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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

TIEs not having shields probably comes from the way they explode into puffy clouds compared to X-Wings, which explode into chunky meteors. However, that could also be the result of TIEs having a pair of teeny-tiny practical guns while X-Wings sport twice as many f-huge cannon. Also, X-Wings are bigger and slabbier.

One of the funny things when you go back to ANH is although shields are specifically mentioned on the X-Wings, they really don't take a hit any better than the TIEs. Certainly nothing like the soaking of damage you see in most media. If a TIE gets a shot off, they tend to explode all the same.

I think the more realistic answer of the difference in explosions is just that bad guys go poof so everyone cheer. Good guys have to have some time for the audience to garner sympathy.

I never actually saw 8 or 9. And frankly. I feel rather blessed. I have a rough idea what all happens but I was on the fence after 7. Everything I heard about Last Jedi made me not want to watch it.

You should. It's not quite as good as Empire or RotJ but it's up there.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The no gravity in space thing went out the window in ANH, pay close attention to how the death star trench run works... heres a hint:

You’re not getting that one. Proton torpedoes are guided. The fly straight forward when launched, and then turn to hit the target.

Tie bombers are fair game.

There's nothing wrong with Tie Bombers though.

 Flinty wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The no gravity in space thing went out the window in ANH, pay close attention to how the death star trench run works... heres a hint:

You’re not getting that one. Proton torpedoes are guided. The fly straight forward when launched, and then turn to hit the target.

Tie bombers are fair game.

Depending on your source (made more difficult by the fact that current canon doesn't really seem to specify in any way shape or form) ,the proton torps fired by T-65B X-Wings were unguided and the whole point of the targeting computer was to identify the release point at which their trajectory would place them on target (in this case down the exhaust shaft). In any case, in the instance of the successful shot Luke turned off his targeting computer, which leads one to believe that they were, in fact, fired in an unguided mode.


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 KingmanHighborn wrote:
There's nothing wrong with Tie Bombers though.

There is when they are *dropping* bombs straight down as though they are under the influence of gravity when they are in a microgravity/zero-g environment, according to the thesis that resistance bombers are bad on the same basis.


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 Vulcan wrote:

Resistance Bombers? I well recall people harping on about No Gravity In Space. Turns out in canon? Gravitic Racks. Just enough to give them a wee hurl toward their target.

Which is fine. That was never my problem with them in the first place. My problems were

1) Aside from selling a new toy, there's no reason to go with new bombers instead of Y-Wings,

2) Dropping 1000 bombs in such tight patters means the first one detonates, and either sets off all the rest in a chain reaction AWAY from the target, or the explosion of the first bomb starts scattering the rest all over creation instead of focusing the destruction in one point like we see in the movie.

3) And that's even before considering how slow the bombers are. Remember that as slow as they appeared on screen moving toward the Dreadnaught? The Dreadnaught was also moving toward them AND the Resistance Fleet behind them, meaning they were EVEN SLOWER THAN THEY APPEAR ON SCREEN.

4) Last but not least, they're so fragile just using them in combat is a suicide mission. Leia should have slapped the logistics officer who procured them instead of a proven ship-killing design like Y-Wings and ion torpedoes; not Poe.

"Aside from selling a new toy, there's no reason to go with B-2 Spirits instead of P-47 Thunderbolts".

Basically your argument in a nutshell. You're comparing a modern heavy bomber to a 60+ year old fighter-bomber. Completely different roles, completely different capabilities, etc. etc. etc. Its well-established in dialogue when Poe is doing his attack run that its impossible for an X-Wings weapons to penetrate the Mandators armor, the Y-Wings bomb load is only moderately more capable than the X-Wings, its fair to say that it wasn't going to happen.

CANADY: That 'puny ship' is too small and at too close range. We need to scramble our fighters! Five bloody minutes ago.
GONERIL: He'll never penetrate our armor.
CANADY: He's not trying to penetrate our armor. He's clearing out our surface cannons.

The rational conclusion is that an 8+km long dreadnought is well beyond the capability of the Y-Wings which were principally used to attack 1.6km star destroyers 3 decades prior, not that the Y-Wings are capable of handling threats which we've never seen them used to tackle. Keep in mind that thanks to the square-cube law, the dreadnought is something like 125 times more massive than an Imperial Star Destroyer, despite only a 4-5x increase in length.

