The B-wing's name origin is kinda interesting actually. They originally didnt name the B-wing or the A-wing during production, and simply referred to then as "fighter a" and "fighter b". While they were in production, Bill George, one of the prop makers, spent so much time working on it's design that they named it the "bill-wing", and the name kinda stuck. In universe, it's full nickname is the "blade-wing", due to it's narrow profile.
Huh... that got me thinking, since *Blade-Wing* makes so much more sense as a nickname for the fighter if the same could be applied to the A and X-Wings. Perhaps Arrow-Wing for the A-Wing (due to resembling an Arrow Head) and Cross-Wing for the X-Wing? Not sure what to do for the Y and U-Wings though...
@@caelumis3630x wing might be a variant of executioner (imperial design) and since a good chunk of the galaxy would be illiterate in galactic common it become “xicutioner” and eventually shorted to just x-wing.
In the old Expanded Universe now called Legends they rotation system around the cockpit was actually notorious for failing at extremely awkward positions...
The entire B-wing was notorious for being a nightmare to fly. Powerful in the hands of an experienced b-wing pilot (yes, a pilot experienced in flying specifically b-wings) but more than useless to anyone else.
@@CHRF-55457 The A-Wing's deal was that it too much ship for most pilots and ended up over-steering into things. It did not fold itself like an origami swan while in flight.
It is even a noted flaw in universe that the B wing has major maintenance problems. Also, the Mon Kalamari who designed it was a noted oddball by even Mon Kala standards. Calling it mass produced is a stretch. They couldn't afford to build or maintain very many of these, so they didn't.
I know the B-Wing makes less than no sense. I still love it. It’s like they tried to design the worst possible fighter and still ended up with something cool. I would never want to fly or fight in one. Nevertheless, it’s my absolute favorite starfighter.
Star Wars Rebels showed that the reason for the wings is that it has one of those converging laser cannons like a scaled down Death Star. Emitters on the wing tips. Still a stupid design though.
@@torinnbalasar6774 Pretty sure you are right as I don't recall seeing the mini-deathstar laser ever being hsed outside that origin episode in Rebels. Had that weapon/feature remained with the B-wing, it would have made this ship worth all the hassle. Note: This design was done right, or at least much better, in the opening scenes of the Lost in Space movie reboot that came out some years ago. The pilot of the Jupiter 2 (Joey from Friends fame) flew one before he rec'd the promotion to trained monkey.
@@earlware4322 I haven't seen the more recent reboot series yet to know if it's portrayed there, but the 1998 movie has them in the opening scene. I'll have to go digging through my VHS tapes to find it again, it's been a while since I've seen it.
Still going through your library of content, something I'm coming to realise; your voice is stunningly good, definitely a fangirl, my cube is staying as a cube, so I've invested in a new Venetor instead, and its parked nowhere near this shipyard. :)
@@SacredCowShipyards You had to mention that you sound like the Grand Nagus. Now I'll never unhear it xD And I'm thinking Weyloon was meant to be Weyoun, which means you're a DS9 fan, and I appreciate that very much.
FYI in legends, the Bwing was designed by Admiral Ackbar with the help of a Verpine. So if it helps in understanding the Bwing Just remember that it came from the mind of a squid and a bug.
To me the most ridiculous part of the design is that the pilot isn't in the center of mass... you know, the point that objects like rotating around. Imagine it, you are in the middle of a spinning maneuver when the inertial dampers glitch for a second, for an X-wing pilot you might get lightheaded for a second since he's pretty much in the center of mass/rotation, for the B-wing pilot he's thrown in the opposite direction of the airfoil, leading to injuries or loss of consciousness.
Depending on how the rotation works during flight, the craft could maneuver around the pod, such that the pilot is always inside of any bank, reducing the amount of G-fource they would receive if the were at the center of mass and thrust
@@ezramiller8936 which is not just yet another engineering nightmare, it's also completely unnecessary and could easily fixed by just adjusting the location of the cockpit.
For the wings, or S-foils, which seem to carry the term 'strike' in some circles, making them 'Strike Foils', seem to get half treated as opening up as radiator panels for the vehicle using them so that the weapons can be cooled. And to a certain extent, that makes some sense. If you work with the assumption that starfighter cannons are overpowered for the platform and under-cooled, you can make the argument that S-foils were a design feature to increase rate of fire by improving weapon cooling. The non-S-foil-equipped fighters, Y-wing/A-Wing, and so on, either have under-powered weapons (A-wing), or low rate of fire (Y-wing). Fighters like the ARC-170 have S-foils, and a really LARGE pair of main cannons, as well as a tail gunner. The X-wing has a moderately good rate of fire, and some pretty LARGE Tam & BaK laser cannons on it that allow it to punch pretty hard. Meanwhile, a TIE fighter has no S-foils, but an absolutely HUGE fixed radiator array. (I refuse to call those things 'solar panels'.) TIE laser cannons are both pretty powerful for their size, and have a vicious burst of rapid fire. Other TIE models like the TIE-Interceptor, TIE-Advanced, TIE-Defender, and so on, have even more weapons and more aggressive panel coverage. If we look at a typical B-wing, it has a pretty heavy armament of three laser cannons, and three ion cannons, while having superior speed to a Y-wing. I can easily believe that the designer went with the opening flying T design as his particular answer to weapon heat dissipation. The rotating cockpit I just consider to be like how X-Wing Collectors CD-Rom showed it. Unfolding from a compact flight deck config, to combat mode. And I would sooner vomit up my own blood than entertain the idea that the B-wing is some kind of nightmare to fly because of the disorienting 'fighter rotates around the cockpit' lore nonsense that's being pushed.
Radiating heat is a major problem in ALL spacecraft design in the modern day. That's why (relatively) modern spacecraft, like the Apollo CSM/LM, space shuttle, and the ISS are painted white, have deployable radiators, and/or are covered in mylar to reflect or radiate away as much heat as they can. Why? Without an atmosphere, there's nothing to attenuate the energy received from the sun. The Apollo CSM solved the problem by turning rotisserie style on it's axis. The shuttle had radiators in it's cargo-bay doors, and the ISS has giant radiator panels.
@@BlackEpyon but this was not foremost in the mind of Lucas in the mid 1970’s when he wrote a fighter that flew in space as if there was an atmosphere. Incidentally, the early technical manuals hand-waved the maneuverability by saying the S foils created a field that let them act upon the ether to maneuver.
Well, in reality it actually achieved al least two of these things: It was more modern and more heavily armed. At the same time being slower and a lot more sluggish, while also being a nightmare to maintain doe to all the ridiculous moving parts. So technically it was a success?
@@h2835 Well some sources say it's slower (RPGs) and some say it was faster (LucasArts X-Wing games) It also looks a BIT like a lower-case, but not upper-case, b.
You can easily see why the Y wing needed replaced, it was a rapidly obsolescent platform decades out of production with replacement parts difficult and expensive to manufacture and spaceframes well over their useful service lifespans. Unfortunately, they replaced one hangar queen with another.
technically the lasers meant for starfighter to starfighter combat were located just below the cockpit, the ones mounted on the wings were ion cannons and heavy blasters meant for attacking capital ships. The wings are apparently for heat distribution purposes, though the UA-camr EckhartsLadder made a good argument that space in Star Wars isn't actually a vacuum but rather an etherium filled with some kind of substance that is the cause of the strange physics we see from ships (flying, rather then floating).
The B-wing was designed to fill a role similar to something like the Hs 129 or the A-10 Warthog, with a big fuckoff gun to blow up hard targets and a fuckton of bombs, torpedoes, and missiles to blow up even harder targets. The idea was to replace the then 25-year old Y-wing torpedo bomber with something both more capable and more generalized. However, as you said, the problem is that the big fuckoff gun is half a mile from the cockpit and thus impossible to aim properly. Also, I'd call the secondary torpedo tube blowing the cockpit clean off if struck a feature, not a bug. You're gonna lose the fighter either way if the magazine is struck, but at least the pilot will survive, and B-wing cockpits were later designed to be able to fly independent of the fighter, probably to aid in survival when this happens.
Let's be honest, when was aiming a thing in star wars? It was "spray and pray" since first movie and they all need that weird targeting computer, that takes half of eternity to lock on something, to actually hit something - and even that has limited capability, since they needed "space magician farm boy" to hit that exhaust port on first death star, cheesing it with force. So I wouldn't really see that issue with aiming as anything significant, within lore...
@@themanformerlyknownascomme777 Well, the US Marine Corps also strapped a big fuckoff gun to the B-25. Some versions in Marine service were equipped with a 75mm cannon from a Sherman.
I would consider putting those big fuck-off guns that can threaten a capital ship as far away as possible from the pilot a safety feature too. Those will create excessive heat and will go out in a spectacular fashion if malfunctioning
The B-wing was primarily designed as a blockade buster and also to replace the aging Y-wing fleets in the heavy assault role against large capital ships, as it had the advantage of more weaponry and stronger shields. Also the size of this assault starfighter is down to the fact that the vast majority of it's weaponry and systems were usually reserved for much larger patrol ships and corvettes, Whilst the Prototype B6 version did have a composite beam laser weapon that could inflict heavy damage upon cruiser class targets. it was very power hungry and would lead to other system failures i.e the hyperdrive when used, So Really the later production models were far worse than the original prototype
It does look like a long tail lower case b when the wings are closed & the cockpit is in the down configuration but it is also supposed to look like a dagger with the cockpit as the pommel which is why it's also sometimes called a Blade Wing.
