idea is the same reason you don't send unassisted fleets of Kirov Airships into battle in Red Alert. The fighter support and overall defense of the bombers was completely incapable of defending them from TIE Fighters, which seem to be the most dangerous enemies to these things.
Many have pointed out other design flaws that are clearly seen in the movie, so what I'd like to add is that operating on the base presumption that the Resistance's high command is intelligent is one thing, but doing it in a movie where a vice-admiral willingly withholds necessary information from her most combative, aggressive and influential subordinate, which ends up blowing up in her face, is another.
To be fair, the odd thing about the Starfortress is why they were created. In a period of relative peace someone thought it was a great idea to manufacture a ship that would only really see service in war, and not just any war, but one in which total collateral damage was acceptable. Even during the Galactic Civil War such tactics weren't used (the Death Star et al. don't count, Alderaan wasn't collateral damage, it was the target).
@@DerpaTure9503 Oh I meant why they were created in universe, the reasons for having them in the film is obviously for cinematic and stylistic purposes.
The problem I have with the Starfortresses is the fact a resistance group, which survives on mobility would take something as slow and cumbersome as a bomber that big. Arming the thing and keeping its upkeep just seems foolish for such a small force.
It doesn't make it any less stupid as while one could destroy a warship, if the First Order was more competent, they would not have make it to kill the enemy warship.
Also, in lore, the B-Wing had the highest count of bombs/torpedoes of any bomber of its time, bar none, and it was designed specifically to destroy capital ships, so your argument is not valid.
raw666 The B-Wing model was discontinued specifically because of the large payload it needed to carry, thereby warranting higher construction parameters that The Resistance simply cannot afford. Also, you're referring to Legends, yes, there is a difference.
raw666 But it's not close to 1000 ordinance.
"I'll deny everything the video correctly demonstrates and substitute it with my own arrogant dismissive ignorance". - You.
Grow the fuck up.
No, I don't deny the idea is partially sound, but the overall execution and reasoning are still too questioning. For partially the argument that the Y-Wing carries a heavier payload when many different cannon material states otherwise, and it stated cannonically the B-Wing was designed specifically to kill heavier warships better than the Y-Wing and an upgraded version like the X-Wing and A-Wing would probably do better. And if we are going with the B-52 Bomber argument, then it is severely flawed since they were never designed to kill warships, they were used to hit long areas of land to destroy enemy strongholds and targets. Which seems to match the Star Fortress design with its slower speeds and high dispersal of heavy payloads seems more like something to hit and destroy enemy bases when orbital bombardment would not be precise enough, aka destroy the based but not the city next to to it. In fact, to kill warships, it was often used warships or faster and more maneuverable torpedo bomber fighters like the Douglas DTB. So it still does not take away it like it is the wrong craft for the wrong job and only reinforce it to what the craft is based off of.
Hell, you could make the argument that it would be safer to use a heavy warship to fire payloads into the ship since most warships appear to be faster then the star fortress, and would be better shielded and carry heavier payloads if the amount of payload is an issue for a bomber.
". And if we are going with the B-52 Bomber argument, then it is severely flawed since they were never designed to kill warships, they were used to hit long areas of land to destroy enemy strongholds and targets."
So the four-kilometer long Dreadnought counts as a ship, not a long area of land and/or stronghold. Compare that to the 29 metre long Resistance Bomber.
Welcome to Star Wars where the ships are big.
Can we start calling the resistance bomber "T-wings" instead of Star Fortresses or just bombers?
why not have mass accelerators launch proton bombs at high velocity from the capital ship.
If they Had one!
@@rpk321 they're shown repeatedly to get access to proton bombs. And a mass accelerator is just a rail gun or coil gun.
@@SilverStarHeggisist That is not how it works...a gun (it is not even a gun) designed for one thing doesn't automatically mean it can do another thing.