That being said, your complaint is basically wholly irrelevant because its a narrative plot point that using the bombers was unnecessary to begin with - that Poe used them in the attack, and in the process lost them all, is basically the key point of conflict between him and Leia/Holdo. They may have been the right or wrong tool for the job, but the job never had to be done in the first place - there was no tactical or strategic need or advantage to be had by destroying the dreadnought.

With regards to the bombs being in too tight of a pattern - thats not how bombs/detonators work, especially not in a fictional setting where they can use all sorts of handwavium to justify why sympathetic detonation isn't occurring. It is possible to design bombs and munitions to minimize and eliminate sympathetic detonation for applications exactly like this - or did you just think it was magic that real world bombers can deliver dozens of bombs onto a single target in tight patterns without the first bomb cooking off the rest?

You kind of got me on the slowness though, yes they were very slow - but its also incorrect to say that the dreadnought was moving forward, theres nothing to suggest that it was and a lot to suggest that it was stationary/holding position. In fact, the entire initial scene of Poe sitting in his X-Wing alone in front of the dreadnought is only actually possible if its stationary. The X-Wing is powered down, and the Mandator isn't getting any closer to him.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Nope. It is covered in canon media though. It’s the expectation that the sequels need to explain everything right there and then, when none of the other two trilogies did any such thing.

So, you basically ignored your own argument Doc?

Not at all.

My examples are people not questioning things in the preceding films that are only explained in spin-off canon (books, comics etc), whilst demanding the prequels explain everything there and then.

I feel like you are arguing against things no one really complained too hard about while ignoring the glaring obvious.

 Easy E wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Resistance Bombers? I well recall people harping on about No Gravity In Space. Turns out in canon? Gravitic Racks. Just enough to give them a wee hurl toward their target.

Were those mentioned on the film? I do not recall?

They were not, but honestly, I don't think a tech explanation is even necessary beyond what we see in the film: Multiple shots of people walking on board the bomber showing that they have gravity on board, driven home further by Paige Tico having to climb up, and falling down the ladder through the bomb bay shows that section of the ship, and when she releases the bombs they too fall through that same space until they leave the ship, continuing to move because an object in motion stays in motion.

Alternatively, genuinely weird stuff, like the way the Supremacy's turbolasers arc to hit the fleeing rebel fleet would be worth an explanation in a book somewhere.

Honestly, Star Wars is at its best when they don't explain the technical aspects at all. I still cringe when I think about the TFA visual dictionary attempting to explain how Starkiller Bases deathbeam was visible in real time from the other side of the galaxy thanks to phantom energy opening up a tear in sub-hyperspace.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Quadjumper is a tugboat not a light freighter. The Falcon while a freighter is also heavily after marketed with 2 quad turbolasers and missile launcher. So it's more akin to a Me109 taking on a B-25 Mitchell or a B-26 Marauder. The 262 would be closer to something like the Silencer in comparison. So it's not out of the realm that she and Finn could make do with the Falcon against F/O Tie Fighters.

Also Luke never flew in combat until Yavin. Even with the T-16.

Also the Resistance bombers wouldn't even need gravitic racks, they'd drop out at speed into space because of the 1:1 artificial gravity in the bomber, because there's no friction.

We hear Luke claim to 'bullseye womp rats' in the desert. And we've also seen that sandpeople like to hang out in the desert. We don't know that he hasn't been shot at while flying before. We do know he's done some shooting while flying before.

Again, where is this established for Rey? Where does she learn to fly that B-25/26 like it's a fighter? Hmmm? We can speculate that she did this or that or the other... but where's the on screen mention that she did ANY of those things that would justify her flying the Millennium Falcon as good as Han or Lando who'd been flying it for years?

Every Star Wars movie that isn't the Phantom Menace being shown on the big screen in 1999 is absolute peak, premium, platinum, depleted uranium-tipped cringe, objectively speaking, and you cannot and will not change my mind.

 Vulcan wrote:

We hear Luke claim to 'bullseye womp rats' in the desert. And we've also seen that sandpeople like to hang out in the desert. We don't know that he hasn't been shot at while flying before. We do know he's done some shooting while flying before.

Shooting what amounts to a big rabbit and being in war are entirely different things. Yavin is Luke's first actual battle in a war. It's a military engagement the likes of which he has only ever heard stories about. Not only does he handle himself in that situation in a way no reasonable person should be able to, he is the single most important person in the entire conflict and delivers the fatal blow that turns the tide of the battle and the rebellions place in the galaxy.

