BTS The Star Destroyer bridges of the Original Trilogy

First of all I think an apology is in order as it is usually not my style to start a thread in article series form, tease the readers about an incredible find and then vanish for over a week.from this message board.

Well, I had a bigger fish to fry, ask Lord Vader to catch it, slice its throat just below the hammerhead and have its insides studied in-depth to be able to provide a) an accurate length for this particular fish (maximum length is 135 meters based on the original cockpit figure and space really needed to accomodate the studio sets seen onscreen) and b) 99% onscreen compatible deck plans with c) logical character movement through the ship.

My big excuse is that I wanted to really have the accurate measurements of the Tantive IV to evaluate how these might affect the accurate size of the Devastator (still have to do the exact calculations) because I wanted to present here the 'original' Devastator bridge viewport visualization...soon.

Darth Basin wrote

Ok figured it out! The certain SD bridge we never got to see is from a "certain class without a reactor bulb that was flying upside-down at Endor" !!!!!!!!

Most certainly not. I haven't decided yet what to think of this mysterious "Tector-class" Star Destroyer. The "main communications ship" at the Battle of Endor according to James Kahn was a "larger Star Destroyer". Either that indicates another SSD ("larger Star Destroyer" used to be the synonym for the Executor) or a standard Star Destroyer larger than the others which could perhaps be Devastator-class, IMHO.

Jedi_Sith_Smuggler_Droid asked

You mention side view screens on the Star Destroyer. Are those similar to the Red and Blue digital displays on the Second Death Star? Or do you mean a Star Trek style display that looks exactly like a window?

Yes, similar to the display arrangement of the Emperor's throne room on Death Star II. That they are side view screens is emphasized by the fact that the star background is slowly moving from the left to the right (IIRC), suggesting slow forward momentum of the Devastator.

(I will not participate in the ROJ Super Star Destroyer bridge detail discussion as I'm saving this for later).

Part Six - Darth Vader’s cabin, room and chamber

Set between the “aft bridge area” and the “main bridge area” Vader’s cabin (“Vader chamber”) could make use of the intersecting corridor element as a background element during the scene when Admiral Piett entered the room. However, none of the scenes in the film seriously suggested that Vader’s room would be right next to the bridge area, considering (a) the absence of his two security guards in other scenes and (b) various personnel coming from and moving towards this location.

The location was also used as the adjacent hologram room, opposite Vader’s meditation (and escape) pod. The filming on May 2, 1979 required some “hologram light”.




Part Seven - The other Star Destroyer bridge that almost wasn’t there (and still really isn’t…)

During his research for Star Wars-The Blueprints, J. W. Rinzler stumbled across an unusual Elstree Studios artwork he interpreted as an “alcove window”. Actually it depicts the “floating window wall” in its original position (the film set side view annotation for the “main bridge port recess” reads “floating window wall beyond from aft bridge”), closing the “aft bridge area” part of the film set.

If one were to assume this had just been a film set detail illustration, then it’s unusually lavish as it consists of a “transparent top sheet” (with the drawing) and a sheet to add the colors once the two are overlapped. It shows the same kind of forward view like one of McQuarrie’s production paintings for Vader’s Star Destroyer bridge, and it also featured the same prominent overhead ducts (deflector shield energy conduits or blast absorbers?) that lead towards the front of Executor’s main bridge:



What we see here is very probably the original “bridge” proposal for a Star Destroyer other than Vader’s Executor, i.e. the film set could have been used to feature the bridge of Vader’s large Star Destroyer (with the correspondingly sized bridge balcony) on one end, and the smaller bridge of a standard Star Destroyer on the other.



A black & white photo of the film set construction and a screencap from the Star Wars documentary Empire of Dreams (featuring the master console in the first red color scheme of its Death Star cousins) reveal that this wasn’t just some production artwork that became obsolete but one that would actually be constructed to be ready for filming.

