2014-06-21

Damaging Starships

Just a quick list . . . it occurred to me that we see ground-scale weapons used successfully against Star Wars ships an awful lot.  According to some, of course, this ought not be even remotely possible.

1.  Arguably, anytime a Vulture droid brings down an enemy ship of any kind is a ground weapon event, given that the Vulture is a walker as well . . . and, notably, one which we've seen hand weapons disable, albeit not destroy in the same flaming way as starfighter weapons tend to.

2.  TESB . . . snowtroopers are setting up a blaster cannon for use against the Falcon, which is evidently of sufficient concern that it gets special attention from the Falcon.

3.  "Revival"[TCW5] . . . a pirate uses a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher to bring down the small cargo ship Maul and Oppress are on by striking an engine nacelle strut, damaging it and the engine.

4.  "Necessary Bond"[TCW5] . . . an older-model Jedi cruiser of about 100 meters length is shot down by a small hovertank.   A single shot to one of the engines damages it and causes a number of secondary explosions on the ship before it crashes.   The ship was being boarded for escape at the time, so the shields were almost certainly down.

5. "Necessary Bond"[TCW5] . . . Hondo, piloting a vessel that either is or is identical to Slave-I, withdraws from firing on a helpless and exposed General Grievous when two Separatist hovertanks show up.

6.  "The Lawless"[TCW5] . . . Mandalorian jetpack missiles bring down (a vessel that I refuse to accept as being) the Twilight.   (It was the "parts car" for the real one.  Totally.)

I think there are more examples . . . one could point out the Republic transports as seen in AotC getting knocked out of the sky at Ryloth, but those were (I think) anti-aircraft "proton cannons" and not any basic ground weapon like an artillery cannon.  The only other time I know of those weapons being seen, they were at Geonosis (the second time) blowing apart Republic gunships.  

(And y'know, I was gonna dismiss that example, but if you think about it, the presence of such guns does serve to explain the unusual tactic of keeping the mainline ships far away from the drop zone at Geonosis.)

2 comments:

Zwzn said...

You forgot "Downfall of a Droid" though that was AT-TE firing on the unshielded rear of some ships.

Guardian said...

How the devil could I forget that? I must be getting senile.

Additionally, ground turrets are fired against vessels in the last episode of the slaver duology. Those could be considered anti-air turrets, except we see them fired against the ground as well, to limited effect.