CT The Rebel Fleet's Victory at Endor

What shifted the battle in the Alliance's favor?

At first, it seems their fleet is considerably outnumbered and outmatched by the Imperial Star Destroyers. Admiral Ackbar himself attested to this "At that close range, we won't last long against those Star Destroyers!"

Yet,the Rebels became able to drive the Imperial fleet to retreat. Even though many of the Rebel pilots are very skilled, it might not fully explain how such a dramatic turn of the tide happened.

The movie never explicitly says how the Rebel fleet started to win. Which brings me to this. In KOTOR, Bastilla's Battle Meditation ability can shift the tide of battle to any side.

What if when Luke decided to resist the dark side temptations of the Emperor, the Force had shifted to the Rebel's side to help them overcome the Imperial fleet?

What do you think?

 

funny, before you even brought up KotOR, I was going to say that I believe there's some EU where it states that Palpatine was using Battle Meditation during the battle

Of course, the destruction of the DSII and Palpatine's death would massively shift the battle in the Rebels' favour. The Empire had lost their best stardestroyer and their ultimate weapon - obvious demoralization. equal cause and opposite effect for the Rebels.

 

That EU source seems interesting!

As for your other statement though, ROTJ seems to imply that the battle had shifted before DSII was destroyed. The Rebels were managing to destroy some Star Destroyers before the Super Star Destroyer. After DSII blows up, we don't see any Imperial ships anywhere. It's certainly possible that the fleet retreated into hyperspace before/during the explosion, but it seems like the tide of the battle was shifted before the explosion.

 

Try to steer clear of EU elements in CT threads.

 

My apologies, I didn't know about that rule. Just checking, does this really count as such? Since the CT didn't give an explicit explanation for the space battle victory, it could leave room for speculation.

 

It's no biggie. If you have a look at the forum rules you'll see that discussion of EU elements is generally not encouraged here, as there are other places for that. However, the rules also explain that there's a degree of flexibility with this. In this case, the OP seems to raise the EU element as a main focus area for the discussion, hence my suggestion. Let's see the direction that it takes. Try to focus on what happens in the films themselves as much as possible.

 

The ROTJ novelization at least hints at it:

For the first time, the Death Star rocked. The collision with the exploding destroyer was only the beginning, leading to various systems breakdowns, which led to reactor meltdowns, which led to personnel panic, abandonment of posts, further malfunctions, and general chaos.
Smoke was everywhere, substantial rumblings came from all directions at once, people were running and shouting. Electrical fires, steam explosions, cabin depressurizations, disruption of chain-of-command. Added to this, the continued bombardments by Rebel Cruisers—smelling fear in the enemy—merely heightened the sense of hysteria that was already pervasive.
For the Emperor was dead. The central, powerful evil that had been the cohesive force to the Empire was gone; and when the dark side was this diffused, this nondirected - this was simply where it led.
Confusion.
Desperation.
Damp fear.

The EU went on to introduce the concept of "battle meditation" - and to continue the idea of the Force being used to enhance and improve the Imperial military machine, with The HTTE trilogy (1991-1993), and various other sources, though later, the person using it at Endor was made to be one of the Grand Admirals (Declann) rather than the Emperor himself.

 

the rebels knew when the death star started firing that they couldn't stay where they were. they moved as close to the empire's star destroyers as they could to discourage the death star from firing at them. the empire couldn't risk blasting their own ships so they stopped firing the ds laser. the alliance concentrated on the super star destroyer and brought it down into the death star severely damaging it.

 

The chain of command on the Imperial side was pretty vague but presumably the Emperor was in overall command (either by force communication or just good old fashioned giving orders verbally) and Vader second to him. Then when both die within minutes of each other the Imperials probably had to try and reorganise and work out exactly who was in charge, as I am guessing most of the high-rankers would have been on the Super Star Destroyer or the Death Star itself, both of which went boom. So there are a bunch of Captains all trying to work out who has seniority enough to take control and all the while the Rebels are pepped up and gunning for success and in the confusion the tide turns with the two most powerful Imperial craft taken out of the fight.

 

Perhaps the Rebels simply took the initiative, and out-fought the Imperials with superior aggression.

Piett was told they need only prevent the Rebels' escape. That's a very passive stance.

Lando decided to take the fight to the Imperial fleet and engage at point blank range. If they caught the Imperials by surprise with such a bold maneuver, it's possible they did major damage before the Imperials could respond.