While this would have made perfect sense to (a) differentiate between an 11-mile Star Destroyer and the much smaller ones and (b) help audiences distinguish the various Star Destroyer bridges featured in the final film, it’s pretty obvious that with just three bridge windows the Avenger’s near-collision with the other Star Destroyers during the Millennium Falcon chase or the near-collision of the MillenniumFalcon with the Avenger’s bridge would not have nearly looked half as impressive on screen as it did – thus the control deck of the Executor had to stand in for the Avenger’s while the different arrangement of the controllers’ consoles in the crew pit then had to clarify that it wasn’t the bridge of the Executor audiences were watching (the elements between Executor’s control consoles in the crew pit were reused as very narrow consoles of their own in Avenger’s crew pit).

Coming up next after the break will be Part Eight - Did the ILM model makers know what was actually being shot in the UK?

 

That last one. Wasn't that the "Our 1st catch of the day" window?

 

I guess the set builders decided they were gonna need a bigger bridge.

 

Darth Basin

No, the "first catch of the day" window was shot in the "main bridge port recess" alcove, apparently to suggest the "third" Star Destroyer main bridge or the second "smaller" bridge. Why they didn't use the aft bridge area they way they had probably intended, I wouldn't know, unfortunately. Perhaps the "first catch of the day" scene was shot before the Avenger scenes and before someone had a change of mind what the main bridge of the Avenger should look like to have more impressive VFX vistas on screen.

Here is a visualization I forgot to post for Part Seven:




Part Eight - Did the ILM model makers know what was actually being shot in the UK?

According to the production notes from January 1979 one trio of model makers each were assigned to the new “huge” 8-foot Star Destroyer and “Vader ship”, the new standard Star Destroyer VFX model was finished in mid-June 1979 at a cost of 55,000 $ (more expensive than Executor). Whatever the case, the finished model’s conning tower did not feature any corresponding windows but instead a gun turret from a WW II battleship model kit (blast cover?) obscuring the ‘upper’ main bridge location or a mechanical shield protecting its ‘lower’ position. And although the UK film footage (usually sent via video cassette) should have at least revealed the central (physical) trapezoidal window on the film set, a storyboard of ILM’s Rodis-Jamero from July 3, 1979 still featured rectangular windows for the main bridge of Vader’s Executor.



Nevertheless, the idea of a Star Destroyer bridge being different from the Executor’s by featuring (at least) three ‘flat’ windows still made it onto the screen during the scene when the first Star Destroyer (apparently the Vengeful, one of the three original production names, as “Tyrant” is obviously an Alliance reporting name) moved in for its “first catch of the day”. The “main bridge port recess” was deliberately diverted from its otherwise intended use to simulate the forward bridge of that particular Star Destroyer, yet fan editors like “Adywan” and some people at Lucasfilm apparently remain oblivious to such variations and instead propagate one kind of Star Destroyer balcony bridge to fit them all - which ultimately (and unfortunately) deprives the galaxy far, far away of flavor and diversity.

( CC Pabawan )



However, it would appear that the front bridge of the "first catch of the day" Vengeful has been retroactively changed into a balcony bridge consisting of three "flat" window gallery elements (i.e. IIRC - ! - that's what the main bridge of the Rogue One model looked like to me, but I still have to see close-up shots of the model's conning tower).

The thing is that the Star Destroyers seen in Rogue One are a hybrid with a mix of elements from the original ANH VFX model (Devastator) and the new VFX model built for ESB. In the above illustrated scene the Vengeful approaches Hoth as the ANH model (with collapsed jamming and com-scan array)but the subsequent shots with the ion cannon blasts impacting on its superstructure clearly reveal the ESB model, so there has been some confusion what type of Star Destroyer we do see here.

IMHO, the mix of elements on the new Rogue One Star Destroyer could indicate that the Vengeful actually belongs to this new type of Star Destroyer (Dauntless-class?), i.e. it looks like the RO model makers deliberately or coincidentally created the "missing link" (which would then also put those discussions to rest, hopefully).

