What happened to the Imperial fleet at the battle of Endor?

Right when Admiral Ackbar notes "ITS A TRAP" a large imperial fleet blocks the exit for the Rebels, trapping them betwen the Imperial Navy and the Death star. The Deathstar takes a few of the Rebel ships down and Admiral Ackbar notes that the Imperial Navy fleet is too large and that they "Won't last long against those star destroyers"

Though they take down the Super Star Destroyer, they are still outnumbered, and when the deathstar blows, the Imperial Navy seems to vanish. Did the Rebels manage to beat them all even though they were outnumbered? Or did the Imperial navy leave? But why would they if they still outnumbered the Rebels?

 

The surviving Star Destroyers, under the command of Gilad Pellaeon, fled after seeing the Death Star destroyed. At that point, it wasn't about numbers. They were simply demoralized.

 

Exactly what the above posted.

The Imperials, having seen the destruction of the Death Star and no longer having Palpatine's battle meditation on their side, were forced to retreat. On Endor, Skywalker and the others celebrated their freedom, as did the inhabitants of many other worlds. With its two main leaders dead, the Empire began its long decline, with multiple warlords fighting for power. Many Rebel heroes of the battle, such as Wedge Antilles, were hailed as liberators, and they helped form the New Republic shortly thereafter. While the actions of the battle did not signify the end of the war, they marked the beginning of the end for the Empire and also succeeded in restoring balance to the Force.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Endor

The Thrawn trilogy gives some insight to this also if you havent' read them.

 

They did need a scene to clarify what happened with the Imperial fleet, I assume they were all destroyed or surrendered.

I believe there are deleted scenes of B Wing fighters blowing up Star Destroyers.

 

There is a well-known publicity still of that...

[image=http://le.one.free.fr/images/Bwing.jpg]

... but it's clearly not a movie still. I'm not sure if such things were ever filmed. Certainly the B-Wings were intended to be used more, but their slim profiles and blue color caused problems when trying to composite them into the scenes.

 

Star Destroyers as depicted in the movies are incredibly weak, they are never shown to be impressive war machines and get blown up very easily.

I'm not sure whether they are more Battleship or Carrier but I think it's very possible that the B-Wings alone could have wiped out all the Star Destroyers.Star Wars has a strong World War 2 influence and a few small fighters/bombers could destroy the much larger Battleships and carriers.

It's possible that wiping out the Star Destroyers was the role the B-Wings were meant to play in ROTJ but they couldn't get the effects to work.I hope the Bluray release has some stuff about this.

 

The B Wing was meant for Capitol Ship Assaults. The old source guides had some great info on this but below is a snippet from Wookiepedia

The B-wing was designed to replace the aging BTL Y-wing starfighter in the heavy assault role, as it had the advantage of more weaponry and stronger shields. However, the B-wing had several weaknesses, notably being difficult to fly and lacking speed and agility. Its large hull furthermore made it an easier target and it also had less armor protection. Consequently, it never fully succeeded supplanting the Y-wing as intended.


The cockpit module of a B-wing showing the groove allowing for rotation
Added by JMASIn particular, the rotating hull system made the B-wing a challenge to master. It also made the ship abnormally delicate; too many sharp turns could cause extreme strain to the spaceframe, and the cockpit rotation system could get stuck in one position. Only a few pilots were qualified to fly the ship before the Battle of Endor, resulting in a smaller number of B-wings present than expected. These difficulties forced the Rebel Alliance to invest in an upgraded Y-wing, rather than an entirely new ship, to fulfill their needs.

Like its predecessor, the Y-wing, the cockpit could be detached from the rest of the ship, but unlike the Y-wing, the B-wing's cockpit could be ejected into space and support atmospheric re-entry.[7]

 

Star Destroyers are not depicted as being weak in the movies. There are only 3 that get destroyed in the films:

1) ESB, a massive asteroid smashes into the bridge of a Destroyer.
2) ROTJ, a Star Destroyer blows up in the background as Ackbar orders the Rebels to assault the Executor.
3) ROTJ, the Executor itself.

For #1, the sheer size of the asteroid hitting the Destroyer has nothing to do with its toughness or lack thereof; it's just a pretty big ****ing rock. Nothing could stand against an asteroid that size.

#2, the ship blows up in the background, so we don't know the circumstances of its destruction. Presumably it got overwhelmed by the Rebel ships.

#3, the shields got taken down and an A-wing destroyed its command center.


None of those 3 destructions depict the Destroyers as being weak.

 

There is of course the Star Destroyer in ESB where the ION canon cripples it. Not sure that counts as being destroyed, but certainly disabled.

I dont feel they were portrayed as weak though. To a point, each one was only as good as the crew managing it.

 

Tim's got a point. Only three Destroyers were destroyed in the films.

As for the reason the Navy left, it's all explained in Robot Chicken.

 

Can i just ask:

If the Death star hadn't been destroyed, if the emperor had lived, would the rebel fleet been able to escape?

 

As far as I know, there were no Interdictor cruisers there, so the Rebels could have escaped if necessary.

