Lets talk all things Star Wars

[Joek3rr]

Greebling or greeble. A term made up at ILM do describe the doodads on a model or prop that give that look, of this thing is real thing that actually works.

What's everyone's favorite greeble?

Mine is probably going to disappoint. But I love those knurled screws used for the "activation" buttons on the prequel sabers. There's just something to how light reflects off of red anodized aluminum that I just love.

 

[Halliwax]

Greebling or greeble. A term made up at ILM do describe the doodads on a model or prop that give that look, of this thing is real thing that actually works.

What's everyone's favorite greeble?

Mine is probably going to disappoint. But I love those knurled screws used for the "activation" buttons on the prequel sabers. There's just something to how light reflects off of red anodized aluminum that I just love.

Mystery chunk

 

[Laspector]

The connector part of a zip tie. Great greeblie. I've used them on tons of models.

 

[Psab keel]

Cone knobs are a favorite of mine.

 

[Joek3rr]

Mystery chunk

Hahaha, should have seen that coming!

 

[Joek3rr]

The connector part of a zip tie. Great greeblie. I've used them on tons of models.

That's so cool! Could I bother you for a picture?

 

[Halliwax]

The connector part of a zip tie. Great greeblie. I've used them on tons of models.

I would have never thought of that!! Genius!

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

I want to talk about Rogue Group in The Empire Strikes Back.

A lot of people tend to identify Rogue Group as Rogue Squadron. Rogue Squadron (if memory serves) did not exist to the first Thrawn Trilogy and it was established in honor of the members of Rogue Group, not a continuation of an existing squadron of the same name. After all, we know Red Squadron was still used and existed in Return of the Jedi.

IMHO, T-47 airspeeders in Rogue Group was like a Star Wars version of Humvees in the Armored Calvary. I also submit that Rogue Group could have consisted of a mix of pilots from various existing squadrons and not just one specific squadron. It is also MHO that those individuals in rear seat of the speeders are not pilots (I know the databank and other old and new canon says differently) but instead would be closer to a Naval Flight Officer serving as weapons officers or enlisted personal serving in a roll similar to that of Naval Aircrew or Flight Engineer. I just think it is a waste of a skilled pilot to have them serving in such a roll. Just like Finn in the back seat of a Special Ops TIE during Poe's escape. You don't need a pilot to fire a weapon or check and operate systems.

In current cannon, the comics have brought back Rogue Squadron. This time recognizing the origins of Rogue One. https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-origins...ialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
I’ve not read the comic so I don’t know if the idea was that the use of the name was a one time thing because of the factors involved or if the name was to be carried forward and therefore why they were called Rogues in The Empire Strikes Back or if it was just another use of the name.

This brings me to another pet peeve... when they wiped out the old eu, imho, they should have treated all old and new comics and novels as legacy. In which I mean that they should not be treated as canon. I just don’t feel enough research and collaboration is involved in these stories.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

My view is that the rear seaters are pilots as well. It would be like how in a AH-64 Apache helicopter where the gunner (front seat) is also a pilot. The Astromechs could move the X-Wings to the staging area and they must have had some other pilots because if I remember correctly they were already launching escorts with the transports while the battle was going on. So they have some extra pilots with nothing to do.

I pretty much figured the new EU Rogue Squadron would have their name be taken from the Rogue One mission.

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

My view is that the rear seaters are pilots as well. It would be like how in a AH-64 Apache helicopter where the gunner (front seat) is also a pilot. The Astromechs could move the X-Wings to the staging area and they must have had some other pilots because if I remember correctly they were already launching escorts with the transports while the battle was going on. So they have some extra pilots with nothing to do.

I pretty much figured the new EU Rogue Squadron would have their name be taken from the Rogue One mission.

Is the Apache gunner facing the rear? Uhh no. Also, not every military aircraft with a back seat (unless a trainer) has controls in the back seat. Rear facing is ok for targeting computers for weapons, but not a great position to be piloting. Take the F-14 Tomcat. The RIO does not have flight controls. Also, from most official schematics , cutaways, databanks, the craft is listed as having 1x pilot and 1x gunner. Not pilot and copilot. To me it just comes down to lazy fans and lazy comic/novel writers. Their lame thinking... Luke is a pilot and he wears an orange suit. So if this other guy is dressed like Luke, then that guy must be a pilot too. Whatever...

I agree the idea is that Rogue Group (not squadron) was an homage to Rogue One. My point is that the movies never said Rogue Squadron but people jump to that assumption.

