The Original Nex wrote:Luke used the Force.
You're saying Luke used the Force to make the torpedoes do a 90 degree turn down a shaft and detonate inside the thermal exhaust port, while he was struggling to get his lightsaber in TESB right in front of him?
They were fighting with the TIE squadron that was launched.
No, I'll cover that later.
Or Vader and his wingmen would have called for reinforcements,
It would have been too late for reinforcements. By the time they'd get there the DS would be gone.
or Vader would have sent his wingmen to fight the stray X-wing and stayed on course himself.
Just like he did with Wedge.
There was no time to waste.
That, I will give you.
One X-wing was seen destroyed by surface cannon fire. It's not a gurantee that guns can't track fighters, it's just more difficult.
No fighter was destroyed by anything else other than TIE Fighters or Vader's X-1. Here is a list of all the destroyed fighters seen:
1 X-Wing: Porkins was killed from an explosion from a deflection tower he and Biggs blasted.
1 X-Wing was killed by a TIE Fighter over the surface.
1 Y-Wing destroyed by Vader in the trench (Tiree).
1 Y-Wing destroyed by Vader in the trench (Hutch).
1 Y-Wing destroyed by Vader as it was coming out of the trench (Gold 5).
At this point, General Dodonna orders Red Leader to keep half his group out of range, which is Luke, Biggs, and Wedge. So
that's where they were; staying away from the other group when they could have been covering their asses. It was Dodonna's fault that the extra 3 X-Wings couldn't cover the other 3 in the trench. There's the answer I've been looking for.
1 X-Wing destroyed by Vader in trench.
1 X-Wing destroyed by Vader in trench.
1 X-Wing hit by Vader over surface, crashed into surface (Red Leader).
1 X-Wing destroyed by Vader in trench (Biggs).
Not a single one of them was destroyed by the surface or trench guns.
Mange the Swede wrote:Uh, Red Six (Porkins) was downed.
As stated before, he died as a result of getting caught in the explosion of the deflection tower. He never got hit by anything else. Here is the dialogue:
Porkins: I've got a problem here.
Biggs: Eject.
Porkins: I can hold it.
Biggs: Pull up!
Porkins: No, I'm all-AAAHHH!!!!!
Then his cockpit immediately explodes and it cuts to his fighter exploding. You never see anything hit him. He was damaged somehow from the explosion.
And, if the Rebels had left the trench, they could have come up in very close proximety or the right angle for the TL cannons.
Really? And yet Red Leader, Gold Leader, and Wedge were able to do so, and very slowly and gradually at that. The only reason why Red Leader and Gold Leader died was because they both got shot down by Vader when he pulled out of the trench, and then only because they were the only ones left in their groups of 3.
Isolder74 wrote:Meest wrote:The Death Star was about to blow up their base, dogfighting was the last thing they wanted to be doing. There were 30 fighters launched, not sure have many runs they tried offscreen, but weren't the majority of fighters running distraction/interference runs for the main wing?
Red leader's group was cutting across the axis to draw their(the turbolaser batteries) fire. so that answer to that is yes.
Ok, but that doesn't explain why the fighters we see in the trench do not pull up and dogfight when there are no other Rebel fighters in the area to cover them.
For the fighters weapons being slaved togather, the Gold group has one pilot saying, target locked getting a signal. Not conclusive but this implies that the weapons system on the fighters were programed to all fire their torpeedos togather
He says, "Computer locked, getting a signal." Shit, I think you're right.
That is probably the reason why they didn't pull out of the trench. But then why couldn't they go back in the trench when they were ready to fire?