 

This thread is amazing, you guys really pay attention to details! You are really professionals on technology. I hope I'm not too off topic with this, but here is one thing I have been wondering about since ESB. I don't have the book here right now, but I'm pretty sure in the original novelization of ESB (not sure if there have been any revisions later) the bridge of Vader's SD was said to have a 100 meters long window. Since I had read the novel first I was a little disappointed by the bridge design in the movie, mainly because I found the windows and the whole bridge far too small. I'm not sure what practical purpose a huge window like that would have had but would have been quite impressive on the screen. After all the ship itself is huge. We have practically the same bridge size and design in the Venator SD in ROTS, which is just one km long, just a fraction of the Avenger. Wouldn't a way larger ship have a larger bridge as well? We are talking about 10 times longer (or even more?). Does anyone know if there are earlier bridge designs for ESB that do have a huge window instead of the small triangular ones? I can understand that design didn't make it into the movie for budget reasons, but there could exist some earlier drawings maybe? I have never seen one myself.
As for ANH, I never interpreted that control room where they see the escape pod as being the actual bridge. Not only is the angle wrong (sure, it could be just a screen like in Star Trek but to me it didn't "feel" that way), but the room seems tiny for a ship that size.

 

TBPH I don't remember such a statement in the ESB novelization (which was essentially based on the screenplay which neither doesn't contain that statement). The ESB novelization read "As Darth Vader watched the endless array of stars, Captain Piett rushed across the wide bridge of the ship."

As for myself I originally found the Art of TESB rather confusing which stated that the bridge of Vader's ship was at the "head" of the vessel. In naval terms "head" (the toilets...) was always at the bow of the ship, so I wondered for some time whether Vader's bridge would be at the bow.

Going by the Falcon attached to the stern of Avenger's conning tower that Star Destroyer is only 1,270 meters long: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...urn-of-the-jedi.50041047/page-5#post-53671687

But what you are saying is exactly my point, the large balcony bridge was originally an Executor exclusive while the smaller standard Star Destroyers would have originally featured the small bridge I illustrated in post # 51 and compatible with the bridge description of Vader's ship (Devastator?) in the first ESB draft from 1978, just featuring a "forward (view)port".

I remain confident, that the Avenger would have featured that small bridge, but because of VFX considerations during the production of ESB we saw this premise change in favor of the balcony bridge, too, which I rationalize as being the characteristic of a "command ship" Star Destroyer (which would also apply to other Star Destroyers with the 'balcony bridge' we saw henceforth).

Essentially that screen would occupy the space of the port and starboard alcoves with the three holo-windows we saw on the balcony bridge. At this stage I orignally wanted to have already featured deck plans to illustrate the issue, but - alas - the accurate deck plans of the Rebel Blockade Runner Tantive IV as seen in ANH currently eat up all my spare time. I hope to be able to provide more graphics, ASAP.

 

Thanks! Your posts are always very competent and helpful, not to mention, extremely well researched! Of course I could be wrong about that bridge window, but then I don't know where else I got the idea, as at that time the only thing I had regarding that movie was the novelization, soundtrack on cassette tapes and a few action figures. No other material was available where I lived in 1980. I don't have the book here now so I'll have to wait till about May to check it.
Wow, I have The Art of ESB too but must have missed the part where it said the bridge is at the "head". For me the bridge in SDs was without any doubt always in the control tower. That's where the bridge is in modern real-life warships (if I'm not mistaken), and the SD design is somewhat based on those.

My mistake! Of course I meant Vader's super SD Executor, not the Avenger. Any reliable canon sources on how long that one is? Wookieepedia is really confusing. They put the length anywhere from 2200 meters (not even twice the length of a standard SD???) to 19 km, depending on different sources. Judging from the movies, especially in shots where the Executor is behind a normal SD, it must be at least ten times the size. What has always bothered me a little is that "small" ships like the Venator class (at 1155 meters at least on Wookieepedia no contradictions regarding size) have pretty much the same bridge size as super SDs which are, according to at least some sources, as much as about 16 times longer.

 

The 2200 m figure does not refer to the Executor - but to the smallest known Legends SSD - the Allegiance-class.

The newcanon seems to be sticking with the 19km late-period Legends figure for the Executor. It also portrays the Imperial-I and Imperial-II as the same length - 1600 m.

Actually, even the Venator has suffered contradictions - just much smaller ones.

