Hoth, snowspeeders and X-wings

[Darth Garden Gnome]

I know, but they would have bought themselves all the time it would take to land another strike force had they destroyed the first one. <snip>

It's not as if the Rebels could've wiped out the AT-ATs and then started fucking about all day until they were good and ready. Every second they wasted their position was becoming further compromised by the Imperial warships in orbit. It was critical they got out there fast before their ion cannon would be unable to stop all the Star Destroyers to make an escape route.

They knew about the walkers how far out? No one says you have to wait until they're on top of the base. Or that you bother to send out ground troops at all, seeing how they did absolutely nothing other than die and waste energy shooting.

They saw the walkers on the horizon. Chances are, if they used their torpedoes at that distance the Rebel soldiers would die. And the ground troops had to hold off attacks from Imperial snowtroopers; had there been no resistance the Imperials would've walked right in and captured the Rebel command staff.

[Stormbringer]

They knew about the walkers how far out? No one says you have to wait until they're on top of the base. Or that you bother to send out ground troops at all, seeing how they did absolutely nothing other than die and waste energy shooting.

You realize a few kilotons is going to have a fairly large blast radius right? They might well have dropped the AT-AT inside that safe range. And giving how Hoth base was handling the fighting they might even have brought the base down if they started popping of proton torpedos.

And as Mr Gnome point out, you need those ground troops there so you don't simply waltz soldiers into the base.

[Rogue 9]

Okay. I was under the impression that all those snowtroopers were in the AT-ATs in the first place, but whatever. Still, X-wing cannons are far more powerful than snowspeeder blasters. I daresay the armor's not too strong for that.

[Stormbringer]

Okay. I was under the impression that all those snowtroopers were in the AT-ATs in the first place, but whatever. Still, X-wing cannons are far more powerful than snowspeeder blasters. I daresay the armor's not too strong for that.

Yes, they were. But if the Rebels didn't have a ground troops all they would have had to do was drop the troops and march them over land, avoiding air cover. It's not like it's too tough to hide.

But that again brings up the problem that the X-wings probably weren't capable of extended operations on Hoth.

[Cal Wright]

They weren't willing to lose X-Wings but they were willing to lose their X-Wing pilots? That makes no sense.

You can train any poor sap to fly an X-Wing fighter. You can't train a repulsorlift craft to operate in the vacuum of space with no gravitational influence what so ever. Not to mention they would have needed the X-Wings to not only cover the transports, but to engage any space bourn threats as well.

[Cal Wright]

Additionally to that, is it possible that it takes more fuel to move through an atmosphere than through space?

Another good point. The fuel and propulsion needed to keep an X-Wing aloft has to be tremendous when compared to a smaller craft that uses technology which has been observed to work whether the machine is running or not. This was seen in ANH, ESB, RotJ and AotC. Possible TPM as well, though I can't think of anything in particular right now from there.

[Drooling Iguana]

Another good point. The fuel and propulsion needed to keep an X-Wing aloft has to be tremendous when compared to a smaller craft that uses technology which has been observed to work whether the machine is running or not. This was seen in ANH, ESB, RotJ and AotC. Possible TPM as well, though I can't think of anything in particular right now from there.

Well something kept those pods off the ground, despite the fact that the engines only provided thrust foreward.

[Cal Wright]

Another good point. The fuel and propulsion needed to keep an X-Wing aloft has to be tremendous when compared to a smaller craft that uses technology which has been observed to work whether the machine is running or not. This was seen in ANH, ESB, RotJ and AotC. Possible TPM as well, though I can't think of anything in particular right now from there.

Well something kept those pods off the ground, despite the fact that the engines only provided thrust foreward.

I'm talking about during BATTLE. Not just pointing the sky and punching it.

[Alyeska]

They weren't willing to lose X-Wings but they were willing to lose their X-Wing pilots? That makes no sense.

