Books Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Bomber Command by Jason Fry

So you're annoyed at the film for not giving backstories to the bomber crews?

Ahem, what about all the other pilots and people who've been killed in action? I know for a fact half don't even have names (Canon or Legends)!

 

It's mostly a kneejerk thing for some people Jason. Those same people never question why X-Wings bank in space, or why Darth Vader flipping his TIEx in Rebels backwards isn't the norm.

For example *EU Nerd Lore activate* space bombs from the TIE fighter series were basically identical in shape and function to the space bombs we see in The Last Jedi. It's just the bombers themselves are built around carrying as many of the things as possible. Also, magnetic bombs were used in Shattered Empire by Y-Wings during a bombing run against AT-ATs.

 

I mean I'm pretty sure you can look up all the new/Legends names on Wookiepedia, (which is a decent place to start if not an exhaustive source,) fan sites, threads here, or the plethora of YT channels out there.

I'm not trying to tell anyone they're silly for enjoying the movie, or saying this is anything other than my personal take on a part of a good film.

I'm pointing out that in a film with a lot of other moving pieces, it's easier to get the audience invested in the movements and story when jumping into an individual, fast-moving fighter as opposed to a more ponderous bomber with a more nebulous objective, where you need to spend more time with the crew and crew dynamics to get invested in the raid as a whole. Even a couple of minutes can make or break that investment.

The point to canon and Legends is we get to know the average pilots and soldiers better, and understand why they're there for the few seconds of screentime they appear in. Wedge's survival in the OT made him compelling to fans before he was expanded upon in Legends because there was something neat about an average guy able to survive all the crazy Jedi space war stuff.

When the pilots die in ANH, ESB and ROTJ, we've seen them all in the briefing rooms and we know the stakes, then we get to hear them sounding off before the attack with a little banter: "Red one standing by," "Look at the size of that thing," and so on.

I'd have felt more connected if say, we'd gotten a scene with the pilots and crews having some downtime in the hangar playing pickup sabaac or watching a shockball game before the tension ratchets up, just talking for a minute or so in the background of Paige and Rose trying to do some quick maintenance on a sticky turret servo before the alert call goes out. They rush to man their craft and there's a quick hug between the two sisters just before Paige dashes to the umbilical airlock and the bombers detatch from Raddus.
Give me a couple minutes of that, and I'm personally more invested. Bonus points if they can throw in a line about what a great pilot/leader Poe is and or how they trust him to get them through this, just to twist the knife later.

If this book gives us that:

I'll give it an honest go. Cute with naming conventions for the the StarFortress SF-17 by the way.

 

You honestly think I wouldn't be posting on a STAR WARS forum board if I didn't know what I was talking about?!

I may not have access to most of the materials until six months later unless I pre-order (I live in Australia FYI), but I am attached to Wookieepedia and am always excited to see characters - pilots, Jedi, clones, senators, palace guards, minor extras - finally get names or backstories! I know everything that Wookieepedia knows and what I've gotten from official websites as well as here and twitter.

Careful with insults to my intelligence or bullying. I was a victim of both throughout my entire life and continues to hurt to this day.

 

Easy there, pardner. I'm uncertain where you're seeing "bullying or insults to your intelligence" from, but suff like Hobbie's death was just recanonized, so official canon changes pretty quickly. Figured I'd point you to some sources because there are Wars fans obsessive enough to catalog the newly-canonized pilots in every scene. All of them. Even the ones who get... "newly cannonized," before elaborating my own druthers/incredibly nerdy nitpicks RE the bomber scenes in TLJ, as you seemed unclear about my post when you quoted me.

Have a great night and watch out for drop bears!

 

So leaving aside the argument about how the bombers function etc... has anyone actually read this yet? I've read Cobalt Squadron and I'm curious about how this is different; I feel like I still don't quite know exactly what it is?

 

Interesting! I was wondering why the bomber had both the "MG-100" and "S/F-17" designations. Out of curiosity, did you come up with the StarFortress name? Cause that may be the coolest Star Wars/WWII connection ever. Dedicated bombers are a long overdue addition to the GFFA!

--Adm. Nick

 

Though on the topic of world war 2 inspirations - since the target was a warship, I wonder why they didn't go for a torpedo bomber inspiration.

Something like the public class from Gundam:


In particular their doomed run reminds me of the (in)famous torpedo attack at Midway.