The rebellion had A Lot of fighter designs. This allowed them to sell more "toy" and "model" star fighters to raise funds to design even more star-fighters for the Rebellion.
As someone who has been doing star wars flight-sims since the 1990's i can tell you that the B-Wing is the best anti-capital-ship fighter/bomber in the rebellion fleet. While the gyroscopic cockpit is a bit of a gimmick, the separation of the weapons systems does not lessen the ship"s effectiveness as the onboard computer can keep the guns zeroed on a single reticle. It's faster, better shielded, has triple the combined firepower firepower of a Y-wing., and a massive magazine of torpedoes. While the X-wing remains my first choice for combined speed and firepower, if I had to bring down the hammer with a fighter, there is nothing better than the B-Wing.
I played those old Sims too. The b-wing certainly had the firepower to lay the hurt on large slow moving capital ships, but it was pretty helpless in dogfight. Getting those spread out canons to stay locked onto anything with speed and maneuverability was near impossible. The y-wing might have been slower but I'd still prefer flying it any day of the week because at least if I got forced into a dog fight I knew I'd actually be able to fight back.
@@EmeralBookwise well, b-wing wasn't really intended for dogfights, but as analog for torpedo bombers or ground attack aircrafts like A-10 or Su-25 - none of these were/are suitable for air to air combat against fighters, just to screw over big/static/heavily armored targets. Speed and excessive maneuvers aren't required from this type of plane, just firepower and combat survivability, and they are typically not sent before gaining air superiority or without fighter escort. SW just for some reason calls things "fighter" even when they are clearly not. probably more accurate comparison would be to ww2 twin engines (mostly, but single engines existed too) designed to fight bombers - they had heavy armament and armor and really sucked against escort fighters, but regular fighter didn't had enough of firepower to shoot down heavy bombers effectively. That's also reason, why Americans typically used just fiftycals on fighters, while Germans was increasing amount of canons and their caliber - first one was fighting just intercepting fighters while latter ones had priority on taking down bombers (since escort fighters didn't poses a threat to factories or military bases, so they could happily leave those alone).
@@depressedTrent: you're not wrong, and I'm not entirely criticizing the b-wing from an in universe tactical function. More so I'm saying that it wasn't all that much fun to fly in a GAME that was mostly sold on the premise of exciting starfighter combat. Missions where I played as the fighter escort protecting b-wings tended to be more fun than missions were I was actually expected to fly a b-wing myself. I just couldn't reliably expect an AI escort to actually keep enemy fighters off my tail, assuming I was even provided any escort at all.
@@EmeralBookwise well, than probably avoid Wing commander 1, because you would end up doing escorts with worst garbage available, that turns way more slower, than attacking enemy fighters and probably even than those escorted cargo ships... :D like, not all the fighters are bad, you even start with the more agile ones, but fleet doesn't really waste those on escort missions, so you have to pilot most outdated and outperformed thing in hangar... :D but they were good challenge, forcing you to go more tactical (and hoping for blessing from gaming gods) and showing some serious skills rather than simply "I'm hunter they're prey, let's play a little with them" (not that it's making me like those stupid escort missions... 😅)
I read that the B-wing is called that because the ship design team for ROTJ made new Starfighter A and Starfighter B. Instead of creating a fitting letter-wing name for the B-wing, they just went with it. It has been retroactively made the Blade-wing by Star Wars Rebels, so I guess it is supposed to represent a sword.
If memory serves, the original 'b-wing' had a death-star-style-multi-to-one-laser weapon. At that's why all the points are all spread out. When it was mass produced, such a large weapon would -break the plot- be unsupportable in such large numbers. So they were re-built with normal weapons.
The B-Wing is derpy and yet I can't help but love it. Of course, I ignore the whole "rotating cockpit" thing... I seem to recall that the purpose of the B-Wing was to be an anti-ship fighter in the same way that the A-10 is anti-tank, and that the weapons pod at the end of the wing was for anti-ship guns. Add to that the knowledge that in pre-production it was supposed to be a two-man ship, and I can sorta see it: the pilot steers the ship and perhaps uses the anti-starfighter weapons in the nose and on on the short wings, and the gunner/RIO fires the missiles & torpedoes and runs the anti-ship pod from a weapons camera (thus eliminating parallax). Like I said, I know it's full of derp, yet I can't help but love this chonky boi.
@@SacredCowShipyards A ship the size of a house with the turning radius of a super tanker with that wonky rotating hub famous for breaking I'll take a Y wing with no shields. Yes it had incredible shields & armor but such long recharge time on the shields in game it wasn't worth putting power to the shields. It drained so much power from the engines decreasing speed & maneuverability to a crawl. Like I said above in my post if it's a straight in & out bomb run after your a-wings & X-wings clear the area of enemy ships & strip turbo lasers off the hull of an ISD ya its great but still fill out that will and organ donor card.
@@stevebotham2018 man, it's actually not much bigger, than F-22 or randomly selected member of Flanker family (Su-27 and its many derivatives), or F-111, MiG-25/31... F-14 is more than half size of Airbus A-319... Size of B-wing is actually just about optical illusion, if compared to earth jet fighters.
@@depressedTrent still handles like a fully loaded super tanker playthe game.xwing expansion pack bwing or the games xwing vs tie or xwing alliance you'll see why I make the assessment
So the B-wing was supposed to be a modernized heavy fighter/bomber to replace the ancient Y-wing. I can' remember where I read it, but I remember reading somewhere that it wasn't successful in the long run for a lot of the reasons you mentioned here, with rebel mechanics hating it due to the overly complicated nature of the ship, and as well as a chronic shortage of pilots due to the difficulty of training someone to manage to fly what is, as you said, the inside of a washing machine. Frankly, if they just had made the lore so that the ship was horizontal for landing and vertical for combat, and the cockpit only adjusted between those 2 modes, not changing on a dime for reasons, it would have made a lot more sense. Still overly complicated and with issues, but you would have at least been able to see the reasoning behind the madness
The old EU described B-Wings as notorious hangar queens, because they were stupidly big and complicated. And IIRC they were the first of the four Rebel starfighters shown in the OT to be completely taken out of service, with even the humble Y-Wing (which the B-Wing was supposed to replace) holding on in reserve units for years or decades after the last B-Wing had gone to the scrappers.
It's actually the inverse on service career, the Y-Wing was yeeted from regular service ASAP as soon as the Thrawn Crisis ended while the B-Wing was upgraded to the E2 model and saw a rather humble, albeit long, career as a fast strike bomber. That and in legends they were developed by a hive-minded insectoid species named the Verpine via the Slayn and Corpil company (also the makers of the V-19 Torrent Fighter used by the Republic) under Ackbar's direction, and in Star Wars such species are well renowned for making complex designs as an almost trademark of their biology. (The Vulture Droid, B1 Battle Droid, and a few other similarly complicated designs come from such species)
@@hyperiongm330 In active duty squadrons, sure. But I'm pretty sure there are references to Y-Wings still in service in planetary militias and reserve squadrons at the time of the Vong invasion, long after _all_ of the B-Wings had been scrapped and replaced by K-Wings.
@@Philistine47 You're still wrong though, B-Wings continued to be used as late as the 2nd GCW, they never scrapped them until some time after that. Y-Wings got shunted into the militia and reserve service.
@@barrybend7189 >Misreading my point Both are largely hive-minded insectoid species like the Verpine, if you took 'VERPINES MADE THESE' away from what I wrote, it's not my fault you lack critical thinking.
I love your videos. Lots of fun! For reference, there is a really good reason for wings/"s-foils" on a ship. Heat dissipation in space is really hard. The s-foils are radiators. The fighter generates way more heat when you start firing weapons. That's why these wings open for combat - exposing the most radiators to dissipate more heat when the ship is generating the most of it. Yes, moving wings are a little silly, but they do have some useful purpose.
Sure... if they were a few dozen times larger. Then again, most of the writers and FX designers for SciFi movies and series don't seem to even realise this is a concern at all, never mind how big of a limitation heat would really be. Even relatively hard SciFi gets it wrong, so expecting a soft SciFantasy franchise like Star Wars to have anything sensible is rather out there.
One interesting thing to note about the B-Wing (and I should clarify that I’m only taking this from some UA-cam video, I’m not sure if this is fully canon) is that the ship rotating around the cockpit was a method to confuse the targeting system onboard enemy Ties, with the moving body of the ship throwing off the target lock while not having to perform wild dog fighter manoeuvres that the B-Wing simply wouldn’t be able to do.
Ah, the B-wing... The answer to the question, "What happens when common sense engineering is sacrificed for a design aesthetic." Flying wings are cool, but not when they lack symmetry and functionality.
I think the blasters sitting on the wingtips is considered a good thing in Star Wars, for whatever reason. It has something to do with some of the same reasons WWII fighters often had wing-mounted guns, despite the technology for guns directly behind the propeller (and centerlined for the pilot) being surprisingly reliable even in WWI. It allows for easier bullet spread so you don't have to be as dead-on to hit something. I also consistently hear that they're on limited gimbals too, so they can easily adjust their parallax to any desired range.
Personally, the name B-Wing makes more sense than the names of other Rebel-era fighters. Its short for Blade Wing. For one, the galaxy is using the aurebesh alphabet, not the Roman alphabet. So it doesn't make sense for the X-wing to be called an X-wing because their alphabet's 'X' looks nothing like the real world's 'X'. Still, love the video. One of my favorites is hearing you rant about the abomination that was the Resistance bomber. I love listening to you rant in general.