 

[Joek3rr]

Is the Apache gunner facing the rear? Uhh no. Also, not every military aircraft with a back seat (unless a trainer) has controls in the back seat. Rear facing is ok for targeting computers for weapons, but not a great position to be piloting. Take the F-14 Tomcat. The RIO does not have flight controls. Also, from most official schematics , cutaways, databanks, the craft is listed as having 1x pilot and 1x gunner. Not pilot and copilot. To me it just comes down to lazy fans and lazy comic/novel writers. Their lame thinking... Luke is a pilot and he wears an orange suit. So if this other guy is dressed like Luke, then that guy must be a pilot too. Whatever...

I agree the idea is that Rogue Group (not squadron) was an homage to Rogue One. My point is that the movies never said Rogue Squadron but people jump to that assumption.

So Rogue Squadron was coined by Timothy Zahn. Which was supposed to be Rogue Group renamed after the films. But Rogue Squadron was........you know what, its inconsistent EU stuff that's confusing so I'll just post what's on Wookieepedia

Rogue Squadron's origins date back to Irvin Kershner's 1980 film Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, wherein Luke Skywalker commands a team of snowspeeder pilots during the Battle of Hoth that he calls "Rogue Group."[47] The movie's novelization also uses the designation "Rogue Group,"[184] but its radio drama identifies the group as "Rogue Flight,"[47] a name that would be echoed in 1984's A Guide to the Star Wars Universe.[185] Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, published in 1989, again uses "Rogue Group," and describes them as a squadron of starfighter pilots who are pressed into service flying snowspeeders in times of need.[186] 1990's The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook refers to all of the starfighter units assigned to Hoth's Echo Base as "rogue squadrons,"[187] and Galaxy Guide 5: Return of the Jedi, published in the same year, again uses the term "Rogue Group" to refer to Skywalker's squadron.[188]

Ralph McQuarrie's concept art of Rogue Group at the Battle of Hoth

It was author Timothy Zahn who coined the term "Rogue Squadron" and established the Rogues as an elite fighting force of the New Republic, active five years after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, while writing his 1991 novel Heir to the Empire.[189] The Second Edition of Galaxy Guide 3, published in 1996, went on to state that "Rogue Group" fell under the command of Wedge Antilles following the Battle of Hoth, and that it was remodeled and renamed "Rogue Squadron" prior to Return of the Jedi's Battle of Endor.[190] More recently, 2012's The Essential Guide to Warfare has established a definitive timeline regarding the squadron's nomenclature: "Rogue Flight" was born just after Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope's Battle of Yavin, and while Skywalker and Antilles were later stationed on Hoth, they were considering expanding the flight into a full-fledged squadron. Hoth's Echo Base was attacked, however, and "Rogue Group" was an ersatz snowspeeder unit created from Rogue Flight, Green Squadron, and Blue Squadron, and tasked with defending Echo Base.[6] The Rogues then became a full twelve-person squadron following the battle.[50] Nevertheless, various sources refer to the pre-Hoth Rogues as either Rogue Group[22] or Rogue Squadron.[28][34]

A different origin story for the Rogues is given in Brian Wood's 2013–2014 comic series Star Wars. The series' tenth issue sees Skywalker and Antilles flying in the Rebel Alliance's black ops Stealth Squadron, which Antilles suggests renaming Rogue Squadron.[191] Two issues later, he formally requests that Stealth Squadron be dissolved so that he may form Rogue Squadron, a proper Alliance squadron that fights out in the open. His request is approved.[192] This runs contrary to the Rogue Squadron origin story given in Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, Second Edition[22]and reiterated in such sources as The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia[2] and The Essential Guide to Warfare.[6] The two conflicting stories have not been reconciled.


But as far as the gunners bring pilots. It makes sense when you consider that they probably didn't have enough T-47s to go around. And those pilots would be excellent gunners being really adept at leading targets. And when it was time to load the up T-47s both guys could hop out and jump in their fighters.

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

It's just a more of the same crap. There is no reason an airspeed group has to be tied to a star fighter squadron.

According to the script, a dozen airspeeds were launched. That means that 24 personnel are manning the craft. The other thing to consider is that it there is more than just Rogue Group. There could be more. We only hear Luke talking to his own group. We know Luke, Wedge, Zev, and Hobbie are pilots for Rogue Group. That is four. Can it be that a group consists of 4 airspeeds. Can there be 3 groups out there? Are all groups from the same squadron or did different squadrons assign pilots for the groups. We tend to think of a squadron of at most 12.