The problem isn't the answer, the problem is that we're left with the question. Repeatedly throughout the new series we see unexplained and unprecedented (at least on the films) scenes without any of the narrative devices that could aid our suspension of disbelief. I'm talking about a lack of foreshadowing, or even hanging a lampshade on it. These problems leave us unsatisfied with the questions raised, and no amount of off-screen apologia makes up for that.
4:08 oh my gosh! that's one of the key things missing from the Prequels and new Trilogy! i didn't realize how important those short briefing scenes were fixing before this.
This scene as a whole has a lot of problems, in both sides, not just the resistance one...
#1 Why send Poe in a modified Xwing, could putting him in an Awing be a smarter choice (you save the time and resources of modifying an Xwing)
#2 If the resistance has the luxury of upgrading their X-wings to completely redesigned T-70 and their A-wings to RZ-2, couldn't they design a new bomber fighter to replace the B-wing or the Y-wing?
#3 How did the hell did the combat style change so drastically, specially considering that the empire didn't used to have heavy non-fighter bombers either.
#4 why the hell does a capital ship lack anti fighter weaponry... even the death star had some....HUMONGOUS FLAW FOR A SHIP THAT SIZE....
#5 With bombers that size, why didnt the escort star destroyers target them, they're bigger and slower than fighters so higher size cannons should be able to shoot them down
#6 your momma joke...
#7 why are you hesitating to shoot them from long range way after committing to rout them (planetary bombardment of their base not considered hostile enough?)
An A-wing lacks the firepower of an X wing. A wings amount to being a pure air superiority fighter. I agree with everything else that movie was a disaster
I mean, I just assumed they were bad because they had a 100% loss rate but ok
Also all it took was the first few bombs to cause a ship to explode, so yes a y wing could have done it
Ok I'm watching this video with current information available in my head. And from what I know now, this scene is still dumb. We now know that not only does the resistance have Y-wings but improved models along with all the other alphabet craft. Biggest thing I've noticed (in the clip provided) is that all it took to cause a critical reaction was the first rails payload, (about a 6th of 1k) so like 166 bombs. So now with that information, let's look at the Y-wings again and maybe even be less forgiving and say they can only carry 20 bombs a piece. All you need is 8 Y-wings a totally realistic amount. Well that's all from me being late to this.
As far as i can remember, in ancient times, when legends were lore and expanded universe was vast and diverse, those of us fortunate enough to become a pilot on an X-wing or Tie Fighter, knew about such pieces of equipment as concussion missiles, Proton Torpedoes (both with an advanced version), heavy rockets and proton bombs . We all knew that four rockets or a couple of bombs would take out a corvette, and that a tie bomber would carry at most four of them, but also we knew that both bombs and rockets would have some kind of propulsion system, and in the case of the bombs, that propulsion system was so weak that it was better to drop them at full speed (the bomb would follow the path and speed of the finghter that launched it) so they were inertia based devices. Now this new bombs seems like they fall (gravity based, on space) and are somewhat less powerful... hardly an advancement.
4:27
Because Turbolasers. Try a perfect little dive boom run on a pinpoint target like that and you can have a very fun, very short time of it with the artillery that has you dialed in. The point of the treanch run was to avoid as much fire as possible, trading threat from fixed defenses for danger from mobile forces.
Despite their short onscreen lifespan, I actually love the MG-100 StarFortress bombers. Being an aviation nut, there's nothing more impressive than the medium and heavy bombers.
I agree, I hate how people hate the ship solely for a freak accident (The Tie Fighter crashing into bombay of a Space Fortress.)
"A freak accident". But said accident was caused by a TIE solar panel hitting, and not being deflected by the shields, not blocked by any armor- but a flimsy solar panel slicing through the hull of the ship, igniting the bombs (which had not only been armed, but apparently their fuses set to "blow the hell up at any moment", instead of proximity, speed, distance, time- any of the real world fuse setting that bombs/shells have...)
No, it was a poor designed ship for the starfighter field, (if the X-Wings could have actually done THEIR JOBS, maybe it would work), and a pretty lousy plan- a staggered attempt, or even (presuming the bombers were hyperspace capable) a microjump to the "target window" would have been a much better plan instead of "fly slowly forward and get chewed up".