1155m comes from TCW tie-in book Incredible Vehicles (that's the figure the newcanon chose to adopt)

But prior to that (based on the ROTS movie) Incredible Cross Sections gave 1137m for the Venator.

So, in this case, the TV series has trumped the movie.

 

Why are we debating this it's kinda clear as of canon PT, Clone Wars and rebels series, RO that all Imperial and Republic Star Destroyer bridges are almost if not identical to those of the Executor's bridge with a few small differences and different arrangements (personally I love the continuity among Imperial vessels unlike rebel vessels).

 

I also love the continuity among Imperial vessels - this modular design for everything in the Empire's military, from bridges on Star Destroyers to the docking bay on a Star Destroyer and the Death Star. It really adds to their oppressive totalitarian might.

What's so fascinating about this thread and worthy of debate is what the photos Lt. Hija are showing about the Imperial design aesthetic. This continuity isn't so much a stylistic choice but the result of compromises in the movie making process. Limitations and ingenuity creating an aesthetic out of necessity.

What this thread also shows is some of the the unique individual designs actually still made it into the movie and maybe we've been interpreting them differently than what they are. What I thought was a bridge side window might be the main bridge view port. A gun port might actually be the bridge, etc. And since these things only exist through movie magic - not everything adds up. And it's interesting to see how a design is interpreted decades later on The Clone Wars or in Rogue One when it is design choice.

 

I like the continuity too, shows the how the Empire is machine like by mass producing identical and standardized parts for everything. Interesting that for TESB they were originally going to have two different types of bridges but likely Lucas classically changed his mind during production. Whoever made the change made the right call IMO. You can see the little windows of the old standard bridge would not work well with the MF flyby effect. Plus I suspect the old 3 window wall is recycled in ROTJ. Also explains why the Invisible Hand has a greenhouse bridge, even better view. Notice how how the Republic / Empire bridges have the slave pits and overseer walkway while the CIS bridges are tiered like a bureaucracy?

 

Looks to me to be curved rather than flat, with lots of windows (though the gaps between windows are hard to see at this scale):

Spoiler

The Rogue One Ultimate Visual Guide also provides images of the Devastator - with the bridge being curved rather than the rectangular hole seen in ANH:

Spoiler

 

Sith Lord 2015 asked

Any reliable canon sources on how long [Executor] is? Wookieepedia is really confusing. They put the length anywhere from 2200 meters (not even twice the length of a standard SD???) to 19 km, depending on different sources. Judging from the movies, especially in shots where the Executor is behind a normal SD, it must be at least ten times the size.

To answer your first question: NO!

That issue is a mess of astronomical proportions and here is the reason why (it still qualifies as an anecdote worth telling, IMHO):

In his ESB novelization Donald Glut described Vader's Super Star Destroyer as being a Star Destroyer larger than the 5 standard ones escorting it.

Unfortunately, the author of the first SW 'encyclopedia', Raymond Velasco, misread that and wrote in his Guide to the Star Wars Universe that the Executor is five times larger than a standard Star Destroyer (that is not what Donald Glut had written, he left it wisely open how much larger than a Standard Star Destroyer Vader's Executor is).

Now, things got worse. Bill Slavicek from West End Games blindly just copied that figure for his ''encyclopedia'', assumed a Standard Star Destroyer to be one mile long (there is only one in the entire OT, I'll get to that soon) and concluded that Executor was only 5 miles long, without ever examining the on screen evidence (i.e. the fleet arrival at Hoth clearly reveals that the conning tower of the Executor is about the same size as the conning tower of the Star Destroyers escorting it) - a general disease that's crippling any earnest "in-universe" research efforts in SW fandom up to this day because according to my experience here and elsewhere, fans prefer to believe what they are being told instead what they can actually see with their own eyes in the actual films.

As a result - seriously - we saw various attempts to illustrate the Executor as a larger Star Destroyer only 8 miles long and that nonsense made it into the beautiful first Star Wars Chronicles and other reference books. However, already the display card of the ILM Lucasfilm exhibit at the Marin County Fair 1988 stated the ship's length as "11 miles", apparently based on the assumption that a standard Star Destroyer is one mile long (my guess: Don Bies probably wrote that who was in charge of the Lucas Archives at that time).

