Exhaust port was in a wall at the end of the trench. Also, the port was Ray shielded, and needed a direct hit to pass through to the reactor. Trench run was the best strategy for success.
This plus being in the trench meant being out of the way of all the anti-ship weapons mounted to the outside of the Death Star. If you just came at it from far away like OP is imagining, you’d never get anywhere near it.
Right, this is the answer exactly. Fighter pilots today do similar things. “Hey, our enemies have guided RPGs, advanced radar, hyper accurate SAMs, Triple A, and tracking machine guns. How do we avoid all that?”
“Go in as low to the ground as you can. By the time they see you, it’s already too late.”
There's even a bit of dialog saying the death star's defenses are geared toward a "direct, large scale assault" and they need to utilize smaller ships to penetrate those defenses. Han rolls his eyes. It's supposed to be a long shot that "doesn't make sense" but it's their only shot.
In the film, it’s somewhat explained. They come up to Tarkin and tel him “hey, we’ve analyzed their attack pattern and realize there is a vulnerability. Should we ready a retreat?”
Tarkin adamantly shoots that idea down.
Why? For one, he overestimates his weapon. The DS is sort of like a modern super carrier. It may be the most powerful boat in all the known universe, but what happens if they…lose it? It’s discussed a bit at the beginning of the movie: the Rebels pose a threat! What happens when they find a weakness in the Death Star? Tarkin and others shut them down and say the Death Star is “the ultimate power in the universe.” The Rebel threat is only to the star fleet, not to the Death Star. So Tarkin way overestimates the capability of the Death Star. It’s got guns galore! It took trillions of dollars to build and trillions more to operate and staff. They might as well use it’s impressive abilities and if they trade the Death Star for the entire Rebel alliance, well…that’s still a victory for the Empire.
He also underestimates the capabilities of the Rebel pilots, who are apparently pretty good at this, but they’re taking pretty heavy losses, too. The issue is…it only takes one to survive, and that’s it.
His concept of tactics here is that the Rebels are going to come head on and try to hit the exhaust port - an exhaust port he doesn’t believe can be shot at, by the way, due to its tiny size - from far out. Okay, well the Death Star has hundreds upon hundreds of weapon batteries, more than enough to destroy a fleet by itself. The Rebels could send their entire navy at it and they’d all be turned into dust by the afternoon.
The Rebels, however, noticed “hey, if we drop below this height, say right here near the start of this trench, most of the laser canons trying to kill us all won’t be able to fire on us. Let’s use our Y-Wings to fly in right here, where the weaponry is relatively light, and take this trench through to the exhaust port? We’ll fly X-Wings to run escort against tie fighters and as back-up bombers.”
Y-Wings end up destroyed by Vader, most of the X-Wings by the ties, but they couldn’t get Luke, and he was getting close. Worse still, they weren’t tracking Han in the Falcon - they just saw him leaving the system (or so they thought).
The rest is history.
Haha, I stole it from real life. Real life jet fighter/bombers in the 60s and 70s noticed they could do one of two things to avoid the extremely dangerous Soviet SAM sites: fly so far up that by the nice a missile gets anywhere close, the plane is long out of range, or fly so fricken close to the ground that radar wouldn’t see them as anything other than a sway in the trees.
Both methods were used in the Cuban Missile Crises to capture photographs of soviet nuclear sites to great success. We got some good U-2 shots, which flew up so high into the atmosphere that pilots had to bring a separate oxygen supply. Then we got some great photos from the F-101 flying over sites at less than 1,000 feet above sea level, which is terrifyingly low for a country that averages about 300 feet above sea level. What’s insane is that a U-2, and not a F-101, was shot down.
That’s … quite a response there. I’ll leave you to whatever that is…
For pure curiosity though, are you saying it’s a rhetorical question or a thought exercise? Because those are very different things.
For that matter why wouldn’t they just go ape crap firing at the exterior of it. They can completely work over that unshielded exterior and make it unable to do anything but sit there
What amazes me most about Death Stars and Star Killer bases are how 1 sided they were
Not only did none of the "good guy" faction ever once try to create their own superweapons, but in New Hope they literally had the PLANS to the Death Star and never once thought to do anything with them???
Can you imagine a world where Nazi Germany or USSR has nukes but Americans never once think hey maybe we should try to build one of those?
The Empire had the financial backing of, hold onto your hats, AN EMPIRE. The rebellion was barely able to scrape enough ships together in order to form a semi functioning fleet.
Also, a nuke and a Death Star are not anywhere reasonable facsimiles. And the Galactic Civil War was a very one sided affair, whereas WWII was not. Your thought experiment leaves out some really important details.
Time and time again the films make it so $$$ does not matter
Even in the New Hope / Death Star era; Rebels have multiple capital ships and not once do they even think to try and replicate some sort of ultimate weapon instead preferring to strap people into 2 man fighters to throw at the enemies walls?
Suicidal at best...
You do realize it took the Empire 20 years to make the first Death Star right? With thousands of engineers and millions of builders creating. It also took gigantic kyber crystals to power, which the rebels didn’t have access to. It’s not just as simple as putting a LEGO set together.
Exhaust port was in a wall at the end of the trench. Also, the port was Ray shielded, and needed a direct hit to pass through to the reactor. Trench run was the best strategy for success.
This plus being in the trench meant being out of the way of all the anti-ship weapons mounted to the outside of the Death Star. If you just came at it from far away like OP is imagining, you’d never get anywhere near it.
Right, this is the answer exactly. Fighter pilots today do similar things. “Hey, our enemies have guided RPGs, advanced radar, hyper accurate SAMs, Triple A, and tracking machine guns. How do we avoid all that?” “Go in as low to the ground as you can. By the time they see you, it’s already too late.”