It was the rule of cool- and like way too much in TLJ, showed neither the First Order nor the Resistance had a competent military commander.
I don't care who you are, anyone can identify that the bombers used in TLJ are far inferior to already seen established bombers (eg, Y-Wings, X-Wings, the new TIE fighters, old tie bombers, etc). It is a poor excuse you have to come up with a vehicle that instantly can destroy another one just to advance the plot, because anyone with even the glimmer of a tactical mind understands that is not the point of combat. The most effective strategy (and one used by the rebellion I may add, but not the resistance?), is to disable or disarm the enemy BEFORE taking out their assets. One COULD argue that was what Poe performed in the opening shots, but these new crappy bombers were so useless against enemy fighters that they all went down with a lone fighter screen from 1 ship. In WHAT SCENARIO does that even remotely sound like a feasible vessel to employ!?!?!?!
Let's just get our facts straight. Ruin Johnson simply wanted to insert a WWIIesque scene into his crap movie because he thought it would pay homage to how the original movie used scenes borrowed from old WWII fighter plane scenes. Here's the rub though, he never took into account that it may LOOK pretty, but it had no substance because the immediate question that follows is, "Why don't they use any other ship to do the same thing?"
Honestly, a better tactic (and more likely a much better scene), would have been to have squadrons of the new Xwings attack key points on the ship to disable it from being able to attack and not have the other 2 star destroyers accompany (since they contributed absolutely nothing to this scene but questions as to why they didn't act in the first place). Have those squadrons target the ships engines and the power generator for their main weapon. Once both of those are removed, the vehicle is a tactical paperweight (unless you count the new lightspeed ramming technique pioneered by this hack...).
A better, and far more relatable scene, and you could still give it the feel of a "battle of midway" scene, and accomplish all your same goals, but you wouldn't get that sweet sweet merch from "adding a new vehicle to the roster"...
Actually, now that it's established they have hyperdrives, I'd take these bombers over anything else if I had to go destroy an enemy warship.
Light or medium bombers would have been a much better idea. For WWII examples, the B-25, or A-26/B-26. The StarFortresses getting annihilated was bound to happen as it was based off the B-24, for one. Of course these are different type of bombers, but for comparison, the B-25 performed more effectively in its role compared to the B-24 in its role. Don't believe me? Look it up. A bomber based off one or both of the WWII bombers would be the best decision the Resistance would've took. It would've supplanted the Y-Wing during the New Republic era.
Still baffles me as to why the Resistance bought this POS anyways. The construction and design is severely flawed as a heavy bomber despite its massive armaments.
It wasn't a planned attack. They were literally prepared to retreat before Poe ignored his orders. He literally got demoted in the next scene.
The Y-Wing is a generally better bomber than the Star fortress, since he Y-Wing could maneuver and likely get out of the engagement, and the Star Fortresses were incredibly vulnerable to fire to tie fire, and one tie wing hitting the side of a bomber. Also, it is Canon that they pulled the bombers from a *second* fleet, as opposed to being in the same area. The Y-Wing is, generally, easier to maneuver and fight in, and the Star fortress is incredibly vulnerable to the sides, since the ball guns couldn't protect the flanks as easily. The Star Fortress also needed an escort, and all the point-defense weapons eliminated in order for a successful run to be completed
So I just watched the video about the photon torpedoes and he mentions that it was weird that something that small could destroy the Death Star, which it did. Unless the dreadnaught had shield which it appeared not to the photon torpedoes dropped by the Y- Wings would be enough. If the resistance used Y-wings they would also receive far less casualties. The y-wing has a crew of 1 and an Astromech pmeanwhile those stupid bombers carry 9 or 10. No to mention how much faster the y-wing is.
it still does not explain why they shot the bombs at them with little engines attach to them. or why they don't spread out the bomber so if one explodes, weather from a freak accident or a normal attack, it does not take out other bombers.
You should be a Resistance General.