Lets not pretend that ANYTHING in Luke's history prepares him in any capacity for that engagement or explains how cool he handles every aspect of it, including watching friends and comrades die in explosions as their ships smash into the side of a moon sized battle station.

The basic argument that Rey is a mary sue or that 7-9 do a bad job of setting up the skills of it's characters is terrible. SW has always had characters just learn random gak in the moment the plot demanded and the explanations for why have always been flimsy at best.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not at all.

My examples are people not questioning things in the preceding films that are only explained in spin-off canon (books, comics etc), whilst demanding the prequels explain everything there and then.

But your examples are all things that don't matter to the films in any way at all.

Nothing in any movie changes if Han is Correlian or not. Or if we know the names of the random bounty hunters (especially the ones that don't even show up again).
You're bizarrely conflating 'knowledge of random trivia' with criticism, and they're not even related concepts.

chaos0xomega wrote:


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 KingmanHighborn wrote:
There's nothing wrong with Tie Bombers though.

There is when they are *dropping* bombs straight down as though they are under the influence of gravity when they are in a microgravity/zero-g environment, according to the thesis that resistance bombers are bad on the same basis.

Except that there's gravity IN the ship. Otherwise Rose's sister wouldn't have fallen down in the first place. You don't even need the hand wave of 'gravitic racks' just letting the bombs go inside the thing WITH gravity would drop them at acceleration out into space, which HAS NO/VERY LITTLE FRICTION so they'd plow down at the same pace a bomb dropped from a regular bomber would on Earth.

Tie Bombers though actually do shoot their bombs downward, so they hit faster then the target can avoid similar to how dive bombers like Stukas or a Dauntless did by diving to rapidly drop it. So there's absolutely no issue with the bombs on EITHER one.

Also the Resistance bomber would be carpet bombing with those bombs and that's something real world bombers do and they don't have to worry about 'sympathetic detonation' so that's not an issue either.

The whole “dropping” issue seems like a strawman. The complaint is the bombers are uncharacteristically slow for Star Wars ships. Ridiculously slow.

Now the turbo laser shots later in TLJ that follow a ballistic arc, those make space gravity a problem.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


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 KingmanHighborn wrote:
There's nothing wrong with Tie Bombers though.

There is when they are *dropping* bombs straight down as though they are under the influence of gravity when they are in a microgravity/zero-g environment, according to the thesis that resistance bombers are bad on the same basis.

Except that there's gravity IN the ship. Otherwise Rose's sister wouldn't have fallen down in the first place. You don't even need the hand wave of 'gravitic racks' just letting the bombs go inside the thing WITH gravity would drop them at acceleration out into space, which HAS NO/VERY LITTLE FRICTION so they'd plow down at the same pace a bomb dropped from a regular bomber would on Earth.

Tie Bombers though actually do shoot their bombs downward, so they hit faster then the target can avoid similar to how dive bombers like Stukas or a Dauntless did by diving to rapidly drop it. So there's absolutely no issue with the bombs on EITHER one.

Also the Resistance bomber would be carpet bombing with those bombs and that's something real world bombers do and they don't have to worry about 'sympathetic detonation' so that's not an issue either.

I think you've entirely missed the point of the discussion as you and I seem to be on the same side, just talking around eachother... although it does need to be mentioned that TIE Bombers - and TIE series craft in general - do *not* have artificial gravity generators on board. Nor do TIE Bombers "shoot" their bombs. They have a bomb drop chute, but thats not the same thing. They do have a missile launcher in the forward section of the pod - but thats for launching concussion missiles, proton torpedoes, etc. *forward*, it doesn't fire them downward.


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The whole “dropping” issue seems like a strawman. The complaint is the bombers are uncharacteristically slow for Star Wars ships. Ridiculously slow.

Now the turbo laser shots later in TLJ that follow a ballistic arc, those make space gravity a problem.

You can't cherry pick your problems. Either there is space in gravity to drop a bomb and arc a turbolaser shot, or there isn't. Theres no "handwave one problem away but not the other" option.

And its not really a strawman, its an actual complaint generated by someone who is using it to justify their dislike of the film. If they are going to use that as the basis of their complaint, I am going to pick apart their so-called argument until its clear that its not an argument at all and that they are hating for the sake of hate and not because they have a legitimate issue with the film.