Ever since, it has been an uphill battle to correct this stupid, erroneous 8 mile figure propagated by West End Games but even with the current 19 km figure (11.8 miles) that battle isn't over, yet, and here is the reason why:

ILM's a) chief model maker and b) builder of the Executor, Lorne Peterson, stated in Sculpting a Galaxy (2006) "in the model shop we constructed the Executor to appear over 8 times longer with its conning tower the same size as that of the smaller vessel."

So according to the ultimate authority on the subject, the Executor would only be 8 miles long? NO! Fortunately, J.W. Rinzler quoted Lorne Peterson again in his 2010 publication The Making of The Empire Strikes Back on page # 87):

According to Lorne Peterson here, the new Star Destroyer VFX model for ESB would be "11,000 feet [3,353 meters], Darth's [new] ship is 16 miles."

We can easily do the math: 3,353 meters x 8 = 26,824 meters / 16.6 miles (there goes the mythical one mile length figure for a standard Star Destroyer, almost that is...)

Although I consider Lorne as the ultimate authority on the subject (met him several times in the 1990's, he's a very nice and great guy), I nevertheless think he's exaggerating a wee bit.
According to my research, the large conning tower model built for the Super Star Destroyer for ROJ is only 357 meters wide:



Now, with that conning tower the Super Star Destroyer in ROJ would *only* be 14.63 miles long.

Simply put: The current 11.8 mile figure makes the vessel too short, while Lorne's 16.6 mile figure makes it too long. The compromise between both figures would ultimately be 14.2 miles which looks like the correct and real length figure for the Super Star Destroyer.

(CC Pabawan)

Of course, there's more to it: Lorne clearly stated that the conning tower of the Executor had the same size as that of a smaller Star Destroyer...Which one is possibly 3,353 meters long ?!?!?!?!

Now, with standard proportions the "in-universe" length of Star Destroyer is usually 6.28 times the width of its conning tower. Therefore, a conning tower which is 357 meters wide must then belong to a Star Destroyer at least 2,242 meters long.

The good news is that we do have a candidate for that, i.e. the Devastator-class (as I just finished yesterday my size comparison to examine how long the Devastator would have actually been with a Tantive IV of 148.8 meters in its main bay):



It would appear that the actual length of the Devastator-class varies somewhere between 2,242 and 2,400 meters. But it's pretty obvious that the one mile figure can't possibly apply to Vader's ship in ANH.

What we actually end up with is this:

Devastator-class: 2,400 meters overall length
Invader-class: 1,622 meters overall length (length of Star Destroyer from whose forward bay Vader's shuttle emerges at the beginning of ROJ, the ONLY one that apparently is "one mile" long)
Avenger-class: 1,270 meters overall length (based on Millennium Falcon size reference and larger bridge balcony module on the large VFX conning tower model, seen briefly in ROJ and presumed lost - the larger balcony Bridge module)
Dauntless-class (Rogue One): 955 meters (based on size of conning tower bridge - got my copy of Cinefex # 151 on Monday and did the size calculation a few hours ago)

Just for the fun I couldn't help myself but to add those four numbers and then divide these by four. As a result I got "1,562 meters", so it stands to reason that the popular one mile figure is merely the average length of a Star Destroyer but fails to indicate that there are (at least) four different types with four different dimensions.

 

Previously I recall you agreeing that a 126m Tantive IV was compatible with a 1600m Devastator:

 

As it turns out I was obviously mistaken and upon further and more precise examination (see above) the main bay of the Devastator must be longer to accomodate the Tantive IV as seen in ANH. If the Devastator were just 1,600 meters long, the Tantive IV would fill the entire bay and all we'd see of its hammerhead section would be the bottom part of it.

The Vengeful (aka 'Tyrant') suggests otherwise, and I haven't seen the main bridge of the Devastator, yet, so there's a gap to fill. I for one strongly dislike this "one bridge design for every Star Destroyer". Like I wrote, the smaller 3 window main bridge was a great idea to distinguish between the smaller, standard Star Destroyers and the 14 mile leviathan Super Star Destroyer.