Yeah, anybody with an ounce of sense would have sent the bombers in one-at-a-time and keep them spread out, just to increase your odds of success.
A well-stated video, I can't agree more in regard to the sudden rise of nitpicking when the Star Wars universe has always had much weirder things going on that everyone was fine with.
Another thing that everyone seems to have either missed or is willingly ignoring about this battle is that the movie acknowledges that the tactics that the Resistance uses are flawed, and that the battle is a needless waste of life and ships.
The Resistance is throwing together what limited resources it has to stall for time to evacuate their base, the plan is to slow the First Order down until the fleet can jump to safety (remember, they are unaware of hyperspace tracking at this time). Big, slow ships make sense for this, they are clearly bluffing, but bringing enough firepower with them to do some damage should the bluff fail. Before the attack begins, the fleet becomes ready to make the jump, and Poe is directly ordered to call off the attack. He ignores this order, and after everyone dies he is berated by his commanding officer and demoted. This is the starting point of Poe's character arc. He's only had like 15 minutes of screen time in the last movie, so at this point in the trilogy we're still being introduced to him. So far we have seen that he is a cocky, arrogant flyboy who doesn't spend much time outside of the present moment or thinking about the consequences of his actions, and this battle is the inciting incident in his path to becoming a better leader. How well this arc is handled is a separate discussion, but the point remains that the opening battle is flawed on purpose.
TL;DR, If you think that the battle tactics are stupid, you are correct, and the film is agreeing with you.
The thing I find hilariously unthinkable about this scene is how close the formation is ; yeah, it would make sense if they were starfighters. But they are practically bombs waiting to go off. One tie fighter wing taking out three bombers? Really Rian? That's the dogfight scene you come up with?
I tried to be positive about TLJ. I really did. After I watched it for the first time in theaters, I just had a couple quibbles about it. Over the next couple days, my feelings about it deteriorated until my brother asked me to go watch it with him and I just had zero interest in rewatching it. The entire plot of that movie was to repeatedly pretend it was setting up some cool and fun thing, then call you ridiculous for wanting it.
Then I have to deal with people assuming I'm toxic or coming at the movie in bad faith. It's soul crushing.
Same here bro, but from the other side - I was shouted down and almost convinced tha TLJ was the devil itself. Then I rewatched it and rediscovered I had a blast.
So now you have a Star Wars movie that you dislike - and what's worst of it, it is someone else's favourite movie - happened to all of us. Welcome to the club. The fandom manace works from bothe sides of this argument. All we can do is be reasonable aboput it all and accept reality - we might disagree, but that's not the reason to be an arse about it.
The movie has a lot of problems and the no use of Y-Wing is just one of many other gabs.
I think I would like them more if they had more going for them than just ordinance. like mounting boosters on them too. Its also easier to poke holes in their design because they had somewhat of a disappointing outing compared to ships like the snow-speeder, despite them both only appearing in one scene, and they were basically the only new rebel fighter in the entire sequel trilogy. When previously the rebels were defined by their interesting and diverse fleet now the designs are hampered by the studio executives thinking that the main mistake of the prequels was their ships, when in fact that was the main thing many people liked about them alongside the memes. I know the resistance aren't the rebels but they might as well be. Its like the only new republic ship being the v wing.
All this is assuming anyone at Lucasfilm is following any rules for space combat. No rules means "creative freedom", which means any ship can do anything for no reason whatsoever.
"Chose thier crafts carefully" which is why the one they chose Got killed. Instantly also "freak accident"? That shit happens in war surprisingly often enough for people to factor it in
I never once asked this question. There were so many dumb decisions made throughout that this didn't even occur to me.
Ok but I have some things to add, the Starforts were anti-planet fortification carpet bombers, aside from potentially being ill suited to this task, how the fuck would you store these things? where on gods glorious space hanger could you store them? would they be docked outside of a ship? They certainly don't have the tech or internals to land sideways. They have most of their payload in an extremely large cross section on the bomber that is vulnerable to straffing fire. Who built these things.
