Understanding the Role of Rebel Alliance Capital Ships

hi friends welcome back to another episode of generation tech my name is Alan today we're gonna continue our series that analyzes the different role and purposes of each vehicle in Star Wars so far we've covered the Imperial and rebel star fighters today we're gonna be looking at the larger ships in the Rebel Alliance fleet from gunship all the way up to the larger cruisers in the early days the rebellion wasn't made up of much more than a few diplomatic shuttles and some local Defense Force fighters as more and more factions started signing up for the fight against the Empire they bought with them their unique vehicles and weapons which was a mess which meant that rebel quartermasters and logistics officers had a very high rate of suicide by swallowing live detonators the production of larger ships especially capital ships was far more difficult than building a few snow fighters in an underground secret garage only a few shipyards in the galaxy had the capability to construct something that's large as an imperial class Star Destroyer and the amount of resources that need to be shipped in to construct a one-mile ship would also be pretty hard to ignore and hide so the rebel lines had to be very creative aka do a bunch of illegal stuff and steal a bunch of ships to create their fleet in the beginning there was just a CR 90 Corvette and it was good designed by the Karelian Engineering Corporation which was famous for designing medium to small ships that were extremely modular and great for smuggling Corellia was basically the new jersey of Star Wars hasn't it smelled bad and it was sketchy as out and yes I can say that because I used to live in Corellia the CR 90 was an extremely popular Corvette during the Galactic Republic era due to the complete lack of Republic military forces most diplomats traveled without an armed escort and if there was one who's usually made up of planetary defense forces or just judicial forces therefore the CR 90 Corvettes were designed to travel alone and focus more on speed for defense rather than weapons this is why the CR 90 had 11 ion turbine drives which took up more than a third of the ship it's basically the a wing of Corvettes really great at slash and run attacks and blockade running in the earlier years of the war when the alderaanians were still pretending to be loyal to Palpatine Leia and Bail Organa would oftentimes use that ended before to travel from world to world on rebel missions using their diplomatic immunity as cover once that whole facade fell apart the CR 90 became essential to the new rebel fleet the modular CR 90 had room for more than 6 turbo lasers which meant that it could easily take out a ghazan T class cruiser or any equivalent Imperial ship a pack of these CR 90s traveling at full combat speed could prove to be a problem even for larger Imperial like cruisers during a lot of years of the Galactic Civil War when larger rebel ships started appearing the CR 90 was used more as a picket ship to screen and protect capital ships from fighters the CR 90 could also dock externally with three rz1 a wing interceptors further increasing its firepower and range the design and speed of the ship was so well received that the rebel wanted to even use it as a transport ship the famous rebel unit known as Twilight Company used the CR 90 Corvette thunderstrike as their home and base during the mid rim retreats and comfortably housed a few hundred men and well the Sierra 90 was essentially a very fast gunboat the Rebel Alliance needed something that was a little more resilient and could actually stand and fight larger Imperial ships as a rebellion grew larger and operated more bases they could just slash and run away from every situation sometimes they had to stay and fight and defend things this is when they began incorporating the Saffir in a class Corvette or as I like to call it the hammerhead Corvette now for all of you Old Republic history buffs you're probably jumping out of your seat to comment that hey this looks a lot like the Old Republic hammerhead cruiser which served as the main capital ship for the Republic Navy for thousands of years and I would say that you're spot on there are actually very few design differences between the Old Republic era hammerhead cruiser and the Galactic Civil War era Corvette including the length which stayed at around 300 meters it just goes to show you how much bigger galactic civil war-era ships were compared to the Old Republic era what used to be a ship of the line der in the Old Republic era and classified as a cruiser is now considered just a small Corvette the hammerhead Corvette was also designed by Karelian Engineering Corporation and it was marketed as a tugboat or something that can haul around cargo in the same way that the whitey 1300 F was designed to be a forklift there was always gonna be demand for mobile ships that had some defensive capabilities and by labeling the hammerhead Corvette as a commercial ship the karelians could skirt around Imperial regulators the hammerhead Corvette was also used by the alderaanians to transport supplies secretly to rebel cells in the earlier years of the war but what made the ship so popular than it was used for thousands of years was the wedge-shaped cockpit which was incredibly durable and could withstand multiple hits even when the deflector shields were down which is why the hammer had always attacked cockpit