You can train any poor sap to fly an X-Wing fighter. You can't train a repulsorlift craft to operate in the vacuum of space with no gravitational influence what so ever. Not to mention they would have needed the X-Wings to not only cover the transports, but to engage any space bourn threats as well.

This still doesn't make sense. The Rebellion treated people more important then machines. That is why personel recovery was ALWAYS more important. Furthermore you claim the Rebellion was willing to sacrafice their crack pilots rather then standard X-Wings.

[Illuminatus Primus]

This still doesn't make sense. The Rebellion treated people more important then machines. That is why personel recovery was ALWAYS more important. Furthermore you claim the Rebellion was willing to sacrafice their crack pilots rather then standard X-Wings.

Why is this hard to believe? First of all, Blizzard Force AT-ATs may be much higher quality than monkey-model AT-ATs stationed by some warlord over five years after Endor. Secondly, if you want to delay and divert some armor you know you can't stop, do you take your expensive state-of-the-art space superiority fighters, and use them, or some specialized cold-environment speeders? The X-Wings may be somewhat more effective, but you're only trying to buy time. Either way you may love pilots. But can you afford to lose the fighter which can be packed in the place of speeders you probably won't take anyway and aren't as valuable for an advantage which is probably negligible?

[Comosicus]

I think that the main reason was fuel and resources. According to the Database on www.starwars.com (don't know exactly how it fits in the canon priority):

There is enough oxygen, fuel and power in an X-wing for a week of non-combat operations

They were preparing for a runaway with possible harassements from the imperials on the way. using the X-Wings for the battle or any other patrol would have had them unprepared for a possible long and dangerous journey.

Also it seems that the snowspeeders were upgraded with armor plates from Y-wings, making them tougher than a X-Wing.

If someone can help me with a comparation, there could be another reason for the use of snowspeeder. The official site states that the snowspeeder is extremly maneuverable, while the X-wing has the atmosferic behaviour of a T-16 Skyhooper. Which one has better maneuvrability?

Also the small number of X-wings fighters could have some importance ... you can not use a snowspeeder to fight TIE-s. Thus they didn't want to risk their spacefighters.

Another reason that pops in my head is that Alliance technicians had to modify the original airspeeders for use in the cold enviroment of Hoth . It could be possible that the same modifications made on an X-Wing could affect their effectiveness in spacefighting.

[Rogue 9]

T-16s are airspeeders by design, and are quite maneuverable. But I don't think the X-wing has the same handling characteristics in atmosphere. The similarity as I recall is that the controls are laid out the same way, not that they handled identically.

[Comosicus]

T-16s are airspeeders by design, and are quite maneuverable. But I don't think the X-wing has the same handling characteristics in atmosphere. The similarity as I recall is that the controls are laid out the same way, not that they handled identically.

From Official Databank:

In an atmosphere, the X-wing's Incom RDA repulsorlift drive adaptor provides an airspeed of 1,050 kilometers per hour. The fighter handles nearly identical to a T-16 skyhopper in an atmosphere. The New Republic-era fighter can attain speeds of at least 1,300 kilometers per hour

If maneuvrability was not hte issue, then I suppose there were some of the other reasons I pointed above: fuel, supllies, the need to save the fighters for later use (as the Rebels did a lot of hit-and-run attacks on Imperial targets) or the fact that the modifications made on the snowspeeders would have affected the fighter abilities.

[Crazedwraith]

T-16s are airspeeders by design, and are quite maneuverable. But I don't think the X-wing has the same handling characteristics in atmosphere. The similarity as I recall is that the controls are laid out the same way, not that they handled identically.

From Official Databank:

In an atmosphere, the X-wing's Incom RDA repulsorlift drive adaptor provides an airspeed of 1,050 kilometers per hour. The fighter handles nearly identical to a T-16 skyhopper in an atmosphere. The New Republic-era fighter can attain speeds of at least 1,300 kilometers per hour

If maneuvrability was not hte issue,.

Maneuvrabillity might have been the issue, the could be to fast and manuveurably and if they used x-wings it was quite likely that they're pilots were going to fly to high and duke right into the energy shields!

