The ship had no tactical function

I've been thinking this over for a while now, but still can't find any reason why the Rebellion would need the Rebel transports at the Battle of Endor. Seeing that the transport had little or no defensive weaponry, wouldn't it have been more of a liability than help in the battle? And why did the Rebels need a troop transport for a space battle anyway? ?

 

Some of the transports were modified to carry guns. Also, some others were filled with explosives and used to ram the Star Destroyers.

 

Blast... you beat me to it, Bib.

The Rebels needed all the firepower they could get... even the transports had to be used. It was pretty much do or die.

 

So they were a customised kamikaze job used at Endor then? Not only did they have guns fitted, but they were something they could use as a giant torpedo if the going got bad. Very plausible.

 

Why is it not plausible? They can hold a lot of explosives, and do a darn lot of damage.

 

They also could have ferried wounded to the medical frigate.

 

And promptly be blown to smithereens while docking with the ship with the wounded on it.

But seriously, I doubt that there would have been enough time for ships to offload wounded... they would just have to fight on.

 

Then why bring the medical frigate?

Why bring it in for the fighting if you're just going to waste resources defending it and it isn't performing it's function. To suggest they need every gun would be ture but it would be equivilent to briniging as pick up with a machine gun to a tank battle.

I'd also point out they dind't expect there to be an enemy fleet there so why would you bring in ships packed with explosives? Certainly nto to just ram into the death star, they already had a strategy in place to deal with that.

While filling those ships with explosives and sending them off to crash into enemy capital ships sounds like it would work, it can hardly be the reaosn they brought them.

 

As said above, the Rebels needed every bit of firepower they could get. They brought along the medical frigate because, IIRC, it was armed.

The Rebels couldn't have expected there to have been no fleet or incoming fleets. They weren't that stupid. But say they weren't expecting a fleet. Why bring all the capital ships?

 

When I said that the tactic was "very plausible" I meant it! But farraday does have a point. If the Rebels weren't expecting a trap, why turn the transports into possible kamikaze weapons?

 

Zethlin: Apologies. I misinterpreted you.

But refer to my above post. The Rebels can't be stupid enough to think that they can get into the Empire's brand-spaning new superweapon without some trouble - Why bring the fleet if you expect no trouble? Surely a few starfighters can nick in with no one much the wiser, or at least have an easier time than a fleet of 1 km+ capital ships.

 

Well ignoring the obvious reason that the model makers on ILM wanted to use the old models to save $$$ and create a larger fleet ensamble; Its not unreasonable to presume that all ships capable of firing a shot would be assembled.

Afterall, its the ENTIRE rebel fleet apparently.

 

Couldn't they?

Obviously they took their information the Death Star was not operational at face value, presuming their other information came from a similar or the same source why would they assume one might be wrong but not the other?

Furthermore, as a planned tactical move putting lightly armored freighters packed with explosives at the front lines is just begging to get them blown up, taking your own ships with them.

Again remember, the Rebels, even if there was any part of an enemy fleet there, didn't plan at closing to point blank range with it. I do not see how they'd be willing to pack ships with explosives on the offchance they closed to obscenely close ranges so that the flying bombs could be protected until they impacted their target.

I think it much more plausible that they brought the ships to steal from the Death Stars wreckage or caryr supplies or perform other operations neccesary to the planned attack and not as a defense against what their intelligence assured them wasn't going to happen.

 

The Rebels only said that the Death Star wasn't operational, they didn't say anything about it not being defended at all. After all, the Executor was handling security duties and it usually travels with a few SDs; even just that would've given the rebels a run for their money.

The transports might've also been for use against the Death Star, once the shield was down.

 

I like farraday's idea (and logic) in conjunction with the idea that they were armed with guns.
Don't quite buy the explosions idea. It's EU so I get to pick n choose anyway (can actually hear some people's heads explode from me saying that...)

 

I buy the explosives Idea. They come out of hyperspace and are engaged by a massive fleet, then when they have to close with the fleet the transport guys know they're screwed so they pack their ships with explosives(or arm the munitions they're carrying and crash headlong into ISDs.

Bailing out before hand is an iffy prospect. If you stay in the ship you're gonna die but what are your chances surviving in a warzone a few kilometers from a massive explosion?

And of course that problem becomes even worse when facing the Death Star, since the big ships were going to "create a perimiter" so how were they going to retrieve crews which had bailed out.

The use of transport ships as kamikazee's has all the aura about it of a last ditch desperation move, and it seems odd that Ackbar, who was amazed at the idea of closing to such a short range would come up with it.

 

So considering that farraday seems to be right on the button there, this brings us right back to my original question. Why bring troop carriers into a space attack on the Death Star?

 

They don't neccesarily have to be troop carriers, just transport ships.

They could be carrying munitions or medical equipment or be there to salvage the wreckage of the death star, even to help with the evacuation if the rebels were particularly stupid. They could carry EV'd pilots or fullfil a wide variety of functions.

The point is they didn't expect the death star to be operational so those ships could have hung back and been protected from any defense the DS did have until they were needed.

Or it could simply be they were bringing their entire fleet and had nothing to defend those ships back at Sulis.

 

Or maybe we could could just say ITS JUST A MOVIE.

 

If that's the case, then why have these forums, if not to talk about some of the plots and logic behind the films?

 

Y_wing: Zethlin has a very good point

 

Saying it's "just a movie" is equivalent to taking the easy way out. And who wants that? Pssh...

I like the idea that the transports were brought in as a last-ditch effort. Whether or not they knew there would be a huge fleet, they were sending everything they had because they knew this was do or die. Even freighters. I don't know about the komakazi theory, seems like a stretch, but I don't understand why That_Wascally_Droid called this discussion "EU". It's a possible explanation for something in the movie and doesn't get into anything remotely EU. Trying to get people mad?

I'm going to assume that the Rebellion leadership operates much like the real world, in which they would accept the information that the spies were gaining for them but not simply take it at face value. They were making some critical decisions at that point; they had to plan for possible contingencies. It seems pretty likely that there would be a large fleet protecting the Empire's grandest weapon (Han didn't seem shocked to see a SSD on patrol), so I'm sure they considered a giant fleet instead of assuming it would be left unguarded. Whether or not they considered the idea that the Death Star might already work is hard to tell, since Ackbar and Lando and company seemed so surprised when it fired on them.

Perhaps they were pessimists and figured that if the Death Star did work, they were going to die anyway, and that it wasn't worth it to set up a counterattack?

 

Saying it's "just a movie" is equivalent to taking the easy way out. And who wants that? Pssh...

lol! I know...

 

The kamikaze approach could work in two other ways as well.

(1) The ground strike force fails, and the shield is still up. Kamikaze the ship into the shield generator.

(2) The ground strike force succeeds, but the fighters fail in destroying the core. A kamikaze run on the exposed superstructure would let them damage the DS much more than simply impacting on the surface.

Troop carriers/transports could also fly interference if capital ships were attacked. I'm sure the rebels expected some resistance, they were just surprised by the amount of resistance.

 

They could easily replace the areas where troops are supposed to bo held with miniature (sp?) turbolasers. I'm sure the transport would already have had something in the way of defense, with the new turbolasers and whateverr amounts they already had, those things sound like pretty good gunships. They probably wouldn't have lasted long against Star Destroyers, so they probably helped by taking out as many TIE's as possible.