But when the movies first came out, the galaxy used the roman alphabet. It is only relevant because of the Death Star tractor beam power panel(which was edited from roman to aurebesh with the Special Edition). Well, that and fighter names.
The A-wing is my personal favourite Star Wars fighter. It reminds me somewhat of a cross between a Spitfire and an F-15, and seems like it could actually be somewhat plausible as an actual design. And they're f***ing fast and maneuverable. Hell yeah!
The B-wing is what you get when you try to create a platform that proforms multiple functions at the same time, on take your kids to work day. The designer gave it more ordinance then their heavy bomber, more firepower then their heavy fighter, then when they were designing the cockpit their sprog said, "let's try spinning, that's a neat trick" and the text to speech they were using caught it while they were trying to keep thir kid from falling off the computer chair they were spinning around on at high speeds.
Well in-universe it’s actually called the “B-wing” because it resembles a knife, and the “B” is short for blade. The ship’s full name is the Blade wing.
@@SacredCowShipyards I thought so to, but not sure anymore. The closest in layout is the Y-wing, dual guns in the nose/under cockpit with two honkin' powerful engines out back. I seem to remember an X-wing precursor though, maybe a T-75 Headhunter variant, that had a medium turbo laser in the nose and powerful sub-light engines. Been so long ago that I saw it that it may have been a fan-made design...🤔
Thanks for reminding me at the end that I'm not the only one who loves the Y-Wing, while making me sad that most people don't realize how wonderful it is...
The original design was for it to be more like a mini Death Star main gun. There was only one but it had a composite beam weapon that used all of the wings. They ditched that weapon since it could not support a hyperdrive with it onboard.
Had some thoughts redesigning what it's for while keeping the shape. My idea is basically a captial-nuker. Carries a big payload on the far wing because you want that going off far from you. Mount it so that the launching actually pushes the fighter back a little and have the cockpit flip rotate so you can spin the engine around and backpedal fast without subjecting the pilot to the same G-forces. The mid intersection pulls double duty as a guard against the accident (assuming it doesn't go off as full blast until armed), and as a sensor array for finding soft points to hit. Secondary torpedoes could be mounted closer to the main body to go for secondary targets or in case of primary system failure. Add a secondary firing ball embedded in it with defensive top and bottom lasers that can rotate to provide covering fire for more spinny bits.
No one not from the home planet knows this but the hull design for this is almost a perfectly recreated upscale of a popular pepper mill for the mon-calamari
There's actually a shot load of lore and explanations to nearly everything in the star wars universe, and I think I saw a video a while ago that addressed the whole issue of "ships don't need wings, or to turn, or to constantly have the engines burning, in space" and one of the hypothesis or potential explanations is that in the star wars universe, space isn't a total vacuum, and there's a sort of ether. It's not quite like an atmosphere, but it's enough to add drag, and the need to have wings (but not to have airfoils) in space.
Wings in Star Wars: Watsonian explanation: Heat radiators from somewhere in the EU Doyalist explanation: WW2 airplane aesthetics go wiz wiz and pew pew.
Gets even weirder when in the legends continuity the B-wing was designed by a joint Mon Cal and Verpine team (Verpine are Insectoid species that live in asteroids). So it was originally supposed to be high technology from a fish and bug point of view.
wings in star wars have 2 possible purposes depenindg on the vehicle and source material.. 1) heat dissipation (a serious concern for a space ship that doesn't want to cook it's components / pilot 2) non thruster based sub light engines / manuvering (think star wars floating cars engines but BIGGER)
@@dwightgrant6360 Yeah. With no atmosphere, heat dissipation for space craft is a real headaque. The only way is via UV radiation, which is achieved by sticking radiators on the outside of your craft. They tend to be heavy and inneficient. (but the only option that works)
To be fair i wish they would have stuck to the version in which its a bomber that basically uses the composit beam tech from LAAT/death star on starfighter level. IT would be passable with that design and actually pretty cool if we ever saw them cutting star destroyers in gun runs.
Practical is not a word I associate with Lucas. As a kid seeing those ships on the big screen was cool and awesome. It got me to go out and buy some of them as model kits and get as presents. Mission accomplished by george. Watching all the trilogies as an adult, I see the flaws. That opening in TLJ was laughable. Those bombers were a joke. Have you ever thought of reviewing the Space Battleship Yamato?
The parallax aiming problem is not really an issue given how much computing power Star Wars has access to. It'd be pretty trivial for them to have the gun sight automatically compensate for parallax.
Somebody may have already covered this but here goes. In Rebels, it was retconed explained where the B-wing came from. The prototype was called the Blade Wing which does make sense and then just shortened to B-wing.
If you watched Star Wars Rebels, you would know that the B-Wing was made originally equipped with a GIANT FUCKING LASER that could blow up light cruisers in a single shot. The concept is the same as the death star, where at the tip of each wing a laser would originate and pinpoint into one spot, upon which it would send a beam of death towards its intended target. However, it used the hyperdrive as its power source, so when fired, the ship was a sitting duck in terms of escape, and as such, needed another ship to latch onto so it could leave. As we only really see them flying solo, they aren't exactly equipped to use this piece of weaponry. Nice idea, was used once in a beautiful fashion to make a giant explosion and was never mentioned again. One thing going for it even without the doom ray is that this thing was ridiculously heavily armed. The death ray just makes the job faster. The job gets done regardless, making this vehicle viable in my eyes. Hell, the cockpit even has its own engine block separate from the rest of the ship so that it can eject or pilot itself when the rest of the ship gets blown apart, saving a pilot.
So, explanations for the B-Wing (based on in universe explanations). The B-Wing is not a fighter, as you have stated, but is a bomber of sorts. It was designed as a heavy attack craft with an Ion cannon at the end of the “stalk”. In the SW universe, ion cannons are used to disable electronic devices (watch the Ion Cannon firing scene in ESB - the ion blast was used to disable a Star Destroyer so the rebels could evacuate the planet). Ion cannons are generally large and available only on Capital Ships. The B Wing was the first small assault craft armed with an ion cannon. Because of some “in world physics and mechanics”, the cannon had to be located some distance away from the pilot for safety reasons - hence the reason for it being at the “tip of the knife blade”. The B-Wings in the ROTJ battle scene were not attacked Imperial fighter craft, they were tasked with attacking Star Destroyers directly. Their mission was to get through the fighter screens and disable the SD’s electronics, bringing down shields and point defense systems, basically “defanging” the Imperial capital ships. The shape of the B Wing when the wings were extended make the craft look like a knife “blade”, the “blade” is where the B comes from. The reason for the wings, called “S Foils” which stands for “Strike”, is to spread out the pattern of laser fire, giving the craft a larger area to saturate with laser bolts.
Trying to think of an analog to current fighters is hard. Maybe the closet would be an EW/ECM/ELINT plane like a Wild Weasel…. An A6 Prowler or F111 Raven?
At least in the old X-Wing games the Y-Wing had two ion cannon from the gun above the cockpit so the B-Wing wasn't doing anything new, it just had more guns and better shields so was an upgrade over the Y-Wing.
One of the things in the X-Wing v. Tie Fighter games was the ability to change weapons convergence distances. Yes, the B-wing was terrible at not being a hanger queen.
I always imagine the Rebels du jour rejecting highly effective starfighter designs because they aren't shaped like letters. Maybe that's why they destroyed the Star Crusher.
Without going to far into it, they actually made a carveout/retcon for that. You have basic which uses arubesh (sp) but also uses english letters for iirc "high galactic" used places like alderran.
I can only assume the b-wing got its name from the fact that the cockpit and top and bottom wings make a rough b, if you draw one mentally from bottom wing, to intake, to top wing (when it’s horizontal)
B stands for Blade Wing, because it has such a blade like profile from the side. My favorite version is the Deathraven, which is a custom version that joins two of these at the cockpit/neck area. and it doesn't rotate and is symmetrical. So it's basically a fixed version
This guy points out everything wrong with star wars and every single little logical disconnect (that witty mon calamari bit - who the h*** let a swimmer and general of an aquatic world be an admiral of a ship?) I love it!
The B-wing was design around composite laser, and that explain some problems, like those small folding wings, but it dosen't explain many others problems, that you mentioned.
I still love the F 14. In concept it worked. Sweep the wings back for speed and storage. Strait out for lift and linger time. Still looks cool as hell. The B wing always seemed lame to me.
A lot of the issues you talked about, outside of the moving parts bit, is that the b-wing is not a fighter but a dedicated bomber. Unlike the Y-wing you’re not supposed to dog fight in a b-wing, but can defend yourself if forced to.
Never mind that the B wing has a big problem. The pilot? They’re out there. Open. No armor, no shielding, no hull around them. Just. There. As mech warriors say: kill the meat, spare the metal.
Yeah, apparently, according to the books, the ship DID rotate around the cockpit. Hard sucker to actually HIT, until you figure out to just shoot the cockpit.
I've always hated the B-Wing. The concept actually comes from German asymmetric aircraft designs from WW2. They were mostly medium bombers and at least their wings were required for lift.