But yes, they are painfully and inexplicably slow.

I've seen 8th, it was okay. I've not seen 9, but from clips and reviews it definitely sounds way worse. Like..."we've given up all hope of salvaging this mess" bad, therefore it is probably more "cringe".

 Vulcan wrote:
Again, where is this established for Rey? Where does she learn to fly that B-25/26 like it's a fighter? Hmmm? We can speculate that she did this or that or the other... but where's the on screen mention that she did ANY of those things that would justify her flying the Millennium Falcon as good as Han or Lando who'd been flying it for years?

After they escape the ties, she says "I've flown some ships but I've never actually left the planet." Finn also repeatedly asks if anyone has trained her because he can't believe she's not been trained, their dialogue doesn't really match up too cleanly but they are supposed to be talking over each other coming down off the adrenaline.

Shortly after, Han asks where she got the ship, and she says "I stole it, from Unkar Plutt. He stole it from the Irving Boys, who stole it from Ducain." and when Han comes back complaining about the compressor on the ignition line she says Plutt did it despite her insistence that it was a bad idea.

Combine that with knowing that Plutt had the Quad Jumper, and knowing enough to prefer it as an escape vehicle to the Falcon, the fact that we see that she was left with Plutt as a child. She clearly did fly jobs for Plutt, and almost certainly was involved with stealing and modifying the Falcon, probably other ships too.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The whole “dropping” issue seems like a strawman. The complaint is the bombers are uncharacteristically slow for Star Wars ships. Ridiculously slow.

I don't agree - their slowness is acknowledged in-universe as a problem the ships have and that part people seem generally able to accept, I see a lot more people arguing that it doesn't make sense to drop the bombs out into space because 'there's no gravity in space', which is both factually wrong and entirely misses the point.

chaos0xomega wrote:
You can't cherry pick your problems. Either there is space in gravity to drop a bomb and arc a turbolaser shot, or there isn't. Theres no "handwave one problem away but not the other" option.

Again, the bombs are accelerated by the artificial gravity inside the ship, while they are inside the ship, once they leave the ship they continue moving in that direction because they're already moving at that speed and direction and there's nothing acting on them to make them slow down.

The turbo-laser arcing doesn't work though, because at that point they're showing a curve while they're well into open space - that needs some kind of magnetic attraction or maybe some exotic behaviour caused by it passing through specially modulated shields or something. It's legit weird and worth speculating over.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

We hear Luke claim to 'bullseye womp rats' in the desert. And we've also seen that sandpeople like to hang out in the desert. We don't know that he hasn't been shot at while flying before. We do know he's done some shooting while flying before.

Shooting what amounts to a big rabbit and being in war are entirely different things. Yavin is Luke's first actual battle in a war. It's a military engagement the likes of which he has only ever heard stories about. Not only does he handle himself in that situation in a way no reasonable person should be able to, he is the single most important person in the entire conflict and delivers the fatal blow that turns the tide of the battle and the rebellions place in the galaxy.

Lets not pretend that ANYTHING in Luke's history prepares him in any capacity for that engagement or explains how cool he handles every aspect of it, including watching friends and comrades die in explosions as their ships smash into the side of a moon sized battle station.

The basic argument that Rey is a mary sue or that 7-9 do a bad job of setting up the skills of it's characters is terrible. SW has always had characters just learn random gak in the moment the plot demanded and the explanations for why have always been flimsy at best.

That's fair, to a point. But let's further face the fact that Lucas does a far better job with Luke than he does with Anakin, or Disney does with Rey.


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 KingmanHighborn wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


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 KingmanHighborn wrote:
There's nothing wrong with Tie Bombers though.

There is when they are *dropping* bombs straight down as though they are under the influence of gravity when they are in a microgravity/zero-g environment, according to the thesis that resistance bombers are bad on the same basis.

Except that there's gravity IN the ship. Otherwise Rose's sister wouldn't have fallen down in the first place. You don't even need the hand wave of 'gravitic racks' just letting the bombs go inside the thing WITH gravity would drop them at acceleration out into space, which HAS NO/VERY LITTLE FRICTION so they'd plow down at the same pace a bomb dropped from a regular bomber would on Earth.