 

Re designations, MG-100 was definitely mine; S/F-17 was not. I think StarFortress was mine, but might be wrong. This stuff blurs together -- which honestly is kinda cool, as it speaks to the easy collaboration. (Or maybe that's a rationalization for my increasingly bad memory.)

 

SnubJockey, great post about bomber crews. If you think the bombers get the short end of the stick, think for a moment about the poor saps in the transports. I'm a retired C-130 flight engineer with lots of sorties in Iraq, and the only people who got excited about us were the ones waiting for their mail, or a ride home. But among ourselves, we knew we were damned good at what we did, especially when we were going in to land at places like Bagdad where we knew the insurgents had guided missiles and would love to blow up a fat transport plane full of Americans. It doesn't make for audience-thrilling adventure stories, but it was just as intense for the ones who were living it.

 

I finished it last night. Very interesting. Basically Paige's journal in the style of Rey's journal from TFA. It is enjoyable and gives you more of Paige and Rose's history, but I did feel we got a lot more lore/worldbuilding from Rey's journal than we did from this one.

 

Thanks! Historian, not vet, but if I write anything or study campaigns, a big part of connection to the characters and settting or historical circumstances generally comes down to "Where did they get their water/food/ammo/socks from?" over "What brilliant and flashy tactic did they use?" Which means transpo and logistics is important.

One of my favorite aircraft of all time is the C-47, and the Herk is up there too.

Socks are important. Mail is important, and going home is important. Glad you made it through bro.

 

The Gundam example is less like a WWII torpedo bomber and more like the big antiship missiles the Soviets would fit on their maritime strike bombers:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Raduga_Kh-22.jpg

I can see why they didn't go that route; for visual reasons GFFA space combat is a short-range affair (in fact, TLJ may have given us the longest-range ship-to-ship combat sequences we've seen in the new canon). Having bombers fire missiles from hundreds of kilometers away and then lumber off wouldn't have the same tension.

Then again, TFA also possibly gave us a reason why space combat is at short range - long-range turbolaser fire being unable to punch through or even appreciably wear down capital ship shields.

 

There was an element of this in the Thrawn novel - suggestion that turbolaser fire from high orbit is attenuated - which would also fit - in this case - it's range in general, not just range + atmosphere - that reduces the effect of weaponry.

That helps to explain why the ground explosions from capital ship guns are pretty tiny - hence the need for things like the Siege Dreadnought, to deliver fire that will not only punch through the shield but leave a huge explosion on the ground.

 

To be more exciting, they could also fire the big missiles at close range.

The shield thing is pretty interesting - reminds me a lot of how shields worked in Legend of the Galactic heroes - particularly how all or nothing it was. The Resistance fleet was able to shrug off the Supremacy's attack for most of the film, but as soon as they ran out of fuel and started falling behind they got destoryed in a handful of shots.

 

I'm curious as to how the Siege Dreadnought would have acted as a Fleet Killer given it only has two, slow-recharge main guns. Would it have been a bit like the DS2- one ship-killing shot every few minutes, relying on its shields to hold off return turbolaser fire, and a fighter escort launched by neighbouring Star Destroyers, to keep bombers from slipping under its shields? (The DS2 itself didn't have the permeable shield problem).

 

The other question would be if the Mandator-IV's main guns had greater range than the standard turbolasers we see on capital ships, in which case it could pick off an opposing fleet with near-impunity. In hindsight, that makes the opening scene of TFA less of a misjudgment on Poe's part - the Fulminatrix was destroyed just as it was beginning to target the Raddus, and even if the fleet had escaped before that the dreadnought might have been able to gun them down later during the chase.

Back on the topic, I suppose two possible explanations for the use of carpet-bombing munitions against a capital ship would be 1) the reactor is considered an "area" target that requires multiple impacts to destroy, or 2) those were the only munitions available. The former is why a dedicated heavy bomber would be useful; sometimes you need to blanket an area with explosives rather than put a single torpedo into a 2-meter target.

 

This was super enjoyable and I’m going to invest in getting the other middle grade journal type books because I had a great time reading this and it was super quick. If you’re reading this Jason, thanks for this. Some great First Order backstory too

 

Two questions:
1. When does this “take place”? I know it’s a journal, so it could very well span a great deal of time, but yeah.
2. Is there anyway to purchase an ebook of this? Amazon doesn’t seem to have a Kindle version.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It seems to take place within a bout a year of TFA, from what I can tell. After Poe joined the Resistance, anyway, and we now know he was part of it at least two years before TFA.