To be fair, maintenance issues aside (which were noted many, many times in legends), the B-wing was absolutely a superior vessel to the Y -wing - tougher shields, markedly faster (almost as fast as an X-wing if memory serves), and carried a positively unholy amount of firepower (some sources I've seen have stated up 18 proton torpedoes, others have said 8 heavy proton torpedoes coming out of either 2 or 4 launchers) - and as such it filled a very badly needed role in the alliance - a heavy bomber that was fast enough and tough enough to get in, punch out a capital ship and then run away without getting shot down, something that the clone wars-era Y-wing was becoming increasingly unable to do as more TIE interceptors joined the empire's fleets. Yeah, the design is kinda mad and over complicated, but it was the best thing they had by a large margin until the K-wing eventually wandered in.
I'm not sure if any one has said it yet. But the reason it's called the B-wing is because it's short for Blade-wing, due to the blade shape of the wings when they're closed. But yeah. While the ship does kinda look cool. It's a functional nightmare. Way to many moving parts, and a lack of symmetry.
One thing about many smaller ships, they are designed to take the pilot with them... so they don't die slowly in space since recovery during combat is not likely a thing. You never see rescue ships trying to save pilots or crews. Even capital ships are often lacking in escape pods for the crew/passengers (The Fifth Element was the first and only time I have seen a "starship" with escape pods for the entire ship and that was the luxury cruiser.. not a military ship, and those pods looked more like death traps than real escape pods). And it's not just in Star Wars but many settings. It's a harsh reality of space flight. With the vastness of space, the lethal nature of space, etc.. Rescue is often not something to expect especially in a combat environment (especially as there is no protection for medical ships, or any non-combat vessels. Even the Star Wars medical frigate was just a Nebulon-B with the hanger space removed for the medical facilities, while retaining it's standard weapons load out.)
Agreed the B-wing is freaking stupid. The Rebels would have been better off sticking with Y-wings and A-wings (perhaps redesign the laser cannon position) that are at least more mechanically simple and still effective for shipboard operations.
The B Wing had heavier cannons than the Y if I remember correctly. That was its stchick. Makes me think that a Y wing variant that skips the bomb carrying/launching apparatus and just mounts a massive "Space-Gau-8" Rotary Heavy Blaster, and turned the Y-Wing into a Space-A10, would have been such a better and more awesome solution.
Really all of its stupid if you think anything approximating a dogfight in space would allow for anything mechanically simple. It really comes down to mission success. The tech can be as complex and difficult to maintain as long as the supply line stays open and the design does its job. Look at the systems on an f-22 or f-35.
as far as the name for the B-Wing, the original prototype was called the Blade Wing, and i can only guess that the manufacturer decided to shorten it to B-Wing, as well as to fit the naming convention of the Alliance fighter craft
The B wing is designed to engage large ships. Other than the insanity of the design, it works when used properly. I am a huge fan of the F-302 from Stargate.
I'm not sure if you've seen the scene, but the B-wing "wings" are there to make if fire some kind of death-starry beam weapon. ua-cam.com/video/sA3o_UpFn7E/v-deo.html Also I'm not sure what does your shipyard do with borg cubes parked for more than 24 hours (which was probably asked on multiple occasions).
The “B” is for Blade.. its a blade wing. Think of a sword, the cockpit is the pommel, the long body is the blade the sub wings are the guards. If I was a B Wing pilot I would fly with the cockpit on the bottom, so when I look up I would see the whole ship. With everything in sight and nothing below my ass to worry about it would be quite intuitive to guide the ship around the battle.
At least us humans would never replace an extremely effective CAS fighter with an over engineered and super expensive general aircraft that can do nothing well.
Look at a B-wing sideways with the S-foils open or closed, the main drive section is the bottom of the lower case b, and the wing is the stick, and since the B-wing can orient its body in any direction, having the cockpit on the bottom allows this sort of similarity because it has no "up" or "down" relative to the body, only relative to the cockpit. Additionally the B is often interpreted to being short for Blade, giving it the name of Blade-Wing instead. Wings on SW ships are more often than not radiator surfaces, they are not meant to be nor are used as lifting surfaces. They also serve as means to keep dangerous component away from the pilot or to spread out the sensor coverage of the craft. Additionally the B-wing has one of the more narrow profiles out there as well, not a "billboard" as you describe it, unless you're shooting at it from the top/bottom/sides (depending on the body's orientation) which would almost never happen considering how space combat in SW works. The B-wing was a direct improvement over the Y-wing. Yes they do require more maintenance and pilot training likely takes more time, but by the same logic jet engines are much more maintenance intensive than turboprops yet they are still a vast improvement in performance over said alternative. If the B-wing offers sufficient improvements over the Y-wing, then any other issue will be overlooked _because_ the pros far outweight the cons.
I figure the "B" in B-wing is more based on how the puny little Strike Foils sweep into their attack position. But that's really the only time this thing resembles a B, when the foils are in motion...but then every time we've seen the foils open up, it's been flying in a vertical orientation so the angle is wrong even for that to look like a B unless you turn your head awkwardly. Also, I was surprised you didn't mention how the letter nomenclature is busted anyway since it's clearly based on the English alphabet but the alphabet in Star Wars is this totally different, sharp angled script called Arrabesh.
I recall old EU sources claiming the "wings" had a function as heat sinks for the weapon systems. Hence each blaster cannon being mounted to each of the X Wings S Foils. Does that make sense? Not sure, I'm not an Aerospace engineer.
I suppose it makes some sense, as due to the vacuum of space there isn’t an easy way to get rid of heat (look at the ISS’s radiators, they have to be huge to get rid of excess heat from the station)
What does the Kana character for the letter “a” resemble. I tried googling it and couldn’t get a definitive answer…just long exposes on the various Japanese alphabets and a diagram of the consonants and the relationship with combinations of the vowels…but nothing to indicate which squiggly line character is the letter “a”.
The B-wing's name origin is kinda interesting actually. They originally didnt name the B-wing or the A-wing during production, and simply referred to then as "fighter a" and "fighter b". While they were in production, Bill George, one of the prop makers, spent so much time working on it's design that they named it the "bill-wing", and the name kinda stuck.
In universe, it's full nickname is the "blade-wing", due to it's narrow profile.
Neat
So.
Huh... that got me thinking, since *Blade-Wing* makes so much more sense as a nickname for the fighter if the same could be applied to the A and X-Wings. Perhaps Arrow-Wing for the A-Wing (due to resembling an Arrow Head) and Cross-Wing for the X-Wing? Not sure what to do for the Y and U-Wings though...
@@caelumis3630 the X-wing and Y‐wing are both pretty clearly shaped like the relevant letter.
@@caelumis3630x wing might be a variant of executioner (imperial design) and since a good chunk of the galaxy would be illiterate in galactic common it become “xicutioner” and eventually shorted to just x-wing.
In the old Expanded Universe now called Legends they rotation system around the cockpit was actually notorious for failing at extremely awkward positions...
Its funny I think in legends its also derived from a Verpine design that was bigger and had two cockpits.
@@redenginner They eventually made a two seater version that had the Star Wars version of a WSO sitting in back.
The entire B-wing was notorious for being a nightmare to fly. Powerful in the hands of an experienced b-wing pilot (yes, a pilot experienced in flying specifically b-wings) but more than useless to anyone else.
@@BobMcBobJr Just like the A-Wings!! XD
@@CHRF-55457 The A-Wing's deal was that it too much ship for most pilots and ended up over-steering into things. It did not fold itself like an origami swan while in flight.
Still more effective and useable than the bombers from the Disney monstrosity.
So true there, at least B-Wings can do their job and survive.
@Bob Builder The Expanse actually did have a flying brick. They modified cargo containers into breaching pods.
K-WING😎
@Bob Builder Those would make sense if used in proper way. Problem is they are not.
@@IronWarhorsesFun Their only practical use is bombing undefended civilian areas.
It is even a noted flaw in universe that the B wing has major maintenance problems. Also, the Mon Kalamari who designed it was a noted oddball by even Mon Kala standards. Calling it mass produced is a stretch. They couldn't afford to build or maintain very many of these, so they didn't.
I mean he's on a nearly desert planet anyway that has no com in or out
I know the B-Wing makes less than no sense. I still love it. It’s like they tried to design the worst possible fighter and still ended up with something cool. I would never want to fly or fight in one. Nevertheless, it’s my absolute favorite starfighter.
The Rule of Cool supersedes all.
Star Wars Rebels showed that the reason for the wings is that it has one of those converging laser cannons like a scaled down Death Star. Emitters on the wing tips.
Still a stupid design though.
@@nobodyimportant2470 unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that particular armament was only on the prototype.
@@torinnbalasar6774 Pretty sure you are right as I don't recall seeing the mini-deathstar laser ever being hsed outside that origin episode in Rebels. Had that weapon/feature remained with the B-wing, it would have made this ship worth all the hassle.
Note: This design was done right, or at least much better, in the opening scenes of the Lost in Space movie reboot that came out some years ago. The pilot of the Jupiter 2 (Joey from Friends fame) flew one before he rec'd the promotion to trained monkey.
@@earlware4322 I haven't seen the more recent reboot series yet to know if it's portrayed there, but the 1998 movie has them in the opening scene. I'll have to go digging through my VHS tapes to find it again, it's been a while since I've seen it.
Still going through your library of content, something I'm coming to realise; your voice is stunningly good, definitely a fangirl, my cube is staying as a cube, so I've invested in a new Venetor instead, and its parked nowhere near this shipyard. :)
It's said I sound like a combination of Vir Cotto and the proper Grand Nagus and Weyloon, so... I guess you're right.
