CT Why Snow Speeders not X-Wings on Hoth?

I always liked that the Rebels used Snow Speeders on Hoth not X-Wings. But why didn't they use X-Wings?

I used to think the X-Wings weren't as well suited for atmospheric flight. Not sure that's an issue for them now. The rebels had a hard time adapting the speeders for the cold. Cold shouldn't be a problem for a spaceship, unless it's something to do with icing.

So why use Speeders?

 

Just pulling a possible answer out of my behind, it probably takes more time to prepare a spaceship for flight/combat than a speeder, so the speeders went out to buy time while the X-wings were prepped. Or, the X-wings were kept in reserve for space combat, which only they could do, while the speeders went out for the only mission they were suited for.

 

I think I remember in reading one of the "cross section" books, or something, that the engines in the fighters would commonly freeze up and stall in the cold of Hoth, and that the engines in the snow speeders were directly insulated to prevent this. I know, cold and space ships, but hey, Star Wars Logic, ya know?

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that it has to do with the snow speeders being able to handle the cold, while the X-Wings would freeze up if exposed to the elements for long periods. And from a story standpoint, the X-Wings would've taken down the AT-ATs pretty easily compared to the speeders I think, so that wasn't going to happen.

 

It might also be a difference between handling cold atmospheric conditions and cold conditions in the vacuum of space.

 

because they were saving X Wings in the snow for Episode 7 of course lol

 

Well...maybe. If they hit 'em in the right place.

 

because they wanted something new for the movie.

 

I would think proton torpedoes could've blasted through the walkers' armor pretty easily, actually. It would've been pretty silly to have the X-Wings do damage against and then blow up the Death Star in one film, and yet struggle against the walkers in the next.

 

That's a hypothetical, though. Heavy artillery couldn't break though, so it's possible, but not a given. We know the neck is weak, the underbelly is sort-of weaker, and the legs can be caught and throw off the centre of gravity. The armour plating seems very strong.

The X-Wing(s) only blow up the Death Star because Luke used the Force to guide a proton torpedo down into the core. Without Luke, they'd have been done for. The Empire would have swatted them away like sand fleas.
Plus X-wings don't have tow cables, as far as I know. So that wouldn't be a good tactical decision if the Rebellion had the choice between X-Wing and Snowspeeder.

 

It's kind of impossible to definitively know the strength of the armor plating one way or the other, so yeah it's pretty hypothetical. As for the Death Star, I was mainly referring to the X-Wings also doing damage to various parts of the exterior, which I imagine had some amount of fortification. Again, that's rather hypothetical.

 

Yes, I understood! Even if they did a small amount of damage, it's 120 km in size...so it would be horribly insignificant. It just doesn't mesh for me is all.

 

because they wanted something new for the movie.
---------

and toys!! wonderful toys!!!

 

Yeah, it's all speculative, really. I'm just going to go with 'the X-Wings couldn't handle the cold' and leave it at that.

 

Also the landing platform on a snow speeder is adaptable for a safer landing on ice/snow

 

It was a necessary plot complication.

 

Could be X wings are not suited for low speed, low attitude flight against ground targets since they are spacecraft while snow speeders are suited sinced they are low attitude aircraft like the Republic gunships. In other words, X Wings and Y wings would be deep air support, or in the case of Star Wars deep "space" support while aircraft like airspeeders and gunships would be close air support. The snowspeeders are Star War's version of Warthogs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_interdiction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_air_support

 

This bugged me - on The Clone Wars, Republic Gunships can fly in space. Now we only see them go from a spaceship to a planet and then flying back up to a spaceship, but they are defiantely in space.

And it does look cool when this happens.

 

TCW did some things differently from the films. In both AOTC and ROTC we never see a space going gunship and all of the onscreen ones are open air compartments which would prevent high attitude flight let alone space flight with doorless archways and door gaps for the side turrets. Heck the full name for the gunshps is Low Attitude Assult Transports, LAAT. Lucas once said he wanted the Republic to have craft like transport copters used in Vietnan for AOTC. I think the space going gunships first showed up in the old micro series, however they were not used onscreen in ROTS and TCW was originally a continuation of the micro series rather than a direct continuation of AOTC, a spinoff of a spinoff. The space going version lack the doorless archways and side turrets to allow the side doors to fully close, but we never see this model in the films.

 

The TCW ones do have visible spaces where the side turrets would go - I figure the turrets were just removed. And that the archways have doors - they're just not visible when fully retracted.

 

The issue that isn't explained is the movie version have shorter rear doors that leaves a gap even when closed for side turrets. TCW versions have double doors that fully seal the cargo area with a forwad door in place of the side turrets since they mount to a internal bulkhead between the main cargo area and the archway, which is why TCW versions lack them.

In this picture you can see the foreward doors and lack of side turrets with TCW version.





Here is a picture of the film version which has an open archway, side turrets, and lacking foreward doors.




P.S. also want to point out that even the clones in the PT were killed with a single shot.

 

I remember seeing some turreted gunships in the Geonosis arc of TCW, that nonetheless used the same basic chassis as the TCW turretless version.

With the forward doors closed - the AOTC ones would look basically like this.

 

The question is why we don't see the double door versions in ROTS? All the ones we see in that film are the single door, open air models.

 

If we can have "side doors fully closed" and turrets, maybe we can also have "closable forward archways".

With the ROTS ones just happening to be open, and the Geonosis (TCW) ones happening to be closed.