Tie Bombers though actually do shoot their bombs downward, so they hit faster then the target can avoid similar to how dive bombers like Stukas or a Dauntless did by diving to rapidly drop it. So there's absolutely no issue with the bombs on EITHER one.

Also the Resistance bomber would be carpet bombing with those bombs and that's something real world bombers do and they don't have to worry about 'sympathetic detonation' so that's not an issue either.

Go to 1:17 and watch the bombs fall. See how fast they separate? That's the speed of the B-52, air resistance, and... well, the B-52 isn't trying to drop 1000 bombs within a footprint no larger than itself.


Go to 0:45 and watch the bombs fall. See how tight the pattern is? The bombs are exploding right on top of each other, not separated by fifty feet or more. That's MORE than close enough for sympathetic detonation, or at the very least the blast front of the first bomb throwing a couple hundred of the follow-on bombs off like shrapnel.

Not getting into the gravity argument. That's not my problem with the scene, not even a tiny bit. Be it internal gravity, gravity from the nearby planet, or some sort of linear accelerator built into the bomb racks, whatever.

Far bigger problems are the ones I've addressed and rarely get answered satisfactorily.

I have some sympathy with the writers of episode 9. They were dealt such a bad hand with episode 8 there wasn't a great deal they could do. However, bringing back Sheev was a terrible move and they should have had faith in Kylo as the bad guy.

I prefer not to think of the sequels as canon, in the same way as far as I'm concerned Darth Maul died in TPM

 Captain Joystick wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
You can't cherry pick your problems. Either there is space in gravity to drop a bomb and arc a turbolaser shot, or there isn't. Theres no "handwave one problem away but not the other" option.

Again, the bombs are accelerated by the artificial gravity inside the ship, while they are inside the ship, once they leave the ship they continue moving in that direction because they're already moving at that speed and direction and there's nothing acting on them to make them slow down.

The turbo-laser arcing doesn't work though, because at that point they're showing a curve while they're well into open space - that needs some kind of magnetic attraction or maybe some exotic behaviour caused by it passing through specially modulated shields or something. It's legit weird and worth speculating over.

On the Resistance Bomber, yes. This doesn't explain the same behavior on a TIE Bomber (which lacks internal gravity) or unguided proton torpedoes from an X-wing parabolically arcing themselves into an exhaust port.

Again, you can't cherry pick your problems. If The proton torpedoes can arc, and the TIE Bombers bombs *drop*, then the turbolasers can arc too.

Go to 1:17 and watch the bombs fall. See how fast they separate? That's the speed of the B-52, air resistance, and... well, the B-52 isn't trying to drop 1000 bombs within a footprint no larger than itself.

You've picked a video pretty favorable to your stance here (even still a lot of those explosions are falling a lot closer to one another than you seem to realize). Try this:




In both sets of ground views you can see bombs coming in within just a few feet of eachother, especially the second closeup on the tank around 10-15 seconds in.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Go to 1:17 and watch the bombs fall. See how fast they separate? That's the speed of the B-52, air resistance, and... well, the B-52 isn't trying to drop 1000 bombs within a footprint no larger than itself.

You've picked a video pretty favorable to your stance here (even still a lot of those explosions are falling a lot closer to one another than you seem to realize). Try this:




In both sets of ground views you can see bombs coming in within just a few feet of eachother, especially the second closeup on the tank around 10-15 seconds in.

I think those bombs are a wee bit larger than you realize, which is causing you to underestimate how close together they're landing. At that distance, the bombs dropped from a starfortress would only be visible because there were so many of them so tightly packed together.

On my screen, the still frame of the B-1 is roughly 100mm long, and the bomb that has just been dropped from the front bomb bay is 5mm long, so the bomb is 1/20th the length of the bomber. (The measurements will probably be different on your screen, but the proportion will be the same.)

A B-1 is 146' long, making the bomb approximately seven feet long (likely making it a 500 lb bomb, with an outside possibility it's a 750 lb bomb instead). Even on the still, the bombs nearest the bottom of the frame are no closer than fifteen feet apart, and they'll continue to separate as they fall.

And that tank is well in front of the bomb impacts you're seeing. This means the bomb impacts are again significantly farther apart than you think they are.