[Cal Wright]

They weren't willing to lose X-Wings but they were willing to lose their X-Wing pilots? That makes no sense.

You can train any poor sap to fly an X-Wing fighter. You can't train a repulsorlift craft to operate in the vacuum of space with no gravitational influence what so ever. Not to mention they would have needed the X-Wings to not only cover the transports, but to engage any space bourn threats as well.

This still doesn't make sense. The Rebellion treated people more important then machines. That is why personel recovery was ALWAYS more important. Furthermore you claim the Rebellion was willing to sacrafice their crack pilots rather then standard X-Wings.

I never said anything about NOT recovering them. Your just throwing out some wild tangents on that one. It's far easier to recruit people than it is to replace equipment. They were already fucked on Hoth. They didn't need to risk anything else. It's obvious they didn't encounter the Empire on ground based battles that often. They can just ditch the speeders and hop into thier X-Wings. Who cares if a snowspeeder is damaged, it's only good for ground based missions. The X-Wing is all around plus it's about to make the journey into the hostile frontiers of space with TIEs of all designs and the Imperial Death Squadron.

[Kerneth]

I'm going to disagree with the "it's easier to replace pilots than fighters" theory.

Training a real-life fighter pilot is expensive and time-consuming (approximately 14 months to train someone to fly a civilian jet liner, doubtless longer for a military fighter craft), and even after the training is over with, until a pilot has survived his first few combat missions he's still a rookie and is not going to be anywhere near as effective as a veteran pilot in the same vehicle. I find it unlikely that pilots in the Star Wars universe are different in this respect.

While the Rebel Alliance was, indeed, chronically short on war materiel--including starfighters--this only exacerbates the need for veteran pilots to fly what few fighters they could get their hands on. There's little point to putting a half-trained rookie pilot into the cockpit of a brand-new X-Wing if he's just going to get himself killed and the fighter destroyed on the first mission, necessitating the acquisition of another new fighter and the training of a new pilot. Conversely, a veteran starfighter pilot is much more likely to bring himself and his fighter back in as many pieces as they started.

Finally, and in some respects most importantly, a veteran fighter pilot is an asset beyond price, as was demonstrated in WWI by cycling pilots who made "Ace" back home to train new pilots, resulting in overall superior fighter pilots for the United States and Great Britain. Germany had a few individual fighter pilots who were superior, such as the infamous Red Baron, but as an average the American and British fighter corps were better trained and had higher survival rates.

While the Rebel Alliance has demonstrated its willingness to accept considerable losses among its fighter corps when necessary, such as against both of the Death Stars, it has also demonstrated a great deal of interest in keeping its pilots alive (and thus, contributing to the Rebellion) whenever possible.

[Cal Wright]

While it might not be that much easier to replace a fighter pilot, it's still not reason enough, (maybe even for the rebellion) to try and save pilots while the Empire is hammering away at your only hope for survival. The main point really on the X-Wing issue is why not the space superiority fighters. I think it would be a given (fuck stackpole. isaard's revenge was a piece of shit. you can't make a craft like that dance in the air. i dont care) that you were going to lose some craft. So, as usual, your sending soldiers off to thier death. So send them off in the snowspeeders. They seemed to be pretty damned effective anyways. Here are the main points and thier solutions

Hoth is invaded.
Imperial Task Force is in orbit and closing in.
Buy time for key resistance leaders to evacuate.
Hold back anything the space armada throws at you.

The solutions
Run like hell.
fire off ion canons
send fighters off to thwart the land invasion. slow them down as possible. there's no way in hell you can halt thier progress, even so, the Empire sends more. You can't hold out forever.
This requires a craft capable of space flight. T-47 or X-Wing. T-47 or X-Wing???

Therefore you send pilots out in the snowspeeders to hold off the onslaught coming right at you.

Crack pilots and Aces behind a flight stick might be valuable, but key resistance LEADERS are IRREPLACEABLE!

[Drooling Iguana]

I'm going to disagree with the "it's easier to replace pilots than fighters" theory.

Training a real-life fighter pilot is expensive and time-consuming (approximately 14 months to train someone to fly a civilian jet liner, doubtless longer for a military fighter craft), and even after the training is over with, until a pilot has survived his first few combat missions he's still a rookie and is not going to be anywhere near as effective as a veteran pilot in the same vehicle. I find it unlikely that pilots in the Star Wars universe are different in this respect.

Or they can just recruit some farmboy who's flight experience is limited to small atmospheric craft to fly in an incredibly important mission.

[neoolong]

At least it's better than letting a kid from some backwater planet who's flight experience is limited to glorified race cars steal one of your fighters to fly in an incredibly important mission.

[Chris OFarrell]

I had frigen wrote up a nice long post last night, then when I pressed post I got the 'The board is performing..' and lost it.

So I'll make it short.

1. We know X-Wings take a lot of fuel in an atmosphere, it realy eats into their tanks if you hang around and fight for even a short time. The X-Wing books and some of the other books are preaty clear on this.

2. Echo base was the Rebel HQ. Not a strike base. Fueling up all the fighters and transports at the same time quite probably drained their fuel supplies. No need to not use everything they had, they aint comming back after all.

3. The ships after launching proceaded directly to the deep space rendevous point. Which is probably quite a long trip.

4. X-Wings even only with lasers are quite enough to slag AT-AT's, as shown in 'Isards Revenge'.

Add these facts together and it shows that the Rebels simply didn't have the fuel to play with the walkers. Even if it only took five minuites to slag them all, its five minuites fuel they may realy need to reach their rally point in deep space. As such, the X-Wings were kept grounded during the battle, only launched when they were leaving. The Snowspeeders clearly were not expected to be THAT ineffective against walkers. Recall Lukes 'That armours too strong for blasters!' comment. Even so, they did have some tricks up their sleve, such as the tow cables, a technique that according to the rebel sourcebook Rogue Squadron had developed for just such a situation.

And also remember that the rebels couldn't hope to defeat the Imperials on the ground. Only delay them. The Snowspeeders were expected to do that job and for all intents and purposes, they did it.

[Connor MacLeod]

I noticed this topic up at TFN, and I believe my brain cells are now dead from looking at all the dumb posts, so, can anyone else juice up the answer why snowspeeders were used over X-wings?

Because the snowspeeders had just been worked on (remember, they were still working on adapting them when Han went out to look for Luke.) Given that they were in the middle of an evacuation, I doubt they had any time to prepare any other ships aside from those they were evacuating on.

[Connor MacLeod]

Its not like it would have taken that long. Five AT-ATs, five torpedoes, its over in 30 seconds.

That assumes they had torpedoes to begin with. According to the original ICS as well as other sources, the Rebels at Yavin had very limited torpedo stockpiles (Luke supposedly carried only a single pair.. though the novel indicates he maybe carried two pair) - warheads are costly, and given that the Empire was highly restrictive on military technology, acquiring more may be more difficult than one thinks.

[Cal Wright]

Not to single anyone out, but adaptation to the cold is not a reason. Han asked if they could take speeders, and was told mechanics were having trouble adapting THEM to the cold. However, X-Wings encounter far more severe conditions in space. Extreme heat on one side and extreme cold on the other. (Given if there's a primary close by.)

[Howedar]

The Rebels could well have assumed that their speeders would make short work of the AT-ATs, at which point they would evacuate. There's no reason to risk X-wings if speeders can do the job.

[Rogue 9]

The Rebels could well have assumed that their speeders would make short work of the AT-ATs, at which point they would evacuate. There's no reason to risk X-wings if speeders can do the job.

If they assumed that then someone in the command post was being retarded. Hoth was the first time that anyone had actually stood against AT-ATs, IIRC, because other, lesser resistance forces just died against them until they ran away, at which point they died from behind. Not a pleasant record.