Admittedly, I'd be among the first asking to see the big balcony bridge only in SW feature films, because it enables this panoramic vistas you couldn't achieve with just three windows, but for an animated series like Rebels that's a completely different story (I even wrote Dave Filoni in October 2016 asking for a different bridge design and enclosed the genuine image of the 'small' bridge constructed for ESB, but as it seems the reply I got with one of the episodes makes me wanna turn full Indian...).

So let me ask you a question: Do you also consider it as continuity that EVERY Imperial facilty - since 'nuCanon' took over - features Star Destroyer windows? Personally I find this somewhat insulting, it's as if we fans couldn't distinguish between Imperials and Rebels facilites unless we have these windows. In SW Battlefront the bunkers on Endor feature Star Destroyer windows. The only odd thing remans that the bunker we saw during Vader's arrival on Endor in ROJ just featured rectangular viewing slots...

I got my copy of Cinefex # 151 on Monday and my prayers were heard, i.e. we do have close-up views of the conning tower, revealing not a curved, but a trapezoidal main bridge consisting of three (slanted) straight elements with three windows each that combine to form the main bridge. As it currently stands it beats me why they rendered the conning tower in CGI but decided to put that bridge there although the filming set clearly featured a round balcony bridge.

If that's the Devastator than I'm a lizard dewback.

Let's please look at the facts:

• Assuming that the main bridge aboard the Rogue One Star Destroyer has the same size as the Star Destroyer bridges seen in ESB and ROJ the conning tower of the Rogue One Star Destroyer would only be 152 meters wide. Further assuming it has the same proportions as other Star Destroyers the Rogue One Star Destroyer would be only 955 meters / 3,133 feet long. That's probably the "Imperial Cruiser" Solo spotted in Tatooine's orbit (again, helps to settle this debate, too), but definitely not the Star Destroyer battleship we saw at the beginning of ANH, being at least 2,242 meters long and more than twice as big
• In Blu-ray HD resolution we can clearly see that the conning tower of the Star Destroyer seen at the beginning of ANH features a rectangular, black aperture (with a protruding panel structure surrounding it), the Rogue One Star Destroyer Pablo Hidalgo claims to be the Devastator does not.
• The ANH Star Destroyer VFX model has been on public exhibits since 1988. There are plenty of images available online what the ship looks like, featuring these gargantuan lateral guns and a superstructure that's parallel to the slanted top surface (and has been illustrated as the Devastator in Dr. David West Reynolds Lucasfilm book Star Wars Incredible Cross-Sections). The Rogue One Star Destroyer features noticably different lateral guns and a noticably different superstructure.

For the laymen and occasional Star Wars viewer the Rogue One Star Destroyer probably qualifies as the Devastator, but - again - I prefer to base my research on what I actually do see onscreen (still absolute canon both in George Lucas Canon and NuCanon) and the actual models used in the films and not on what I'm being told...

 

I've got both the Rogue One Visual Guide and the ICS book - and the turrets don't look significantly different from book to book. They're clearly not the "ISD-II" turrets, being much larger and double barrelled, in both cases.

In the context of an evolving franchise, what we see on screen may not be "absolute canon" - there may be a degree of flexibility.

After all, wasn't it you that argued that what we see in TESB of the Avenger's tower

Spoiler

is incompatible with the broad bridge:

Spoiler

and that the "real" Avenger tower would look more like the one seen in ROTJ?

Spoiler

 

First things, first. Here is a close-up image of the Rogue One Star Destroyer conning tower I talked about yesterday, revealing some main bridge detail and the size of the bridge in relation to the conning tower width:



Iron_lord wrote

I've got both the Rogue One Visual Guide and the ICS book - and the turrets don't look significantly different from book to book. They're clearly not the "ISD-II" turrets, being much larger and double barrelled, in both cases.

In the context of an evolving franchise, what we see on screen may not be "absolute canon" - there may be a degree of flexibility.