@@SacredCowShipyards You had to mention that you sound like the Grand Nagus. Now I'll never unhear it xD And I'm thinking Weyloon was meant to be Weyoun, which means you're a DS9 fan, and I appreciate that very much.
@@SacredCowShipyards now that you mention it, i can completely see how you sound like Vir and the Nagus at times
@@SacredCowShipyards WHen espesscially angry yyou sound like a slightly pitched up JK Simmons.
FYI in legends, the Bwing was designed by Admiral Ackbar with the help of a Verpine. So if it helps in understanding the Bwing Just remember that it came from the mind of a squid and a bug.
The quarren is the squid species though...
@@robertharris6092 A fish named after a Squid based food, and a bug that lives in an asteroid field.
To me the most ridiculous part of the design is that the pilot isn't in the center of mass... you know, the point that objects like rotating around.
Imagine it, you are in the middle of a spinning maneuver when the inertial dampers glitch for a second, for an X-wing pilot you might get lightheaded for a second since he's pretty much in the center of mass/rotation, for the B-wing pilot he's thrown in the opposite direction of the airfoil, leading to injuries or loss of consciousness.
Depending on how the rotation works during flight, the craft could maneuver around the pod, such that the pilot is always inside of any bank, reducing the amount of G-fource they would receive if the were at the center of mass and thrust
@@ezramiller8936 which is not just yet another engineering nightmare, it's also completely unnecessary and could easily fixed by just adjusting the location of the cockpit.
For the wings, or S-foils, which seem to carry the term 'strike' in some circles, making them 'Strike Foils', seem to get half treated as opening up as radiator panels for the vehicle using them so that the weapons can be cooled. And to a certain extent, that makes some sense. If you work with the assumption that starfighter cannons are overpowered for the platform and under-cooled, you can make the argument that S-foils were a design feature to increase rate of fire by improving weapon cooling.
The non-S-foil-equipped fighters, Y-wing/A-Wing, and so on, either have under-powered weapons (A-wing), or low rate of fire (Y-wing). Fighters like the ARC-170 have S-foils, and a really LARGE pair of main cannons, as well as a tail gunner. The X-wing has a moderately good rate of fire, and some pretty LARGE Tam & BaK laser cannons on it that allow it to punch pretty hard. Meanwhile, a TIE fighter has no S-foils, but an absolutely HUGE fixed radiator array. (I refuse to call those things 'solar panels'.) TIE laser cannons are both pretty powerful for their size, and have a vicious burst of rapid fire. Other TIE models like the TIE-Interceptor, TIE-Advanced, TIE-Defender, and so on, have even more weapons and more aggressive panel coverage.
If we look at a typical B-wing, it has a pretty heavy armament of three laser cannons, and three ion cannons, while having superior speed to a Y-wing. I can easily believe that the designer went with the opening flying T design as his particular answer to weapon heat dissipation. The rotating cockpit I just consider to be like how X-Wing Collectors CD-Rom showed it. Unfolding from a compact flight deck config, to combat mode. And I would sooner vomit up my own blood than entertain the idea that the B-wing is some kind of nightmare to fly because of the disorienting 'fighter rotates around the cockpit' lore nonsense that's being pushed.
This is what happens. The design is created, and then the WHY of the design is created and the universe warped to justify the design.
Radiating heat is a major problem in ALL spacecraft design in the modern day. That's why (relatively) modern spacecraft, like the Apollo CSM/LM, space shuttle, and the ISS are painted white, have deployable radiators, and/or are covered in mylar to reflect or radiate away as much heat as they can. Why? Without an atmosphere, there's nothing to attenuate the energy received from the sun. The Apollo CSM solved the problem by turning rotisserie style on it's axis. The shuttle had radiators in it's cargo-bay doors, and the ISS has giant radiator panels.
@@BlackEpyon but this was not foremost in the mind of Lucas in the mid 1970’s when he wrote a fighter that flew in space as if there was an atmosphere.
Incidentally, the early technical manuals hand-waved the maneuverability by saying the S foils created a field that let them act upon the ether to maneuver.
@@edwardsummey8843 yeah, it really makes more sense if you stop thinking about it.
@@BlackEpyon time to just enjoy the space wizards with magic swords fighting the ancient evil?
The B-Wing was supposed to be a more modern, more durable, and more heavily armed attack craft than the Y-Wing.
Well, in reality it actually achieved al least two of these things: It was more modern and more heavily armed. At the same time being slower and a lot more sluggish, while also being a nightmare to maintain doe to all the ridiculous moving parts. So technically it was a success?
And while it achieved two of those things, practically speaking it failed miserably
@@h2835 to be fair, that is quite realistic to modern jet designs. F-35 comes to mind
@@h2835 Well some sources say it's slower (RPGs) and some say it was faster (LucasArts X-Wing games)
It also looks a BIT like a lower-case, but not upper-case, b.
You can easily see why the Y wing needed replaced, it was a rapidly obsolescent platform decades out of production with replacement parts difficult and expensive to manufacture and spaceframes well over their useful service lifespans. Unfortunately, they replaced one hangar queen with another.
technically the lasers meant for starfighter to starfighter combat were located just below the cockpit, the ones mounted on the wings were ion cannons and heavy blasters meant for attacking capital ships. The wings are apparently for heat distribution purposes, though the UA-camr EckhartsLadder made a good argument that space in Star Wars isn't actually a vacuum but rather an etherium filled with some kind of substance that is the cause of the strange physics we see from ships (flying, rather then floating).
The B-wing was designed to fill a role similar to something like the Hs 129 or the A-10 Warthog, with a big fuckoff gun to blow up hard targets and a fuckton of bombs, torpedoes, and missiles to blow up even harder targets. The idea was to replace the then 25-year old Y-wing torpedo bomber with something both more capable and more generalized. However, as you said, the problem is that the big fuckoff gun is half a mile from the cockpit and thus impossible to aim properly. Also, I'd call the secondary torpedo tube blowing the cockpit clean off if struck a feature, not a bug. You're gonna lose the fighter either way if the magazine is struck, but at least the pilot will survive, and B-wing cockpits were later designed to be able to fly independent of the fighter, probably to aid in survival when this happens.
"Big f***off gun"
I'm totally gonna steal that.
Let's be honest, when was aiming a thing in star wars? It was "spray and pray" since first movie and they all need that weird targeting computer, that takes half of eternity to lock on something, to actually hit something - and even that has limited capability, since they needed "space magician farm boy" to hit that exhaust port on first death star, cheesing it with force. So I wouldn't really see that issue with aiming as anything significant, within lore...
I'd say it's closer to the B-25 (especially given that it's target is ships)
@@themanformerlyknownascomme777 Well, the US Marine Corps also strapped a big fuckoff gun to the B-25. Some versions in Marine service were equipped with a 75mm cannon from a Sherman.
I would consider putting those big fuck-off guns that can threaten a capital ship as far away as possible from the pilot a safety feature too.
Those will create excessive heat and will go out in a spectacular fashion if malfunctioning
The B-wing was primarily designed as a blockade buster and also to replace the aging Y-wing fleets in the heavy assault role against large capital ships, as it had the advantage of more weaponry and stronger shields. Also the size of this assault starfighter is down to the fact that the vast majority of it's weaponry and systems were usually reserved for much larger patrol ships and corvettes, Whilst the Prototype B6 version did have a composite beam laser weapon that could inflict heavy damage upon cruiser class targets. it was very power hungry and would lead to other system failures i.e the hyperdrive when used, So Really the later production models were far worse than the original prototype
It is ridiculous, overly complex, and unreliable but it has A E S T H E T I C
It does look like a long tail lower case b when the wings are closed & the cockpit is in the down configuration but it is also supposed to look like a dagger with the cockpit as the pommel which is why it's also sometimes called a Blade Wing.
Star Wars fighters are what happens when ships are designed by writers.
And designed to mimic ww2 style combat
Not many UA-cam videos make me laugh out loud, but this did. "Cockpit popping off " had me in stitches 🤣
The rebellion had A Lot of fighter designs. This allowed them to sell more "toy" and "model" star fighters to raise funds to design even more star-fighters for the Rebellion.
As someone who has been doing star wars flight-sims since the 1990's i can tell you that the B-Wing is the best anti-capital-ship fighter/bomber in the rebellion fleet.
While the gyroscopic cockpit is a bit of a gimmick, the separation of the weapons systems does not lessen the ship"s effectiveness as the onboard computer can keep the guns zeroed on a single reticle. It's faster, better shielded, has triple the combined firepower firepower of a Y-wing., and a massive magazine of torpedoes.
While the X-wing remains my first choice for combined speed and firepower, if I had to bring down the hammer with a fighter, there is nothing better than the B-Wing.
But is that thanks to the design of it or despite the design?
I played those old Sims too. The b-wing certainly had the firepower to lay the hurt on large slow moving capital ships, but it was pretty helpless in dogfight. Getting those spread out canons to stay locked onto anything with speed and maneuverability was near impossible.
The y-wing might have been slower but I'd still prefer flying it any day of the week because at least if I got forced into a dog fight I knew I'd actually be able to fight back.
