Why didn't the rebels evacuate during the battle of Yavin?

Please forgive me if this has been brought up before and feel free to redirect me to it.

Anyway, I was watching ANH last night with her and I just was wondering why they never evacuted the planet during the battle. They were in more serious trouble on Yavin then they were on Hoth. I mean with Yavin, if Luke failed and the DS destroyed the planet the whole rebellion would have been destroyed. I'm sure that if they were destroyed another rebellion would have formed. However that is still pretty reckless to put all of their faith in a rookie farmboy who decides to switch off his targeting computer and guesses when he should fire his torpedos.

 

General Dodonna ordered a diversion so that the rebels could evacuate during the battle of Yavin.

However, that is all I am not at liberty to say any more since this ties into the current deciding question in the CT Trivia Contest. More info should be released by Darth Falcon on Friday night. Check the Trivia thread tomorrow.

 

The reason why I'm assuming they didn't evac the planet during the DS battle, is it would be cowardice. The men on the ground sent the pilots into a suicidal attack, that probably would fail and it wouldn't be proper while they are up there fighting for a cause they all believed in. . . their high command decides to get out of dodge for when the pilots failed. Staying on the ground gave the pilots an even bigger reason to fight for. The Rebellion's leaders (or some anyways) were there and if the Rebellion had any hope of sucess, then they'd have to live.

And not too many men will volunteer to fight and if necessary die for leaders who turn tail and run when a tough fight emerges.

 

Colonialism is so kewl.

BTW, I've never been in a jungle, but I have been to Mexico and seen Aztec pyramids.

 

The EU states that the Rebels on the base firstly could have been protected by a planetary sheild and secondly had no time to call in transports before the Death Star arrived to evacuate.

Once the Death Star was destoryed, General Dodonna ordered the evactuation of the base in which much of the heavier equipment and personnel were transported off world. However, the Imperial fleet came in and the command staff was trapped.

Obviously Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie escaped but Dodonna was captured when the Imperial ground forces were deployed.


Don't like EU explainations then my theory would be that there were no transports on the planet and so they couldn't leave. However, they learned their lessons and had them dock at Echo Base just incase... luckily

 

I love tearing transports apart in the Revenge on Yavin level in Rogue Leader.

I think E_V has a point, as staying and watching the pilots indicates Rebel Command has full faith in them. Besides if the Rebels fail here, the war's probably over anyway.

On a related note: Did early drafts for RotJ have Lando deliberately ram into the DSII's shield as a sign of solidarity? I think I read this somewhere.

 

I always saw it as the Alliance thinking that there was so little time left, that mounting a full evacution of the base would be impossible. Thus, their only hope was Red Squadron and company taking out the Death Star before they were taken out.