Interesting that you mention "flexibility" as that's another major issue here. While the original big guns are essentially round, the Rogue One Star Destroyer featured rectangular guns.
And those guns featured an ability shown in Rogue One the guns of the original ANH Star Destroyer model never could do, i.e. fire straight forward. That's something the big guns of the Star Destroyer seen in ANH (actually we saw the guns for the first time ever in ESB) can't do because they are packed so close together that they can only fire towards port or starboard but would impede one another because of their extensions towards the back (which ultimately suggests, IMHO, that the guns were designed for long-range targets where three guns focus on the same enemy vessel's spot to inflict maximum damage)

After all, wasn't it you that argued that what we see in TESB of the Avenger's tower is incompatible with the broad Bridge and that the "real" Avenger tower would look more like the one seen in ROTJ?



I addressed this issue in post # 54, didn't I? Yes, there is an obvious continuity error in ESB, i.e. the conning tower of the ESB VFX model lacked the "broad" bridge (for the Avenger) which is probably due to a glitch in communication between the production team in the UK and ILM in the US.
The way I see it, ILM wasn't really happy and retroactively fixed this continuity error somewhat by showcasing the real Avenger-class bridge for a brief moment in ROJ (i.e. they actually went through the hazzle of manufacturing a larger bridge module they could put in front of the 'small' bridge of the Super Star Destroyer conning tower VFX model, illustrated in post # 63), but for some strange reason this has been misinterpreted by several fans as a larger bridge for an unusual, unknown Star Destroyer instead.

But the bottom of the issue is actually this: Does it automatically imply that just because of one stupid, unfortunate continuity error (which only affects the Avenger!) that ALL conning towers of the ESB VFX Star Destroyer model are erroneous and should feature the protruding balcony bridge?

I say no, in those cases where we saw Star Destroyers other than the Avenger, these feature "in-universe" the small bridge with just a three-window viewport, usually obscured and/or protected by the blast cover featured on the VFX model's conning tower.

That way the continuity error remains limited to the Avenger and we can enjoy watching other Star Destroyers in ESB and ROJ without wondering, why there is no visible balcony bridge.

 

Only the rearmost pair (labelled Heavy Ion Cannon by ICS) were rounded - the front three were more rectangular:

ICS image


Saxton's Devastator Exhibition image


(the model appears to be suffering wear and tear - some of the barrels are missing)

That's why I figure that the ISD should not be limited by the model - that both ANH and Rogue One provide imperfect approximations of the ISD, (but that, in-universe, it's a bit closer to the one in Rogue One in having better arcs on its weapons and less obstruction).

 

I will add an original 1977 image with all the barrels intact, soon.

The three forward ones (adopted from some kind of tank model kit) are also "essentially round" but feature rectangular extensions to their backs to obscure their model kit origins.
Regardless, the arrangement clearly reveals that you can only turn the three main guns clockwise up to a certain point before their rotation is blocked and inhibited by the adjacent gun.
Same applies for the ion gun, it's firing radius is limited to something roughly between 10° and 150°.

 

Thanks again for the very in-depth and professional info and wonderful pictures! So I guess we will have to accept the fact that we will not get a definite answer as to the Executor's size, with sources varying this widely and contradicting each other. Great research on your part though!!

Absolutely agree on this one!

Are you sure that last picture is the Avenger, not Executor?

 

Sith Lord 2015 wrote

So I guess we will have to accept the fact that we will not get a definite answer as to the Executor's size, with sources varying this widely and contradicting each other.

I'm not sure I understand your pessimism. We have clear images of the Super Star Destroyer's large conning tower with the bridge windows and do know the size of the actual main bridge filming set. Dr. David West Reynolds measured the width of the conning tower on the SSD model (4.2 cm) which is approx. 277 cm long. Based on all these information we are able to extrapolate the "in-universe" size or length of the SSD.

Are you sure that last picture is the Avenger, not Executor?

It's not my place to speak for Iron Lord, but here is the conning tower comparison I did for the ROJ space battle thread, revealing the two different main bridge modules on the large VFX conning tower model created for ROJ:



On the left is the conning tower variation of the SSD, to the right is the one of the (Avenger-class) Star Destroyer briefly seen (with a large Rebel Star Cruiser passing overhead) in ROJ.