@@EmeralBookwise well, b-wing wasn't really intended for dogfights, but as analog for torpedo bombers or ground attack aircrafts like A-10 or Su-25 - none of these were/are suitable for air to air combat against fighters, just to screw over big/static/heavily armored targets. Speed and excessive maneuvers aren't required from this type of plane, just firepower and combat survivability, and they are typically not sent before gaining air superiority or without fighter escort. SW just for some reason calls things "fighter" even when they are clearly not.
probably more accurate comparison would be to ww2 twin engines (mostly, but single engines existed too) designed to fight bombers - they had heavy armament and armor and really sucked against escort fighters, but regular fighter didn't had enough of firepower to shoot down heavy bombers effectively. That's also reason, why Americans typically used just fiftycals on fighters, while Germans was increasing amount of canons and their caliber - first one was fighting just intercepting fighters while latter ones had priority on taking down bombers (since escort fighters didn't poses a threat to factories or military bases, so they could happily leave those alone).
@@depressedTrent: you're not wrong, and I'm not entirely criticizing the b-wing from an in universe tactical function. More so I'm saying that it wasn't all that much fun to fly in a GAME that was mostly sold on the premise of exciting starfighter combat.
Missions where I played as the fighter escort protecting b-wings tended to be more fun than missions were I was actually expected to fly a b-wing myself. I just couldn't reliably expect an AI escort to actually keep enemy fighters off my tail, assuming I was even provided any escort at all.
@@EmeralBookwise well, than probably avoid Wing commander 1, because you would end up doing escorts with worst garbage available, that turns way more slower, than attacking enemy fighters and probably even than those escorted cargo ships... :D like, not all the fighters are bad, you even start with the more agile ones, but fleet doesn't really waste those on escort missions, so you have to pilot most outdated and outperformed thing in hangar... :D but they were good challenge, forcing you to go more tactical (and hoping for blessing from gaming gods) and showing some serious skills rather than simply "I'm hunter they're prey, let's play a little with them" (not that it's making me like those stupid escort missions... 😅)
I read that the B-wing is called that because the ship design team for ROTJ made new Starfighter A and Starfighter B. Instead of creating a fitting letter-wing name for the B-wing, they just went with it. It has been retroactively made the Blade-wing by Star Wars Rebels, so I guess it is supposed to represent a sword.
If memory serves, the original 'b-wing' had a death-star-style-multi-to-one-laser weapon. At that's why all the points are all spread out. When it was mass produced, such a large weapon would -break the plot- be unsupportable in such large numbers. So they were re-built with normal weapons.
How would it break the plot?
If it works for the LAAT, it would have worked for the B-wing (admittedly worse but still, not 'plot breaking')
The B-Wing is derpy and yet I can't help but love it. Of course, I ignore the whole "rotating cockpit" thing...
I seem to recall that the purpose of the B-Wing was to be an anti-ship fighter in the same way that the A-10 is anti-tank, and that the weapons pod at the end of the wing was for anti-ship guns. Add to that the knowledge that in pre-production it was supposed to be a two-man ship, and I can sorta see it: the pilot steers the ship and perhaps uses the anti-starfighter weapons in the nose and on on the short wings, and the gunner/RIO fires the missiles & torpedoes and runs the anti-ship pod from a weapons camera (thus eliminating parallax).
Like I said, I know it's full of derp, yet I can't help but love this chonky boi.
Just from its stats and loadout, it's a beast of a ship. They just took all that raw, on-paper awesomeness and bolted it onto a flying target.
@@SacredCowShipyards A ship the size of a house with the turning radius of a super tanker with that wonky rotating hub famous for breaking I'll take a Y wing with no shields. Yes it had incredible shields & armor but such long recharge time on the shields in game it wasn't worth putting power to the shields. It drained so much power from the engines decreasing speed & maneuverability to a crawl. Like I said above in my post if it's a straight in & out bomb run after your a-wings & X-wings clear the area of enemy ships & strip turbo lasers off the hull of an ISD ya its great but still fill out that will and organ donor card.
@@stevebotham2018 man, it's actually not much bigger, than F-22 or randomly selected member of Flanker family (Su-27 and its many derivatives), or F-111, MiG-25/31... F-14 is more than half size of Airbus A-319... Size of B-wing is actually just about optical illusion, if compared to earth jet fighters.
@@depressedTrent still handles like a fully loaded super tanker playthe game.xwing expansion pack bwing or the games xwing vs tie or xwing alliance you'll see why I make the assessment
So the B-wing was supposed to be a modernized heavy fighter/bomber to replace the ancient Y-wing. I can' remember where I read it, but I remember reading somewhere that it wasn't successful in the long run for a lot of the reasons you mentioned here, with rebel mechanics hating it due to the overly complicated nature of the ship, and as well as a chronic shortage of pilots due to the difficulty of training someone to manage to fly what is, as you said, the inside of a washing machine.
Frankly, if they just had made the lore so that the ship was horizontal for landing and vertical for combat, and the cockpit only adjusted between those 2 modes, not changing on a dime for reasons, it would have made a lot more sense. Still overly complicated and with issues, but you would have at least been able to see the reasoning behind the madness
The old EU described B-Wings as notorious hangar queens, because they were stupidly big and complicated. And IIRC they were the first of the four Rebel starfighters shown in the OT to be completely taken out of service, with even the humble Y-Wing (which the B-Wing was supposed to replace) holding on in reserve units for years or decades after the last B-Wing had gone to the scrappers.
It's actually the inverse on service career, the Y-Wing was yeeted from regular service ASAP as soon as the Thrawn Crisis ended while the B-Wing was upgraded to the E2 model and saw a rather humble, albeit long, career as a fast strike bomber.
That and in legends they were developed by a hive-minded insectoid species named the Verpine via the Slayn and Corpil company (also the makers of the V-19 Torrent Fighter used by the Republic) under Ackbar's direction, and in Star Wars such species are well renowned for making complex designs as an almost trademark of their biology. (The Vulture Droid, B1 Battle Droid, and a few other similarly complicated designs come from such species)
@@hyperiongm330 In active duty squadrons, sure. But I'm pretty sure there are references to Y-Wings still in service in planetary militias and reserve squadrons at the time of the Vong invasion, long after _all_ of the B-Wings had been scrapped and replaced by K-Wings.
@@Philistine47 You're still wrong though, B-Wings continued to be used as late as the 2nd GCW, they never scrapped them until some time after that. Y-Wings got shunted into the militia and reserve service.
@@hyperiongm330 the Vulture droids were designed by the Xi Char not verpine, the B1 battle droids are designed by Geonosians.
@@barrybend7189 >Misreading my point
Both are largely hive-minded insectoid species like the Verpine, if you took 'VERPINES MADE THESE' away from what I wrote, it's not my fault you lack critical thinking.
I love your videos. Lots of fun!
For reference, there is a really good reason for wings/"s-foils" on a ship. Heat dissipation in space is really hard. The s-foils are radiators. The fighter generates way more heat when you start firing weapons. That's why these wings open for combat - exposing the most radiators to dissipate more heat when the ship is generating the most of it. Yes, moving wings are a little silly, but they do have some useful purpose.
Sure... if they were a few dozen times larger. Then again, most of the writers and FX designers for SciFi movies and series don't seem to even realise this is a concern at all, never mind how big of a limitation heat would really be. Even relatively hard SciFi gets it wrong, so expecting a soft SciFantasy franchise like Star Wars to have anything sensible is rather out there.
@@Llortnerof Very true indeed.
One interesting thing to note about the B-Wing (and I should clarify that I’m only taking this from some UA-cam video, I’m not sure if this is fully canon) is that the ship rotating around the cockpit was a method to confuse the targeting system onboard enemy Ties, with the moving body of the ship throwing off the target lock while not having to perform wild dog fighter manoeuvres that the B-Wing simply wouldn’t be able to do.
Ah, the B-wing... The answer to the question, "What happens when common sense engineering is sacrificed for a design aesthetic."
Flying wings are cool, but not when they lack symmetry and functionality.
there is a functionality for folding wings though
They are symmetrical in attack position, and not every good aerodynamic design is symmetrical.
I think the blasters sitting on the wingtips is considered a good thing in Star Wars, for whatever reason. It has something to do with some of the same reasons WWII fighters often had wing-mounted guns, despite the technology for guns directly behind the propeller (and centerlined for the pilot) being surprisingly reliable even in WWI. It allows for easier bullet spread so you don't have to be as dead-on to hit something.
I also consistently hear that they're on limited gimbals too, so they can easily adjust their parallax to any desired range.
Personally, the name B-Wing makes more sense than the names of other Rebel-era fighters. Its short for Blade Wing.
For one, the galaxy is using the aurebesh alphabet, not the Roman alphabet. So it doesn't make sense for the X-wing to be called an X-wing because their alphabet's 'X' looks nothing like the real world's 'X'.
Still, love the video. One of my favorites is hearing you rant about the abomination that was the Resistance bomber. I love listening to you rant in general.
But when the movies first came out, the galaxy used the roman alphabet.
It is only relevant because of the Death Star tractor beam power panel(which was edited from roman to aurebesh with the Special Edition). Well, that and fighter names.
The A-wing is my personal favourite Star Wars fighter. It reminds me somewhat of a cross between a Spitfire and an F-15, and seems like it could actually be somewhat plausible as an actual design.
And they're f***ing fast and maneuverable. Hell yeah!
The B-wing is what you get when you try to create a platform that proforms multiple functions at the same time, on take your kids to work day. The designer gave it more ordinance then their heavy bomber, more firepower then their heavy fighter, then when they were designing the cockpit their sprog said, "let's try spinning, that's a neat trick" and the text to speech they were using caught it while they were trying to keep thir kid from falling off the computer chair they were spinning around on at high speeds.
So when will you cover the various TIE fighters?