Simple, they have a removable bomb magazine, they just remove the magazine, and land it that way
They keep trying to replace the Y-Wing and they keep failing. The B-Wing, the K-Wing, the confusion that was the H-Wing, now this Resistance bomber monstrosity, the Y-Wing is already perfect the way it is. It can't be hit from behind, it's tough and maneuverable, it's not that slow and has strong shields, the laser cannons are positioned right where they need to be to make it accurate at long range and it has a working defensive ion cannon turret.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The y wing is the a 10 of star wars
Because TOYS
But Y-Wings are cooler which would sell more toys
True, and making a toy that everyone hates isnt a good idea.
Yeah, because TLJ is doing so good at moving merch. (/sarcasm off)
It was a goal, one they failed at. I remember when a toy B-Wing was the hot toy to have, the Starfort doesn't even have the visual flair to make a cool toy.
How many more ways can this bomber fail?
and that is the only true reason. Well said sir
have you seen how the toy sales are over all? Good ideas are not what this franchise does.
The only weapons on the ventral hull are the massive cannons.
My argument: Are you telling me that a couple of proton torpedoes fired into the barrel of those things WON'T cause a large explosion?
jets in real life fly low in mountain ranges (trenches).
avoiding SAM missiles and detection. perfectly reasonable and makes for a better scene. this is a movie after-all
Because Rian Johnson wanted a "12 O'clock High IN SPACE!" scene, instead of writing the action around the ships in canon.
It's a justification of a bad story choice, as Last Jedi kind of sucks about 65% of the time.
Also, fire coverage. A Starfighter going down the trench only has to cope with the weapons and other fighters in the trench.
But if a fighter is approaching the Death Star from a distance directly at the surface, the entire surface can see they're going for a certain target and mass fire against them.
I would also argue that a few Tie fighters massing fire against the bombers in coordination would have taken them all out easily, due to their flimsiness, and because bad writing.
When you base your ship on the B17 flying fortress which was a failure as an anti ship bomber the scene ends up being accurate.
Would have been nice
had they based their design on a B52 Bomber
It's stated in the movie, why they had to make the trench run, to exploit the fact that the Death Star had such a spread defense designed against large vessels. Also, the exhaust ports where facing sideways, not outward, so a dive would not have lined up the torpedo shot. They had to make a run of some length down the trench, because that's where the ports were. DUH.
Maybe you should go watch the movie before making crap up.
Many people criticize the scene because it was a stupid tactical attack full of errors and moronic exchanges. I've never heard of the "Why Not Y-Wings" argument, but Y-Wings weren't used, because they would have worked, as we see in Rogue One, and the point of the scene is a foreshadowing of future events and the condition of the Resistance, so in order for that to happen, it had to be poorly executed and at great sacrifice, succeed, because the Resistance and First Order are full of idiots who care more about virtue signaling, rank and ego than actual combat.
Every word of what you just said is wrong. You should probably watch the film before you criticize someone by telling them to go watch the film.
It is not stated in ANH that that the trench run is necessitated by the Death Star's loose defense, only that this defense can only be because the Empire does not consider a small one-man fighter to be a threat. When General Dodana explains this in response to Gold Leader, he is explicitly reiterating his previous statement about the Death Star's outer defensive perimeter. His briefing then proceeds into the Death Star itself and the objective of the mission, which is where the trench run is stated to be necessary. This is an entirely separate topic from the previous statement about the defense grid, and why they have to run the trench is never explocitly stated.
As for the location of the exhaust port, it is a vertical shaft perpendicular to the trench. Luke using the force to curve his torpedoes into the vent is clearly shown on screen. We see the torpedoes firing straight out from Red 5, parallel to the base of the trench, and then making a 90 degree turn into the vent, next to the scorch marks left by Red Leader's torpedoes that impacted on the surface.
As for the poor tactical decisions in the opening battle of TLJ, everyone seems to forget that the movie literally states this during and after the battle. Poe is directly ordered to call off the attack, he ignores this order, and after everyone dies he is berated by his commanding officer and demoted. If you think that the battle tactics are stupid, you are correct, and the film is agreeing with you.