Now go back and look at the SW video. Those bombs aren't much bigger than Paige Tico's head. Call it a foot in diameter max but deliver explosive power comparable to the modern bombs. Presuming comparable average density to said 500 pound bomb and being roughly the same diameter but 1/8th the length yields an overall weight of 60-odd pounds. This makes it far more vulnerable to being blown off-target... say by the shockwave of the equivalent of a modern 500-pound bomb going off less than ten feet away.

Considering this is a topic I actually know anout from a professional standpoint, Im just going to go ahead and say that you're way overthinking this.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Considering this is a topic I actually know anout from a professional standpoint, Im just going to go ahead and say that you're way overthinking this.

Well, there really isn't any other enjoyment to be derived from the movie, so...

 Vulcan wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Considering this is a topic I actually know anout from a professional standpoint, Im just going to go ahead and say that you're way overthinking this.

Well, there really isn't any other enjoyment to be derived from the movie, so...

Fair. I'm pro-Episode 8 (in case you couldn't tell) but it brings me little real pleasure, none of the sequel films do.

At to TIEs vs Xwings, come on guys, we've seen x wings take hits and survive . A couple times in ANH an xwing took a hit and survived. Even Porkin's X wing didn't die the second it was hit, he was trying to keep it going. Luke's took a hit and kept on going, i think wedge's took a hit and made it back.

With the obvious exception of vader's advanced prototype, TIEs died like flies. We never really saw a damaged TIE, they got hit, the died.

Hell, i think they exploded if an enemy shot came within 3 feet of them. At times I think those big black suits and helmets TIE pilots wore were to hold gas in because a TIE might explode if the pilot let off an uncontained belch or fart in one.

Plus the xwinf cockpit made sense, the pilot could see out of it, he could see to the sides and above him.

TIE cockpits were a joke. those wing panels meant zero peripheral vision. the pilot also could not see out of the bottom half of the windows in the front because the control panel was in the way. He only had tiny slit windows in the hatch to allow extremely limited vision above him.

I think TIE cockpits were heavily influenced by the cockpit of the ME-109, one of nazi germany's most common fighters and one who most pilots agree was not very pilot friendly despite the overall 109 design being technologically advanced over most ww2 fighters.

From an article on ww2 fighters.

"In terms of ease of operation, there were advantages and shortcomings to both designs. The Spitfire’s bubble canopy and large mirrors offered excellent views and better situational awareness to the pilot. The Bf 109s angular canopy with its thick frame fell short. On the other hand, the Bf 109’s Revi gunsight was far ahead of the early Spitfire’s ring-and-bead type sight. It eliminated parallax errors and made deflection shots more accurate. The aircraft’s engine and propeller controls were also more automated, which reduced pilot workload.

On the flip side, the Bf 109’s small size made the cockpit very cramped. Not only was it uncomfortable, it also restricted the force that pilots could apply on the controls, with obvious effects on flight performance. Post-war testing by the RAF revealed that under certain conditions, the force that pilots could exert on the Bf 109’s control column was only 40% of what they could apply in the Spitfire. In an era when hydraulically boosted controls were not available, this was a serious deficiency. The Spitfire’s two-step rudder pedals also allowed the pilot to raise his feet high during high-G manoeuvring, delaying the onset of blackout. The Bf 109 had no such pedals."


Here's a pic of a 109 canopy with it's panels and frame design. Pilots called it a bad canopy but it was still better than a TIE fighters by a long shot.



Here's a close up on a detailed model of a tie made from the original movie blueprints, imagine the view you get from that with zero side views.



Of course the movie shows this view from a TIE cockpit even tho the model shows it to be mpossible.

The octogon is on its point on the model, but resting on its side when the camera looks through it. Clearly the camera can’t be looking through the same window as the pilot. The only possible explanation is that the empire makes teeny-tiny cockpit windows to be fitted over every TIE’s gun camera.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The octogon is on its point on the model, but resting on its side when the camera looks through it. Clearly the camera can’t be looking through the same window as the pilot. The only possible explanation is that the empire makes teeny-tiny cockpit windows to be fitted over every TIE’s gun camera.

Well feth me running.

I'll be damned again if you aren't right. How the hell did i miss that all these years? No wonder you're an inquisitor.

Here;s what a view from a TIE would be like from the pilots POV.



If that isn't the most limited POV of any so called fighter I don't know what is...

Yeah, today we could say the pilots wore VR goggles that had feeds from cameras in the body that gave a full simulated view but not in 1977.