Well in-universe it’s actually called the “B-wing” because it resembles a knife, and the “B” is short for blade. The ship’s full name is the Blade wing.
"now that we're building outside of liquid hate, let's try this 'moving parts' thing I've heard so much about"
They needed a ship that was built around a single heavy repeating turbo laser along its center mass. A10 style.
I swear there's one like this, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.
@@SacredCowShipyards There is a TIE variant like that, single panel with a ball cockpit one side and a turbo laser the other.
@@Tuberuser187 That could be the one I'm thinking of.
@@SacredCowShipyards I thought so to, but not sure anymore. The closest in layout is the Y-wing, dual guns in the nose/under cockpit with two honkin' powerful engines out back.
I seem to remember an X-wing precursor though, maybe a T-75 Headhunter variant, that had a medium turbo laser in the nose and powerful sub-light engines. Been so long ago that I saw it that it may have been a fan-made design...🤔
Thanks for reminding me at the end that I'm not the only one who loves the Y-Wing, while making me sad that most people don't realize how wonderful it is...
I find the B-Wing makes a lot more sense if you think of it less like a bomber and more like a torpedo boat.
The original design was for it to be more like a mini Death Star main gun. There was only one but it had a composite beam weapon that used all of the wings. They ditched that weapon since it could not support a hyperdrive with it onboard.
Had some thoughts redesigning what it's for while keeping the shape.
My idea is basically a captial-nuker. Carries a big payload on the far wing because you want that going off far from you. Mount it so that the launching actually pushes the fighter back a little and have the cockpit flip rotate so you can spin the engine around and backpedal fast without subjecting the pilot to the same G-forces.
The mid intersection pulls double duty as a guard against the accident (assuming it doesn't go off as full blast until armed), and as a sensor array for finding soft points to hit.
Secondary torpedoes could be mounted closer to the main body to go for secondary targets or in case of primary system failure.
Add a secondary firing ball embedded in it with defensive top and bottom lasers that can rotate to provide covering fire for more spinny bits.
No one not from the home planet knows this but the hull design for this is almost a perfectly recreated upscale of a popular pepper mill for the mon-calamari
There's actually a shot load of lore and explanations to nearly everything in the star wars universe, and I think I saw a video a while ago that addressed the whole issue of "ships don't need wings, or to turn, or to constantly have the engines burning, in space" and one of the hypothesis or potential explanations is that in the star wars universe, space isn't a total vacuum, and there's a sort of ether. It's not quite like an atmosphere, but it's enough to add drag, and the need to have wings (but not to have airfoils) in space.
Wings in Star Wars:
Watsonian explanation: Heat radiators from somewhere in the EU
Doyalist explanation: WW2 airplane aesthetics go wiz wiz and pew pew.
Gets even weirder when in the legends continuity the B-wing was designed by a joint Mon Cal and Verpine team (Verpine are Insectoid species that live in asteroids). So it was originally supposed to be high technology from a fish and bug point of view.
So it was designed by a fish and an insect (like) species...is it any wonder then the dang thing looks like a fishing lure??
The only advantage i could see getting from so many spiny bits is maybe corkscrewing like a bayblade makes hitting subsystems all the harder?
I heard spinning is a neat trick.
Bill George had so much input into the starship's development, that his colleagues nicknamed it the "Bill-Wing Fighter." - wookiepedia
The G-forces on that ship by being on the tip of a rotating pole basically would be insane.
wings in star wars have 2 possible purposes depenindg on the vehicle and source material..
1) heat dissipation (a serious concern for a space ship that doesn't want to cook it's components / pilot
2) non thruster based sub light engines / manuvering (think star wars floating cars engines but BIGGER)
The first one is a scary way to die. Cooked by your own craft.
@@dwightgrant6360 Yeah. With no atmosphere, heat dissipation for space craft is a real headaque. The only way is via UV radiation, which is achieved by sticking radiators on the outside of your craft. They tend to be heavy and inneficient. (but the only option that works)
To be fair i wish they would have stuck to the version in which its a bomber that basically uses the composit beam tech from LAAT/death star on starfighter level. IT would be passable with that design and actually pretty cool if we ever saw them cutting star destroyers in gun runs.
Totally organic interaction with content creator.
Practical is not a word I associate with Lucas. As a kid seeing those ships on the big screen was cool and awesome. It got me to go out and buy some of them as model kits and get as presents. Mission accomplished by george. Watching all the trilogies as an adult, I see the flaws. That opening in TLJ was laughable. Those bombers were a joke. Have you ever thought of reviewing the Space Battleship Yamato?
True that. That bomber has to be the worst design thing ever. Not sure how disney approval of that.
The parallax aiming problem is not really an issue given how much computing power Star Wars has access to. It'd be pretty trivial for them to have the gun sight automatically compensate for parallax.
5:27 Which is why gun convergence is a think, sometimes it actually is even easier to hit when you have several guns at different convergences.
Somebody may have already covered this but here goes. In Rebels, it was retconed explained where the B-wing came from. The prototype was called the Blade Wing which does make sense and then just shortened to B-wing.
"salt water is liquid hate" cracked me up.
4:40 I think the winglets are for stability while the mellenium falcon is like one big wing
This is my favorite ship, and flying it on SW: Squadrons was the most satisfactory thing I ever did
I always though the B in B-Wing stood for "Bonkers" as in you'd have to be Bonkers to fly the damn thing.
"Death-trap Doohickey" is an accurate description, only to be outdone by the SF-17 which Disney designed, that was truly a flying "Target of Death".
If you watched Star Wars Rebels, you would know that the B-Wing was made originally equipped with a GIANT FUCKING LASER that could blow up light cruisers in a single shot. The concept is the same as the death star, where at the tip of each wing a laser would originate and pinpoint into one spot, upon which it would send a beam of death towards its intended target. However, it used the hyperdrive as its power source, so when fired, the ship was a sitting duck in terms of escape, and as such, needed another ship to latch onto so it could leave. As we only really see them flying solo, they aren't exactly equipped to use this piece of weaponry. Nice idea, was used once in a beautiful fashion to make a giant explosion and was never mentioned again. One thing going for it even without the doom ray is that this thing was ridiculously heavily armed. The death ray just makes the job faster. The job gets done regardless, making this vehicle viable in my eyes. Hell, the cockpit even has its own engine block separate from the rest of the ship so that it can eject or pilot itself when the rest of the ship gets blown apart, saving a pilot.
So, explanations for the B-Wing (based on in universe explanations). The B-Wing is not a fighter, as you have stated, but is a bomber of sorts. It was designed as a heavy attack craft with an Ion cannon at the end of the “stalk”. In the SW universe, ion cannons are used to disable electronic devices (watch the Ion Cannon firing scene in ESB - the ion blast was used to disable a Star Destroyer so the rebels could evacuate the planet). Ion cannons are generally large and available only on Capital Ships. The B Wing was the first small assault craft armed with an ion cannon. Because of some “in world physics and mechanics”, the cannon had to be located some distance away from the pilot for safety reasons - hence the reason for it being at the “tip of the knife blade”. The B-Wings in the ROTJ battle scene were not attacked Imperial fighter craft, they were tasked with attacking Star Destroyers directly. Their mission was to get through the fighter screens and disable the SD’s electronics, bringing down shields and point defense systems, basically “defanging” the Imperial capital ships.
The shape of the B Wing when the wings were extended make the craft look like a knife “blade”, the “blade” is where the B comes from.
The reason for the wings, called “S Foils” which stands for “Strike”, is to spread out the pattern of laser fire, giving the craft a larger area to saturate with laser bolts.
Trying to think of an analog to current fighters is hard. Maybe the closet would be an EW/ECM/ELINT plane like a Wild Weasel…. An A6 Prowler or F111 Raven?
At least in the old X-Wing games the Y-Wing had two ion cannon from the gun above the cockpit so the B-Wing wasn't doing anything new, it just had more guns and better shields so was an upgrade over the Y-Wing.
The cockpit on the b-wing rotates because Mattel wanted cool moving Parts on the toy that very few people bought.
One of the things in the X-Wing v. Tie Fighter games was the ability to change weapons convergence distances. Yes, the B-wing was terrible at not being a hanger queen.
I always imagine the Rebels du jour rejecting highly effective starfighter designs because they aren't shaped like letters.
Maybe that's why they destroyed the Star Crusher.
Even funnier is the fact that no one in the star wars universe uses our alphabet and would ever have seen a letter B
Without going to far into it, they actually made a carveout/retcon for that. You have basic which uses arubesh (sp) but also uses english letters for iirc "high galactic" used places like alderran.
this one may cause a war of grudges
that said it looks more like a P wig side on, B wing is upside-down and side-on.
Well, that's why the shipyard has the name it does :).
It has one redeeming feature.
It is not the MG100
(/serious_nod)
I can only assume the b-wing got its name from the fact that the cockpit and top and bottom wings make a rough b, if you draw one mentally from bottom wing, to intake, to top wing (when it’s horizontal)
B-Wing is the MBT-70 of Star Wars fighters :)
What you mean it became the M-1 a1 Abrams main battle tank?
B stands for Blade Wing, because it has such a blade like profile from the side.
My favorite version is the Deathraven, which is a custom version that joins two of these at the cockpit/neck area. and it doesn't rotate and is symmetrical. So it's basically a fixed version
This guy points out everything wrong with star wars and every single little logical disconnect (that witty mon calamari bit - who the h*** let a swimmer and general of an aquatic world be an admiral of a ship?)