Additionally, Y-Wings may not necessarily have been the most strategic option. We do see a squadron of them using ion bombs disable an ISD in Rogue One, but the opening scene of TLJ is a different circumstance. In the first place, 30 years have passed since the OT, the Y-Wing was already a pretty old and slow vessel at that time. It is entirely possible, and based on descriptions of their performance from Legends material, very likely that new technology and tactics of the past 3 decades have rendered the craft an obsolete death trap. Secondly, the First Order dreadnought is quite a bit larger and more technologically advanced than an ISD, and as stated in the video, the Resistance does not appear to have enough pilots, let alone strike craft, to take out something of that scale using only one-man fighters.
The purpose of the bombers wasn't to actually bomb anything, it was "designed" to kill its pilot and to add more drama to the movie. That scene where the switch nearly fell out of the ship but was caught at the last second...
Exactly. It was a ship built around a WWII bomb dropping cut Rian put in some rough edit of the film to direct special effects, and a few dramatic flairs. Let's stop trying to make it fit in the universe. It was written by someone who didn't care about the technology of the universe and didn't bother to do the homework or detail someone like EC Henry does.
My problem stems from the desire of Johnson to make this feel like WW2. With that logic, why use a B-17 to attack a Battleship when a group of TBM Avengers (Torpedo Bombers) would be more than sufficient? Keep in mind, I love the design of the Starfortress, but they should not have been used in this instance. Instead, use them to attack Starkiller and save your X-Wings and Proton torpedoes for the Dreadnought. It was obvious the AAA Guns were incapable of hitting a fast moving target. There wasn't even TIES covering the Fleet until the last second.
I think this is the best critique of this scene. In a lot of ways the scene is “fine” but a torpedo bomber sequence would have been more appropriate and potentially cooler
I think it's perfectly valid to assume that the Resistance just threw whatever ships they had at the FO.
I find it very unfortunate that they failed to more clearly state it in the movies themselves, but if you look at the supplemental materials just a bit, it becomes clear that the Resistance is even worse than the Rebel Alliance regarding equipment. The Rebel Alliance at least had some new-ish ships (U-Wings, B-Wings) and they modified old Y-Wings to make them more speedy.
But the Resistance? All their tech is obsolete or crafted seemingly on the spot. ALL their X-Wings are older models, no longer in use in the New Republic Navy. The shuttle that Leia arrives in on Takodana seems to be welded together from a B-Wing cockpit, a laser gun and an armoured brick.
P. S. I've looked Starfortress up at Wookiepedia. That ship was designed soon after the Battle at Endor. The design is almost 30 YEARS OLD! Of course it's slow and clunky.
They had newer model X-Wings. Newer model TIE fighters. Why not newer model Y-Wings? It will be like the other ships, everything has an upgrade; including proton bombs.
The y wings were considered put dated by the time of episode 4
That is why I said "newer model", just like the T-70, -75; etc., X-Wing. I am not talking about the original Y-Wings, but new; off the rack, models.
Y-wings we're not out dated in Star Wars, they we're obsolete.
Because PLOT demands it.
@@TheGlock30owner in what way are they obsolete?
I’m glad your channel is back and running like usual. Keep up the good work
you make a good point; even without a cockpit and half the crew, it delivered the payload; Y wings, in comparison, were a bit more fragile, did require escort, and well, can't carry enough payload..
Here's where your wrong. The star fortress may carry more bombs, but a large unit of Y wings with proton torpedoes can also make up the amount needed AND are maneuverable
so you expect that the y-wing did,t get picked off and that it's harder to escort a small fighter unlike the starfortress (not saying that i really like the design, it's ok)
@@minegaming4526 y-wings are capable of moving faster and wouldn't be picked off as easily, they are also faster and typically escorted by x-wings, which also shoot proton torpedoes and can assist in the bombing run
I see the Y-wing as the light moblie bomber compared to the star fortress and have weaker bombs being used for hit and run tatics and can be used for specific spots. And the star fortress as a heavier, and not as moblie, but can do more damage and can be sure to do the job in a short amount of time. And just the fact that the Y-wing is what I'm guessing more than 50 years old. I don't know. There's probably more reasons and upgrades could be used.