 

I always assumed that a lot of the Star Destroyers went with the Death Star when it exploded. Last we see of the Imperial fleet, it's engaging the Rebel fleet above the station. Admiral Ackbar orders the Rebel fleet to move away from the Death Star at the last second, but the Imperial fleet was probably still in position right above the station when it exploded, so most of the Star Destroyers were destroyed in the explosion.

 

Do you really want to disobey your Emperor's orders?

The Empire outnumbers the Rebel alliance on somehting between 2-1 or 3-1 advantage (if you stop the movie and count the star destroyers on screen vs the rebel capital ships) and were ordered just ot surround the rebel fleet with numbers alone, hence sending out every TIE fighter possible to engage the fleet. The strategy was sound, if you believe the fact that the rebels would stay in one spot and want to be picked off

But you are right, its obvious that the Empire did not learn too much about Rebel aggression in space, considering what happened at Yavin.

 

I don't think it was as much a case of turning the tide as it was surviving long enough for Han to get the shield down. Once Lando gets the read that the shield is down, they immediately abandon their assault on the Imperial fleet and attack the Death Star.

 

It all starts going well for them when Luke defeats Vader and stands up to the Emperor. The balance has shifted to the light.

The Rebels had nothing to lose. They brought the fight into close quarters and took the Death Star out of the equation. The Rebel fighters were superior to the Imperial ones and the pilots really believed in the cause. Its like forcing an enemy to fight with his back to the sea. No surrender, no retreat.

“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” Sun Tzu

 

well said OP!

Nothing wrong with knowing more about star wars lore than what is inside of the films!

As much as I like ROTJ and the space battle especially, the tide turn is a major plot hole. The imperial fleet giving up for no reason.

 

I generally accept the ROTJ novel's take, but I think it's a more ephemeral thing than the EU's idea of battle meditation. I don't think the Emperor or anyone else was exerting conscious control over the battle. Still, the Emperor's death resulted in a massive shift in the Force as it went back into balance. There's the old phrase "May the Force be with you" ... the Imperial fleet found out what it's like when the Force is suddenly and catastrophically NOT with you.

 

"Move the fleet away from the Death Star"

the Imperials must not have , plus i'd assume they didn't know the reactor had been hit like the alliance did.

see i just solved it for everyone that thought the Imperials would go on fighting for 30 years. Nope, Death Star explostion wiped out the whole fleet.

 

Even if all of the Star Destroyers at Endor were wiped out (they weren't), there were still only ~30 of them there. That's just a small fraction of the entire Imperial fleet.

 

I don't buy it. The Star Destroyers were tactically superior and they outnumbered the Rebels greatly. Assuming the nature of the Empire, they would have hired the most loyal captains. At least some of them should go on a mad quest to avenge the Emperor and blow up some rebels.

 

Why are taking credit for my post?

 

It also seems that in the Empire (by the time of ROTJ) promotions are or at least can be as much due to who you know as what you know, Piett was described as promoted way above his actual ability thanks to having connections for example. So the actually competent leaders are rarer than we'd think, whereas the Rebels have far less resources so as a rule they make damn sure anyone who gets command is not going to eff it up. That said though, Ackbar never really shows any tactical brilliance in the films themselves and it was Lando who came up with the 'close in and use the Imps as shields' tactic vs the Death Star II.

 

The nature of the Empire is that the most power-hungry individuals are the ones who advance to the top. Those ambitious rulers were loyal to a point, but without an Emperor around to tell them what to do, many Star Destroyer captains said "**** it, I'm out. I'll go carve out my own mini-Empire instead."

 

Right - and the ones who do stay loyal have to fight off treacherous ex-colleagues at the same time as the Rebels. The ones deciding to GTFO will find themselves fighting the loyalists, and also each other as they won't want potential rivals later on. So Imperials end up blowing chunks out of each other (or the more cautious hold fire as they try to work out whose on which side, and which they want to be on) whilst the Rebels are basically just shooting everything Imperial as it really doesn't make any difference which faction they were, Imperials are Imperials and every ship they destroy/capture is one less to worry about later, whoever is captaining it right then.

The Imperial plan has basically gone FUBAR, the Rebels find themselves doing far better than they ever hoped.

 

"With the Imperial Fleet spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us......" said by Mon Mothma in the briefing