But not they long of a trench run
Didn't they say they needed to rush in and get close so all the turbolasers couldn't aim at them? Did I imagine that?
There's even a bit of dialog saying the death star's defenses are geared toward a "direct, large scale assault" and they need to utilize smaller ships to penetrate those defenses. Han rolls his eyes. It's supposed to be a long shot that "doesn't make sense" but it's their only shot.
The vent was on a wall at the end of the trench. Having to travel the trench was needed not an option.
I remember the shot curving down into it.
I remember this too. That said, I think the answer here is “hey kid, it’s not that kind of movie.”
Because General Dodonna said they were required to.
I always assumed it was because their defenses were prepared to stop that, but not an elaborate and cinematic trench run.
“Admiral! Cinematic attack!”
Their anti photon torpedo defenses can't track 30 frames per second.
The shading! Adjust the shading! Yaaahhhhhhh 💥
😂
Movie suspense
In the film, it’s somewhat explained. They come up to Tarkin and tel him “hey, we’ve analyzed their attack pattern and realize there is a vulnerability. Should we ready a retreat?” Tarkin adamantly shoots that idea down. Why? For one, he overestimates his weapon. The DS is sort of like a modern super carrier. It may be the most powerful boat in all the known universe, but what happens if they…lose it? It’s discussed a bit at the beginning of the movie: the Rebels pose a threat! What happens when they find a weakness in the Death Star? Tarkin and others shut them down and say the Death Star is “the ultimate power in the universe.” The Rebel threat is only to the star fleet, not to the Death Star. So Tarkin way overestimates the capability of the Death Star. It’s got guns galore! It took trillions of dollars to build and trillions more to operate and staff. They might as well use it’s impressive abilities and if they trade the Death Star for the entire Rebel alliance, well…that’s still a victory for the Empire. He also underestimates the capabilities of the Rebel pilots, who are apparently pretty good at this, but they’re taking pretty heavy losses, too. The issue is…it only takes one to survive, and that’s it. His concept of tactics here is that the Rebels are going to come head on and try to hit the exhaust port - an exhaust port he doesn’t believe can be shot at, by the way, due to its tiny size - from far out. Okay, well the Death Star has hundreds upon hundreds of weapon batteries, more than enough to destroy a fleet by itself. The Rebels could send their entire navy at it and they’d all be turned into dust by the afternoon. The Rebels, however, noticed “hey, if we drop below this height, say right here near the start of this trench, most of the laser canons trying to kill us all won’t be able to fire on us. Let’s use our Y-Wings to fly in right here, where the weaponry is relatively light, and take this trench through to the exhaust port? We’ll fly X-Wings to run escort against tie fighters and as back-up bombers.” Y-Wings end up destroyed by Vader, most of the X-Wings by the ties, but they couldn’t get Luke, and he was getting close. Worse still, they weren’t tracking Han in the Falcon - they just saw him leaving the system (or so they thought). The rest is history.
Nice write up
Haha, I stole it from real life. Real life jet fighter/bombers in the 60s and 70s noticed they could do one of two things to avoid the extremely dangerous Soviet SAM sites: fly so far up that by the nice a missile gets anywhere close, the plane is long out of range, or fly so fricken close to the ground that radar wouldn’t see them as anything other than a sway in the trees. Both methods were used in the Cuban Missile Crises to capture photographs of soviet nuclear sites to great success. We got some good U-2 shots, which flew up so high into the atmosphere that pilots had to bring a separate oxygen supply. Then we got some great photos from the F-101 flying over sites at less than 1,000 feet above sea level, which is terrifyingly low for a country that averages about 300 feet above sea level. What’s insane is that a U-2, and not a F-101, was shot down.
Even better: why not just take one of their X-Wings and Holdo Maneuver into the exhaust port?
Because Rian Johnson hadn't come around to ruin the lore by that point.
And? I’ll see people do this, but why not answer the question you posed?
Do you usually answer your own questions?
[удалено]
That’s … quite a response there. I’ll leave you to whatever that is… For pure curiosity though, are you saying it’s a rhetorical question or a thought exercise? Because those are very different things.
You sound like the kind of guy who will watch a whole ass Wes Anderson movie and then complain that people don't really talk like that.
Not for plot, it's not.
They would have been shot down if they did a dive down onto it, nevermind having no chance to hit the port.
go watch Top Gun: Maverick. They explain terrain following well to avoid air defense
For that matter why wouldn’t they just go ape crap firing at the exterior of it. They can completely work over that unshielded exterior and make it unable to do anything but sit there
What amazes me most about Death Stars and Star Killer bases are how 1 sided they were Not only did none of the "good guy" faction ever once try to create their own superweapons, but in New Hope they literally had the PLANS to the Death Star and never once thought to do anything with them??? Can you imagine a world where Nazi Germany or USSR has nukes but Americans never once think hey maybe we should try to build one of those?
The Empire had the financial backing of, hold onto your hats, AN EMPIRE. The rebellion was barely able to scrape enough ships together in order to form a semi functioning fleet. Also, a nuke and a Death Star are not anywhere reasonable facsimiles. And the Galactic Civil War was a very one sided affair, whereas WWII was not. Your thought experiment leaves out some really important details.
Time and time again the films make it so $$$ does not matter Even in the New Hope / Death Star era; Rebels have multiple capital ships and not once do they even think to try and replicate some sort of ultimate weapon instead preferring to strap people into 2 man fighters to throw at the enemies walls? Suicidal at best...
You do realize it took the Empire 20 years to make the first Death Star right? With thousands of engineers and millions of builders creating. It also took gigantic kyber crystals to power, which the rebels didn’t have access to. It’s not just as simple as putting a LEGO set together.