By the time the Clone Wars, the Y-Wings were nearing the the end of their production runs, with maybe a few hundred more units left to produce *at best*. By the time of SWFA, the Y-Wings are looooooooong out of date, and were barely holding together as it was. Also, the Y-Wings being more nimble only means that they'd have to stay in the fight longer when engaging a Dreadnought, which they would have to basically pick apart piece by piece. Think of it like using a TBM Avenger, SBD Dauntless, and SB2C Helldiver against the Yamato. Each craft is small, fairly nimble, and are harder to hit, but it still took 13 torpedo hits, and dozens of bomb hits from over 300 aircraft to sink her, and she didn't even have a fighter screen.
Jonathon Davonger all of that is true. I see the outdate tech being a a major factor of not being used for combat( I don't know how far upgrades will go). I still say hit and run tatics can go far enough for the target(depending on the target or specific target) to take damage and lead the way for a major attack, which I kinda see is a counter for the lack of damage for the bombs, while the star fortess' bombs do more. But the Y- wings have variety such as ion torpedos. Yet the Y-wing still won't be fit for combat.
I compare the y-wing to the f-14 it was a powerful fighter/bomber but it got out of date and the us navy went with the super hornet
I'd compare the Y-Wing more to the A-6 than an F-14. After all, the Y-Wing is virtually helpless in a a dogfight, as is an A-6 Intruder. As for variety of ordinance, remember that by the time of this attack, the Star Fortresses had only just gotten back, and were likely being loaded up with whatever bombs were available to them for another raid when the evacuation order came. It'd be like getting rearmed on the deck when a sudden attack comes. You're not gonna sit around on the deck and wait for the right weapons to be loaded, you're gonna be moved to the catapult, and launched as fast as the crew can load you to it.
Another thing I see is that the Y-Wing I think functions more like a torpedo bomber than a standard bomber, at least in canon. In the Clone Wars, Rebels, and the films, we mostly see them using torpedoes (both proton and ion) as opposed to bombs. The one time I can think of in canon when they actually drop standard bombs is the first episode with the Zillo Beast in Clone Wars when they drop those “electro-proton bombs”
They didn't use Y-wings or B-wings because they would have worked. Rian Johnston needed most of the Assault ships to die in order to progress the stupid story line where Poe gets reprimanded for completing the assigned mission.
BTW the Y-wing was obsolete in A New Hope, they just didn't have anything which could replace it. That's why the Rebellion designed the B-wing, There's one scene in Jedi, during the final space battle, where you see a Star Destroyer blow up in the background. That was destroyed by, IIRC, a trio of B-wings so they have MORE than enough fire power. That scene was shot but never included in the movie because the B-wing's Wings disappeared when filmed from behind. Given that, in the intervening decades, the New Republic designed an upgraded X-wing, the T-70 model, AND an upgraded A-wing, the RZ=2, It's surprising that they didn't upgrade the B-wing, especially with that little monsters' Bang for Buck!
You say the B-wing wasn't a good dog fighter, I disagree. It was better than the Y-wing, far more maneuverable and had much stronger shields and weapons. It also didn't NEED to be as good as the X-wing, given that it was almost the same speed X-wing and a much harder to hit target than the Y-wing, It just needs to be fast and maneuverable enough to fly alongside the X-wings. The scene would have been VERY different if some one with a little Star Wars knowledge and no agenda to push had been in charge, but you could say the same of the whole movie!
One major flaw in your assessment.
Only ONE star fortress reached its target & delivered its payload of 100 proton bombs.
So we know it only took 100 proton bombs to destroy the dreadnaught... a feat easily achieved with just 5 Y-wing bombers carrying 20 proton bombs each.
Now imagine sending in just 2 or 3 squadrons of Y-wings. That would be 20 or 30 fast moving bombers totaling 400 or 600 proton bombs.