Also... We know that Luke's experience as pilot seemed to be based on his T-16 airspeeds. So my other thoughts are about what it takes to be a pilot and to what extent do the Rebels assign pilots to craft. We can see from Attack of the Clones, that airspeeds are like cars so being a pilot (since it seems like operating an airspeeds makes you a pilot if you go back to Luke and his T-16) is not a difficult skill level. But i would have to think that more skills are needed going from an airspeeds to a star fighter or other space worthy craft especially if jumping to hyperspace. So i have to wonder if they might assign a pilot to an airspeeds and not consider them a star fighter pilot. I would have to believe Star Fighters are a valuable resource and they only have so many to go around.

The other thing is that they are still sending out transports when the Luke gets to the area his X-Wing is waiting. There is no reason not to believe that pilots and gunners the survived the AT-ATs, are not assigned to be evacuated on a transport. just because Luke and Wedge have an X-Wing waiting, it would be an assumption to believe everyone had one waiting. Also, 2-1B medical droid that states "Sir, it will take quite a while to evacuate the T-47s." to which Luke responds "Forget the heavy equipment."

 

[Treadwell]

It was a mistake for the EU to assume Too Onebee was talking about Snowspeeders. Luke's response infers that they are "modules", and given the droid's department, they might have been medically related. Perhaps related to Bacta tanks.

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

I agree. However it has been my experience in the military you can be tasked with a lot of collateral duties that may or may not have anything to do with your primary role in the unit. Maybe in the Star Wars universe, that extends to droid duties as well. "Hey droid! If you don't have anything to bandage, pick something up and move it."

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Yeahhh... This is firmly over in the "Dammit, George..." circle of the Venn diagram. Cobbled together from multiple interviews, transcripts, and notes, George admits to being fond of the sounds of certain words. "Commander" and "Group" are two of those. It's easy enough to rationalize things that there's no actual rank of Commander in the setting, but that it's always a position/job title. Like over in Star Trek where Ron Moore apparently couldn't tell the difference between Miles O'Brien's job of Transporter Chief and his rank, and so he went from being a Lieutenant to being a CPO.

George's inconsistent use of "group" is harder to work with. I've talked about it before, here and elsewhere. But germane to this... Earlier, two techs are conferring and one says "groups seven and ten will stay behind to fly the speeders". Doubtful this is the military-aviation use of "group", as that would be a lot of pilots, more than we saw, and an implication of far more fighter assets than the Rebellion seemed to have at that point.

After the battle, Luke leaves Hoth -- and his fighter is still Red 5. Again in ROTJ. Wedge, however, is still flying the same fighter in the Battle of Endor, but one of the stripes on each wing has been painted over in hull color, so he's now Red 1.

So I've maintained for quite a long time that there's no parallel between the airspeeder and starfighter postings. I am gonna say Wedge was promoted to Red Leader after the Battle of Yavin. By the time they were setting up on Hoth, Luke was tapped to be the Commander of the airspeeder defense group, given his extensive experience flying such on Tatooine. After they abandoned the Hoth base, we never heard him called by any rank or job title again.

As for the naming... *sigh* Brian Daley did a lot of good work, but his spinning "Renegade Flight" out of thin air for the ESB radio drama, and the ensuing death of Commander Darra leading to Luke's promotion to Commander of the new Rogue Flight, doesn't fit well. And that's a lot of what Tim Zahn was drawing from when he created Rogue Squadron for Heir to the Empire. It's apropos of not much, and the movies contradict more than support it. I was, frankly, hoping it would never show up in the new ancillary canon.

And I agree that the medical droid and Luke seemed to be talking about something other than speeders. But the connection was made in people's heads vis-à-vis the T-65 being the X-wing in Star Wars.

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

When it comes to Rebel ranks, I think for the most part they hold up. I think what confuses people is that it's a mix of known army and navy ranks.

There was a lot of old canon stuff in the video games but it never made sense to me. It wasn't until TFA when they had the chart of resistance ranks and color explanation where it really seemed to make sense. The rank insignia are basically the same except the resistance have connected the rebel dots. So Luke does indeed appear to have the rank of commander in The Empire Strikes Back.

I do also understand that in military settings, the term commander can also be a position and not necessarily that person's rank. It's the same with Captain. In the navy, it is a rank and a position. You can have a LCDR or CDR as a ship's captain and that person can be called Captain by the ship's crew.