 

But wasn't they supposed to have been hemmed in between the Death star and the Imperial fleet? Wasn't that the trap? If the Death star hadn't blown, and the emperor hadn't died, the fleet wouldn't have fled and they would have remained trapped, surely?

 

#2, the ship blows up in the background, so we don't know the circumstances of its destruction. Presumably it got overwhelmed by the Rebel ships.

Yeah we do, it exchanged fire with a Mon Cal Star Cruiser, missed badly, got hit, got blown up

 

So basically although there were no interdictors, the Rebels had to fly through the whole Imperial Armada to escape...

 

If they headed in any of the 360 degrees around them except for where the imperial fleet was, yes.

 

I always assumed the rebel fleet was suurrounded by the Imperial fleet

 

The Rebels were pinned between the planet and the fleet, so escaping Endor's gravity well and avoiding the fleet at the same time would have been difficult.

 

The point I'm trying to make is the same one nit-picked in either Robot Chicken or Something Something Something Darkside.

Such as when the rebels are fleeing Hoth. Why do they flee directly into the blockade of the Star Destroyer instead of leaving the planet in any of the rest of the 360 degree sphere where there is no blockade? The Empire didn't have the entire planet blanketed in orbit (think GPS satellites around Earth).

Same for the DS2 battle. You had the Death Star in front and the fleet behind in a two-dimensional formation, in one lump -- not blocking every possible escape route in 3 dimensions. That's two poles on an imaginary sphere in which they could not flee. How about any of the rest of the sphere as a direction to flee? How about make a 90 degree bank and flee out into space? I guess people in the GFFA have two-dimensional thinking. Scratch that, one dimensional thinking. Death Star in front, Imperial Fleet behind, can't turn right or left or up or down.

Further I thought the DS2 was between the fleet and the moon, so the moon doesn't really block much of their "escape sphere".

 

Actually, an unlikely source of the answer is in a starfighter computer game: X-wing Alliance. You go through the battle as the pilot of the Falcon.

Anyways, once the Imperial Fleet comes out from behind Endor, about half of it spreads itself out and assumes a cup formation all around, above and below the Rebel fleet. It acts to pin the Rebels against the planet and against the Death Star. The other half of it is formed around the Executor.

So when you're dogfighting the TIEs, dowing Star Destroyers and making runs on the Executor, you get a pretty good sense of how desperate the Rebels are.

As for why they didn't flee, the answer to that is right out of the movie.

***

110 INT REBEL STAR CRUISER - BRIDGE 110

Ackbar stands amid the confusion on the wide bridge and speaks
into the comlink.

ACKBAR
We saw it. All craft prepare to retreat.

LANDO
You won't get another chance at this,
Admiral.

ACKBAR
We have no choice, General Calrissian. Our
cruisers can't repel firepower of that
magnitude.

LANDO
Han will have that shield down. We've got to
give him more time.

http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/rotj-script.shtml

 

I know this thread is a couple months old, however, I may have an answer to what happened to the Imperial fleet. Ackbar orders the Rebel fleet to get away from the Death Star as it's about to explode. The ship-to-ship battles were taking place directly above the Death Star itself just prior, as evidenced when the Executor fell into it, and many Mon Cal Cruisers were seen mixing it up with the Star Destroyers in the background when Piett was shouting orders.

The loss of Piett and the Executor aside, the Imperials probably didn't realize the Rebels had successfully destroyed the Death Star's reactor because they were still going at it ship to ship with the Rebels. When the Rebel fleet suddenly pulled back, they realized too late what was going on, and the Death Star's explosion took most if not all of the fleet with it.

 

^ Sounds like a good explanation to me.

 

Except that's not what happened. Out of 27 Star Destroyers there, a grand total of 8 were destroyed. The rest survived to fight another day.

 

Considering that we're talking about a movie, nothing really happened

And from watching the movies you get the impression that all the Star Destroyers were either destroyed or flew away.

 

I know they retreated as far as the EU is concerned. The outcome I've suggested is for the sake of the casual film viewer who will say "Wait a second...where did all those Star Destroyers go?"

Yeah, the Rebels damaged and destroyed a few of them on screen, but we're meant to assume by the ship-to-ship combat above the station that they probably destroyed a couple of others as well before it exploded. The number we can see being destroyed/damaged on screen comes out to 6: the one with the exploding sensor dome when the pilot says "She's gonna blow!", the pilot who spirals into one when he says "I'm hiiit!", the one the frigate is seen exchanging shots with, the one that gets hit with a torpedo as Lando mentions "We're sure in the middle of it now...", the Executor itself, and the Star Destroyer that is destroyed in the background as the order to attack the Executor is given. There's also the one that was taken down by B-wings that didn't get into the final cut. 20 Star Destroyers is a big number, and the casual fan will be curious. Alternatively, if my suggestion isn't to your liking, check out the background when they cut to Piett giving his final few orders: for every visible Star Destroyer, there's a Mon Cal Cruiser to match it, and there are at least six of each on screen at that point if memory serves me right.

The picture for reference: [image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/64/Gherantdeath.jpg]