I love it!
So basically the A wing is best wing.
Meh. They're better, but not the best.
You know once you do enough of these you can do a comparison video.
The B-wing was design around composite laser, and that explain some problems, like those small folding wings, but it dosen't explain many others problems, that you mentioned.
When you talk about the B-wing I'm reminded of the F-14 which is retired.
I still love the F 14. In concept it worked. Sweep the wings back for speed and storage. Strait out for lift and linger time. Still looks cool as hell. The B wing always seemed lame to me.
@@dwightgrant6360 yea but it was hard to maintain and too complicated.
A lot of the issues you talked about, outside of the moving parts bit, is that the b-wing is not a fighter but a dedicated bomber. Unlike the Y-wing you’re not supposed to dog fight in a b-wing, but can defend yourself if forced to.
Fish people wanted a starfighter that looked like a... Seahorse. Cursed the galaxy with it.
Are the seas on Mon Calimar salty?
Never mind that the B wing has a big problem.
The pilot? They’re out there. Open. No armor, no shielding, no hull around them. Just. There.
As mech warriors say: kill the meat, spare the metal.
on the shielding... i shall stop u right there mate, they have shielding
Yeah, apparently, according to the books, the ship DID rotate around the cockpit. Hard sucker to actually HIT, until you figure out to just shoot the cockpit.
b-Wing short for Bladewing, it was covered in rebels when the Ghost crew secured the prototype from its creator, a Mon Cala Engineer.
I've always hated the B-Wing. The concept actually comes from German asymmetric aircraft designs from WW2. They were mostly medium bombers and at least their wings were required for lift.
kinda resembles the BV-141, perhaps that's where the "B" comes from lol
@@tarnetskygge Yeah, remove the fuselage and tail, swap the prop for a magic space-engine and - B-Wing!
To be fair, maintenance issues aside (which were noted many, many times in legends), the B-wing was absolutely a superior vessel to the Y -wing - tougher shields, markedly faster (almost as fast as an X-wing if memory serves), and carried a positively unholy amount of firepower (some sources I've seen have stated up 18 proton torpedoes, others have said 8 heavy proton torpedoes coming out of either 2 or 4 launchers) - and as such it filled a very badly needed role in the alliance - a heavy bomber that was fast enough and tough enough to get in, punch out a capital ship and then run away without getting shot down, something that the clone wars-era Y-wing was becoming increasingly unable to do as more TIE interceptors joined the empire's fleets.
Yeah, the design is kinda mad and over complicated, but it was the best thing they had by a large margin until the K-wing eventually wandered in.
I'm not sure if any one has said it yet. But the reason it's called the B-wing is because it's short for Blade-wing, due to the blade shape of the wings when they're closed.
But yeah. While the ship does kinda look cool. It's a functional nightmare. Way to many moving parts, and a lack of symmetry.
One thing about many smaller ships, they are designed to take the pilot with them... so they don't die slowly in space since recovery during combat is not likely a thing. You never see rescue ships trying to save pilots or crews. Even capital ships are often lacking in escape pods for the crew/passengers (The Fifth Element was the first and only time I have seen a "starship" with escape pods for the entire ship and that was the luxury cruiser.. not a military ship, and those pods looked more like death traps than real escape pods). And it's not just in Star Wars but many settings. It's a harsh reality of space flight. With the vastness of space, the lethal nature of space, etc.. Rescue is often not something to expect especially in a combat environment (especially as there is no protection for medical ships, or any non-combat vessels. Even the Star Wars medical frigate was just a Nebulon-B with the hanger space removed for the medical facilities, while retaining it's standard weapons load out.)
Agreed the B-wing is freaking stupid. The Rebels would have been better off sticking with Y-wings and A-wings (perhaps redesign the laser cannon position) that are at least more mechanically simple and still effective for shipboard operations.
The B Wing had heavier cannons than the Y if I remember correctly. That was its stchick. Makes me think that a Y wing variant that skips the bomb carrying/launching apparatus and just mounts a massive "Space-Gau-8" Rotary Heavy Blaster, and turned the Y-Wing into a Space-A10, would have been such a better and more awesome solution.
Really all of its stupid if you think anything approximating a dogfight in space would allow for anything mechanically simple. It really comes down to mission success. The tech can be as complex and difficult to maintain as long as the supply line stays open and the design does its job. Look at the systems on an f-22 or f-35.
@@ezramiller8936 I think I am talking about space fiction, based on WWI WWII Dogfighting.
as far as the name for the B-Wing, the original prototype was called the Blade Wing, and i can only guess that the manufacturer decided to shorten it to B-Wing, as well as to fit the naming convention of the Alliance fighter craft
I think they should've made more of that one Junkship that was basically just two B-Wing's slapped together. That sounded badass.
That sounds like it would look like one of the old yagi antennas.
Just think of the B-wing as being an overly complicated A6 Intruder
The B wing is designed to engage large ships. Other than the insanity of the design, it works when used properly.
I am a huge fan of the F-302 from Stargate.
Love that design. For pure space use the Star Fury is a great design.
I'm not sure if you've seen the scene, but the B-wing "wings" are there to make if fire some kind of death-starry beam weapon.
ua-cam.com/video/sA3o_UpFn7E/v-deo.html
Also I'm not sure what does your shipyard do with borg cubes parked for more than 24 hours (which was probably asked on multiple occasions).
The composite beam was only on the prototype, and removed to improve reliability with the power drain causing issues with various other systems
@@NaenaeGaming But it was the original reason to have the S-foils configured like this.
The “B” is for Blade.. its a blade wing. Think of a sword, the cockpit is the pommel, the long body is the blade the sub wings are the guards.
If I was a B Wing pilot I would fly with the cockpit on the bottom, so when I look up I would see the whole ship. With everything in sight and nothing below my ass to worry about it would be quite intuitive to guide the ship around the battle.
...But you're in space. There IS no up or down. Whichever way you're flying, the ship has the same relative orientation.
At least us humans would never replace an extremely effective CAS fighter with an over engineered and super expensive general aircraft that can do nothing well.
Funny how Ep 9 had a revamped Y-Wing but not an updated B-Wing. Not that the Y-Wing didn't have issues, but at least it wasn't a B-Wing.
Look at a B-wing sideways with the S-foils open or closed, the main drive section is the bottom of the lower case b, and the wing is the stick, and since the B-wing can orient its body in any direction, having the cockpit on the bottom allows this sort of similarity because it has no "up" or "down" relative to the body, only relative to the cockpit. Additionally the B is often interpreted to being short for Blade, giving it the name of Blade-Wing instead.
Wings on SW ships are more often than not radiator surfaces, they are not meant to be nor are used as lifting surfaces. They also serve as means to keep dangerous component away from the pilot or to spread out the sensor coverage of the craft.
Additionally the B-wing has one of the more narrow profiles out there as well, not a "billboard" as you describe it, unless you're shooting at it from the top/bottom/sides (depending on the body's orientation) which would almost never happen considering how space combat in SW works.
The B-wing was a direct improvement over the Y-wing. Yes they do require more maintenance and pilot training likely takes more time, but by the same logic jet engines are much more maintenance intensive than turboprops yet they are still a vast improvement in performance over said alternative. If the B-wing offers sufficient improvements over the Y-wing, then any other issue will be overlooked _because_ the pros far outweight the cons.
Can you imagine the PMCS on a B-Wing? I can't imagine the maintenance hours per flight hour on one of those.
"All of them."
"Saltwater is liquid hate"...I'm gonna use hat one in my next discussion about tidal/wave power generators
I should post the expansion of that sentiment.
I figure the "B" in B-wing is more based on how the puny little Strike Foils sweep into their attack position. But that's really the only time this thing resembles a B, when the foils are in motion...but then every time we've seen the foils open up, it's been flying in a vertical orientation so the angle is wrong even for that to look like a B unless you turn your head awkwardly.
Also, I was surprised you didn't mention how the letter nomenclature is busted anyway since it's clearly based on the English alphabet but the alphabet in Star Wars is this totally different, sharp angled script called Arrabesh.
I recall old EU sources claiming the "wings" had a function as heat sinks for the weapon systems. Hence each blaster cannon being mounted to each of the X Wings S Foils.
Does that make sense? Not sure, I'm not an Aerospace engineer.
I suppose it makes some sense, as due to the vacuum of space there isn’t an easy way to get rid of heat (look at the ISS’s radiators, they have to be huge to get rid of excess heat from the station)
Just be glad George Lucas isn't Japanese; Google the Kana character for "a" and imagine that as a star fighter.
What does the Kana character for the letter “a” resemble. I tried googling it and couldn’t get a definitive answer…just long exposes on the various Japanese alphabets and a diagram of the consonants and the relationship with combinations of the vowels…but nothing to indicate which squiggly line character is the letter “a”.
@@kirkbolas4985 あ hiragana "a" ア katakana "a"
Why have wing? Simple. Wing make ship go wheeeeee!
Rule of Cool, baby. Rule of Cool.
@@SacredCowShipyards that’s how I like it. Otherwise it’s dull!
Well, it /is/ possible to be cool while still granting at least a passing nod to physics. See: BSG, B5, Expanse, etc.
Most of the wings are suppose to be space to mount heat radiators. Now that might be post rationalization to help explain the rule of cool.
If the cockpit was designed for full 360 degrees of movement, it would look more like a personal massager ,,,,with wings
The B-wing was a heavy armored anti capital ship fight its job was to punished ship like the ISDs