I also don't believe the term group may line up to the use like a navy air group in which it represents and organization composed of several aircraft squadrons and detachments of various types of aircraft. But honestly... I cannot discount it either. I guess it could be entirely possible that Hoth has multiple squadrons. Let's say for the sake of discussion, Blue, Red, and Green. Together these three squadrons are referred to as Rogue Group. Luke could be the highest ranking of all pilots in all three squadrons or he might be the highest ranking of all the pilots assigned to the T-47 detachment. For example. Luke might not be Red Leader... Let's say it is someone we do not see in The Empire Strikes Back but he exist. Let's say his name is Bob. As a squadron leader, Bob's primary focus is to deal with the star fighter squadron, he has other issues he needs to deal with and not time to do T-47 patrols. It is Bob's job to assign a detachment of pilots from his squadron to fly T-47 duty. Green Leader and Blue Leader had to do the same thing in their squadrons. It could be possible that everyone in the squadron have a duty rotation to fly T-47 missions, like they do it for 3 days and then another rotation of pilots come in for 3 days, and then another. So in this case of the AT-AT attack, Luke was pulling T-47 duty. Of course we know they finally got the T-47s flying so not much chance of actual rotations. Although they may have used them in their last base.

I'm sorry... I'm just babbling at this point. The biggest problem is that I spent 22 years in Naval Aviation. As much as i agree people try to over explain Star Wars... I just love the aviation aspect of Star Wars as much as i love it in real life. The other thing is that during a 10 year period, I ran a role play story board/forum based on rebel pilots. During that time, I had to develop structure that made sense. I tried to use as much canon as I could but some of it was so idiotic, I had to create my own. In the end, I took what I knew from the movies, what made sense in EU, my own experience in naval aviation, and used inspiration from shows like nuBSG and Black Sheep Squadron. So basically, I thought about this stuff a lot.... a really really lot.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I agree and I've been a huge aviation fan since I was little (we live like 20 mins from the USAF museum). However I really like the idea of an elite fighter group so I still have to say it is or eventually becomes Rogue Squadron! Plus the books were really good!

As for the T-47 designation, I'm not too worried about that. The thing I started thinking about watching it as an adult is whether the speeders were that valuable that they would even worry about loading them. They were used to stall the Empire while they evac'd so to me when they landed the pilots would run for their X-Wings and leave those behind. It would be like talking about retrieving the gun turrets to load up on the way out.

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

I have no problem with a Squadron being name Rogue. My problem is trying to force that name on Red Squadron during the original trilogy as if they had changed their name after Yavin. We know they were still Red Squadron in Return of the Jedi. Now if that comic I referred to earlier had Luke and other temporary adopting the name as an homage to their similar act of defiance like Rogue One, I can tolerate that. But only if at that instance, it was a one time thing.

I really wanted to like the X-wing books but them. They seemed very promising and then they had to drag into “turns out I’m a jedi” storyline and I got turned off. Then wraith squadron was just awful... but that didn’t stop me from making patches. I still sell them.

 

[Riceball]

Is the Apache gunner facing the rear? Uhh no. Also, not every military aircraft with a back seat (unless a trainer) has controls in the back seat. Rear facing is ok for targeting computers for weapons, but not a great position to be piloting. Take the F-14 Tomcat. The RIO does not have flight controls. Also, from most official schematics , cutaways, databanks, the craft is listed as having 1x pilot and 1x gunner. Not pilot and copilot. To me it just comes down to lazy fans and lazy comic/novel writers. Their lame thinking... Luke is a pilot and he wears an orange suit. So if this other guy is dressed like Luke, then that guy must be a pilot too. Whatever...

The Navy doesn't do this but I believe that the Air Force did with their F-4s but I don't think that they do with their F-15Es now a days. As for attack helos, apparently both the pilot and gunner are trained pilots and the gunner can, if needed, fly the helo. For present day Navy, I believe that the RIO or WSO sitting the back of F-18Fs are the same as back in the F-14 days and not trained pilots and there are no flight controls in the back seat, that's almost certainly the case in the F-18Gs.

I'm with MJF on the idea that the gunners on the snowspeeders were just that, gunners, and not trained pilots. The Rebellion would have been short on trained pilots and it would have been a waste to put a pilot in the backseat of a snowspeeder. It would have been quick and easy to just given an EM a little bit of quick training and stick him/her in the back and have pilots in reserve in case they're needed like they were when they were evacuating after the Empire started their attack on Hoth. I doubt that the Rebels/Leia's cell had enough qualified fighter pilots on hand to stick 2 per airspeeder and have enough on stand by to act as escorts and/or space patrols. I highly doubt that their evacuation plans hinged on the snowspeeder pilots to get back, get out of their speeders and into their X-Wings to act as escorts, that would have taken too much time and not provide enough escort fighters for the first wave(s) of ships evacuating.

 

[Laspector]

I'm sure we've all probably heard all this stuff before, but still a very cool video on Ben Burt's sound design on ANH