CT Admiral Ozzel. Clumsy, stupid... but perhaps right?

I know when the Imperial fleet arrived in the Hoth system they were going to strike at the rebel base with an orbital bombardment. But since Ozzel came out of lightspeed too close to the system and alerted the rebels allowing them to raise their planetary shield, it resulted in a costly and time consuming ground battle. As a result, Ozzel ceased to be.

But would an orbital bombardment really have been a great plan? Vader's reason for tracking down the base, besides destroying their enemies, is to find Luke Skywalker. If the fleet bombarded the base, wouldn't the risk for killing Luke be much higher? Say if Ozzel had correctly gone about the way Vader intended and then Luke ended up dead. Ozzel may have saved Vader's son! Just a thought...

 

Never thought about it that way, but that's a good point.

 

Very interesting point. I guess Vader was being the foolish one here, not Ozzel. Imagine his rage if they had done what Vader planned and as they combed through the wreckage, they found Luke's charred body?

 

Interesting observation.

 

Vader is all about destiny. If Luke dies, then so be it, it was his destiny. Vader didn't stop him from jumping into doom either, in fact he manipulated the situation so that it was a choice between joining him and suicide.

 

Really? He didn't seem to be all that on board with destiny when he had visions of his wife dying.

 

Different time, different Vader. Vader endangers Luke's life all the times in Empire.

 

The logic of the problem doesn't work for me... The fleet arrives too close, says Vader, but if they advanced from further away then wouldn't the rebels actually have longer to react to their presence? Ozzel's tactic of surprise attack would give the rebels less time to evacuate or set activate their defences - maximising the chance of wiping them all out.

 

I had always figured that Vader's plan was to sneak in from behind without alerting the Rebels. Ozzel basically jumped in so quickly that the Rebels saw them.

 

The Rebels wouldn't have noticed them coming in, because they would have blended in with all the other space debris raining into the system from the asteroid belt. But since Ozzel popped in so close, the fleet stuck out like a sore thumb on the Rebels' sensors, since normal space debris doesn't suddenly blink into existence out of nowhere.

Presumably, Ozzel was operating along the same logic you outlined in your post, which was a mistake.

 

Okay but if a number of ISD sized asteroids started converging on the planet, you'd probably want to evacuate, or at least raise the shield, no?

 

If that's the case, then why wasn't it "So be it, it was our destiny to come out of lightspeed too close to the system"?

 

I don't know. I am not a religious person, Vader and the Jedi are.

 

Here is a link to a thread regarding Ozzel from earlier this year. I think it had a lot of good discussion on the tactical merits of Ozzel's deployment:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/question-was-ozzels-approach-at-hoth-wrong.50020511/

 

Sure, but by the time they got close enough to worry the Rebels, it would be too late. Besides, Star Destroyers probably have basic cloaking devices that give them smaller sensor signatures.

 

Because at the time he was Vader the commanding officer, not Vader the Sith Lord. Different situations call for different attitudes. He specifically instructed his men to sneak toward the Rebel Base without alerting them. Ozzel didn't do this, and Vader (who we all know has such firm command over his own temper) did not like this one bit.

 

But when Ozzel jumped the fleet close enough to worry the rebels, they immediately evacuated. Slowly moving your fleet towards them before revealing yourself would have the same effect - probably worse since the rebels would have so much longer to spot the advance. The logic doesn't hold up.

 

not if their target was the ion cannon and base generator. even with a direct hit from veers' at-at and the generator exploding, it did not outright destroy the base itself.

 

I've always felt that Vader's plan (or what he expected a competent Admiral to do) was to come out of hyperspace far enough away for the Rebels not to spot them, then land ground forces using ships that were small enough not to be as easily detected, or which could at least approach more stealthily, perhaps from the other side of the planet - while the fleet had time to surround the planet and ensure no one could escape.
An orbital bombardment could follow later - after Luke and anyone else of importance were in Vader's hands or accounted for.

Ozzel's approach was little more than a show of brute strength (FREEZE DIRTBAGS!!!), and didn't bother to take a planetary shield or a rapid evacuation plan into account. Completely underestimated the Rebels, and misunderstood the mission. Clumsy and stupid.

 

Yes, I'm assuming if they came in the way Vader wanted, they would have been able to get closer before the Rebels realized they were there. The movie shows the fleet approaching the planet, but I assume they came out of lightspeed further away and that's when the Rebels realized they were coming.

If not, then I'd just go with my theory about cloaking devices hiding the size and shape of their ships. Or what Darth_Nub said.

 

The logic of pretty much every battle in SW is lacking, I don't think it's worth trying to rationalise any of it IU as it's all so anachronistically stylised.

 

I've also thought that surely the Rebels would have had sentry stations throughout the Hoth system (orbiting the other planets) and ships on constant patrols throughout it. For the Rebels' most important base, it seems odd that it would even be possible to approach it undetected with an entire fleet of star destroyers.