 

I see! I just find it disappointing that those other sources were not that well-researched. You did all those measurements and calculations yourself, right? You put some remarkable effort into those.
Just wondering: has Lucas himself ever addressed this particular issue? In interviews (at least the ones I know) he doesn't really talk much about technology or spaceship details, tends to be more interested in the story. Do you know of any Lucas quotes regarding Star Destroyers? I know he had his technical team, model builders etc. to take care of technology. But he at least had to approve every single design before it could be used.He might have made a comment at some point when he checked the designs. Not that Lucas has never contradicted himself as well.

 

Sith Lord 2015 wrote

I just find it disappointing that those other sources were not that well-researched

That makes us two. IMHO, some of that stuff isn't really rocket science, and thanks to the internet we have almost unlimited access to high resolution reference materials (nowadays) to re-examine and re-evaluate previous (but erroneous) findings (Death Star sizes anyone? ).

Just wondering: has Lucas himself ever addressed this particular issue?

No, and from everything I learned in previous years he doesn't really care about these details as many of us do. I recommend - if you dare . to read up on Wikipedia what he said about featuring Hoth in a Star Tours ride, his comments made me go

I've been repeatedly recommending to the people at Lucasfilm to get in touch with John Mollo if they still don't understand the rank badge system he designed for the Empire and the Alliance (what I read in the Rogue One Visual Guide is a certificate of poverty) and my general recommendation remains to get in touch with the original designers if there's something they wonder about and don't find answers in their archives.
In the particular case of the Star Destroyers that's Lorne Peterson, and it's a good thing we have his testaments in both Sculpting a Galaxy and The Making of TESB I quoted in post # 63.

Also just noticed half an hour ago, that the miniature conning tower on the SSD VFX model features slanted deflector-shield (power) generator domes (although they had already 'straightened' these for the new ESB Star Destroyer model built for ESB!), indicating that he took the (larger) Devastator-class conning tower as the inspiration for the original Executor conning tower.

 

P.S.

I felt compelled to make a new size examination of the Tantive IV as it's being pulled inside the Devastator's main bay by using a screencap that shows the shadow casting of the main bay onto the hull of the Tantive IV. As a result the overall length of the Devastator is 2,158 m instead of 2,400 m. It appears that a slight tilting of the Tantive IV and other factors contribute to some errors in any attempt trying to get a solid result, so we could disregard the 2,400 m figure illustrated in post # 63 (although it happens to be the compromise between the popular 1 mile figure and Lorne Peterson's 11,000 feet figure).

While it's painfully clear that the Devastator is much longer than just 1,609 meters (one mile), it's also obvious that it's not 11,000 feet (3,353 meters) long. Going by the "same conning tower size as Super Star Destroyer" approach by Lorne Peterson, I'd suggest we go by the SSD conning tower model created for ROJ (357 m wide) which would yield an overall length for the Devastator-class of 2,242 meters that would be sufficiently compatible with what we can actually observe onscreen in ANH.

(all of these figures are, of course, based on a Tantive IV with an overall length of 148.8 m. Assuming the original cockpit pilot figure to be 1.8 m high, the Tantive IV's length would be 123 meters, however, accomodating the long "L"-corridor of the film set inside the cylindrical main hull and to have the escape pod door wide enough for Artoo to fit in requires a vessel length of at least 148.8 m which I will show once I have all the deck plan illustrations for the Tantive IV finished).

 

Here we have an original image of the ANH model from 1977 of all the port side cannons with their barrels intact (some got missing before 1988 because when I took pictures at the Marin County Fair 1988 some barrels were already missing).

And here is a quick miniature comparison, which IMHO clearly reveals that in designing the conning tower of the Executor Lorne Peterson was inspired by the bigger Devastator-class Star Destroyers, hence an SSD length exceeding 11 miles and the large ROTJ VFX conning tower model with the small bridge
belonging to an SSD longer than 'just' 11 miles: