StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Just a little mystery that popped into my head last night, apologies if it's already been done before.

Throughout the trilogies, we've seen three ships become disabled, and all three would appear to perform impressive dives.
The Invisible Hand gets it's starboard side shredded by a Venator at whatever closer than point-blank is, and proceeds to literally drop out of the sky like a stone, eventually hitting Coruscant
The Tyrant(?) gets pummelled by the Hoth Ion Cannon and proceeds to drift off downwards. I can't remember if the engines are on or not though.
Finally, the Executor, after appearing to take much less damage than the other two, impressively crash-dives over several hundred kilometers and somehow smashes into the Death Star.

So, I was wondering, is this just a weird coincidence? Is it a feature? Or are SW warships naturally hurled towards planets at stupid speeds by magic?
And, in that case, why didn't the Executor plummet towards the Endor moon?

Gravity. They appeared to be in relatively low orbit. The IH was orbiting Coruscant, the Tyrant was orbiting Hoth, and the Executor was within the DSII's gravity well.

I don't think that gravity alone would cause the IH to arrow vertically down an instant after it gets pummelled though.
Plus, the Executor was an awfully long way from the DS and, as it's plummeting, it's certainly not going in the right direction. The Death Star was infront of it last time we saw.

Gravity? No.

We know that the engines of the Executor misfired in ROTJ after temporarily losing bridge control, causing it to plummet into the surface of the Death Star.

The Invisible Hand as I recall, turned away from the Republic warships putting the smackdown on it, and lost control during this, hurtling towards the surface of Coruscant under the previous speed of their escape.

The Tyrant, again, having its circuits fried by the ion cannon blast, may have caused its engines to malfunction (like firing on just one side, causing the spinning dive).

Note that SW ships rarely actually bother to truly orbit; they rely on repulsorlifts, not on centripetal acceleration, to counteract gravitational attraction. Once the repulsorlifts are lost, they freefall.

That only applies at least partly to the Invisible Hand, though. I never for a moment imagined that either the Tyrant or the Executor were falling

was an awfully long way from the DS

Towards the end of the battle, the two fleets moved close to the DS II´s surface. You could see the curvature of it from the Executor´s bridge right before the A-Wing hit.

If it was simply gravity taking over, why would the Executor turn itself to plummet nose-first? There's no reason for it to point the "aerodynamic" end forward in space.

Grandmaster Jogurt wrote:If it was simply gravity taking over, why would the Executor turn itself to plummet nose-first? There's no reason for it to point the "aerodynamic" end forward in space.

Because it looked cool in the movie?

Executor, as previously mentioned, had suffered a catastrophic navigation system casualty. The question remains open as to whether it was due to a serious lack of design redundancy, or whether there was some other damage not visible on film.

Madurai wrote:Executor, as previously mentioned, had suffered a catastrophic navigation system casualty. The question remains open as to whether it was due to a serious lack of design redundancy, or whether there was some other damage not visible on film.

Not only was most of the bridge tower wrecked, but you could see flames shooting out of the back, near the engines.

IIRC the old EGVV said that the Executor was unable to pull out of its death dive because the secondary bridge could not take control in time. There IS redundancy, but it wasn't able to kick in in time.

It may also have been a reflex reaction. If you switch to the backup bridge without putting all the systems over, there might be risks of major FUBARs developing. And in a ship the size of the Executor, it would take a hell of a lot of firepower to destroy it. So while the functions are being switched to the backup bridge, the ship might automatically jack the engines up to full, while the gunners blasted at everything in sight.