Given the length of time it took the Tie fighters to destroy all the star fortresses, before just ONE reached & successfully bombed the dreadnught... more than half of those 20 or 30 Y-wings would have made it through if not damn near all of them.
You are also forgetting the fact that Y-wings were abundant, cheap, easy to repair, & maintain, which is why the Rebel Alliance had so damn many of them, being their 2nd most common fighter. They literally had one Y-wing for every two X-wings.
The Resistance was just stupid... like the rest of the plot in this movie.
But the payload of ONE starfortress is 1000+ proton bombs, not 100.
@@thijmenhermelink1874 , the Starfortresses suck. The Y-Wings and B-Wings would've destroyed that dreadnaught and outflank it with ease plus there should've been more X-Wings and A-Wings for the escort. They could've used the old T-65s to tear up those Tie Fighters.
“They knew what they were doing”… in space where you have infinite angles of approach and the resistance picks head on… yeah nah
The question I have is how the Star Fortresses even came to be. Their design is abysmal after all, big slow unmanoeuvrable targets that go up like fireworks when hit. I mean, even the Tie Bomber only used 50% of its volume for bombs, where this uses something like 75%.
Blame film makers for the ship being terrible
The star fortress would be seen as a decent craft if it was used correctly, you don't need to fly over the ship, this is space, you just have to draw a straight line from you to the target, have the plan be to at medium range to turn around and release the bombs in a wall of bombs, tearing through tie fighters trying to join the fight, while also being able to threaten the dreadnought
Since we’re using video games for some reason, in The Classic Battlefront 2, the Y wing had infinite bombs
In my headcannon I thought they replaced the Y-Wings because they were old (from the clone wars) so needed replacing/improving.
They were indeed old, probably around 90 years old, at the time of TLJ. THe problem is that there were really no designs that were created in the 90 years to take its place? Not only that, but a question I had was why the resistance even needed bombers like the ones they had? In all the cannon I am aware of, they never took actions against the First Order that they would be useful. (unless, you know, trying to destroy a massive superweapon, where they needed heavy ordinance to break through the armor of an installation on the ground. You know, the perfect situation for what the bombers were made for. Too bad that scenario never happened....)
possibly, but these new ships are certainly worse than Y-Wings in almost every way
The Y-wing design may be old, but the Hammerhead corvettes have been around since around 5-6k BBY, and are still used in the Rogue One movie as a valid ship design. The age of a design isn't the key problem here, the design itself is, and these new bombers are worse all around than either the B-wing or the Y-wing.
Gotta disagree man, that wasn't a "freak accident." They didn't have to fly in tight formation like that. This is space warfare, they could've adopted any number of wide formations and still been in good positions to drop their payloads. Now if the intent was to show the Resistance as incompetent, then that would be a success. But to be quite frank, that doesn't really do much for the plot.
1:11 I think EC Henry forgot about that superlaser thing from Rebels on the B-wings
That was only on the prototype model due to it draining too much power
@@omarbaba9892 you’re totally right. I hadn’t learned that at the time, but I did do some more digging after posting the comment. Thanks for correcting me
I blame bad writing. The ship's very use was created by RJ, he could have easily put better shielding on them, and faster engines to show them to be more competant. But instead, we have to try and jump hoops to "explain it away" when it was fully in RJ's control as a content creator in the first place on how to have them function. It was for an attempted emotional impact, which was poorly executed.
"How do I make them die? I guess I'll make them weak and really slow" - RJ
Could have had them shown to be taking all the impacts, bombing well, but then getting taken down by other captial ships that were side supports as they try to turn around with Poe after getting the job down. Something more feasable, and still gets the job done of the emotional impact of loss.
That was one of the more irritating things about TLJ, the level of incompetence of both groups would've led to them killing themselves off long before they ran into each other. And then the epic holdo maneuver that annihilates the universal laws established in 7 previous movies for a pretty scene, which I freely admit it looked great but hurt the franchise. God I hate that movie