first most of the turbo lasers were also mounted in a forward position which also gave the hammerhead an extremely thin profile this allowed the hammerhead Corvettes go toe-to-toe with some larger Imperial ships something that the CR 90 Corvette could never do during the Battle of scares the heavily damaged light maker which had been kept in reserve was ordered by Admiral Radice to ram into the class started for a persecutor which had been disabled by ion weapons the light maker using its tugboat pedigree survived the high-speed impact with the start of stirrer and pushed the persecutor right into the Intimidator and both star destroyers plummeted into the shield gate of scarf killing thousands of Imperials not bad for a tiny tugboats given its modular nature there were also specially fitted torpedo hammerhead Corvettes which could dish out even more damage [Music] the GR 75 medium transport was voted buying the rebel infantry as the worst place to die for four years in a row it was essentially a lightly armed budget freighter its clam shaped hull was designed to maximize storage for this 90 meter long ship the large cargo bay also maximized the surface of the ship that had to be protected and because it was usually used to carry cargo a lacked adequate shielding or armor and was pretty slow which meant that it wasn't fast enough to outrun a turbo laser and not well-protected enough to withstand the direct hits the gr 75 also had a pretty large profile for a ship of its size and was usually never used for combat they were mainly used to transport equipment and people from planetside 2 ships that couldn't land in the atmosphere there was also a variant of the gr 75 transport that was fitted for combat and armed but they were also pretty much useless even against small fighters [Music] the 90 meter long bra ha took class gunship also known as the Dorian gunship was the exact opposite of the gr 75 originally designed for the Dorney and local defense fleet this gunship was purely designed for combat the whole structure was dagger shaped minimizing the profile and design the outer hull was plated in silver to deflect solar radiation armed with eight concussion missile launchers and ain´t dual turbo laser turrets this small gunship had a massive amount of firepower and was still quite nimble with a crew of 75 the Braja took class could also engage multiple snow fighters and enemy ships at one time and some of the more courageous commanders were even known to take this gunship into night fighting range with Imperial class star destroyers although relatively unknown by most Star Wars fans the braja took class took part in almost every major rebel imperial engagement after the Battle of Yavin now anything larger than a Corvette was extremely hard for the Rebel Alliance to get their hands on larger ships even ones that were clearly for commercial or civilian use were heavily regulated by imperial shipyards and as the ship classes became larger there were fewer docks large enough to accommodate them so naturally the rebels who in all fairness had a large amount of criminals in their ranks just stole what they couldn't buy the Nebulon B frigate was one of the most commonly stolen Imperial ships produced by quat dr yards these 300 metre long escort frigates were mostly used in convoys to guard against pirates and later Rebel Alliance hijacking attempts the Nebulon B frigate was seen as a cheaper alternative to deploying a massive imperial star destroyer which usually was overkill when it came to dealing with rebel threats they were heavily armed with 12 turbo lasers and 12 point defense laser cannons along with a variety of missile launchers and tractor beam they also carried a squadron of fighters which increased its overall firepower the frigates did have a huge structural weakness at the relatively thin net joint that separates the command module from the rest of the ship Imperial designers in an effort to save money on construction costs used the neck joint area for external docking for the squadron of starfighters that usually came with these ships this was much cheaper than designing a larger interior hanger it comes to no surprise before the Mon Calamari came that these frigates would serve as command ships for the rebel commanders but there was one major problem it was a headache for the Rebel Alliance to find enough skilled individuals to crew these larger ships especially when you're recruiting from basically farmers criminals and deserters the ship had to operate like a body where the head and toes and fingers we're all moving towards the same goal this was hard enough to do with a proper training pipeline and even more difficult to do with that one due to the mobile nature of the rebel fleets because of their inability to hold any territory openly these nebula NB frigates were also redesigned as hospital ships there's a lot of debate on where the Mon Cala cruisers originally came from some people say that when portions of the Mon Cala fleet rebelled against the Empire they modified their Civic buildings for space flight by attaching engines to them the buildings were already heavily armored and pressurized for the conditions of the deep mon cala oceans another theory is of MCA T star cruisers were originally designed as deep space exploration vessels and luxury ocean liners the other origin story which we can actually confirm is true is that a good portion of the Mon Cala mercantile fleet was allowed to operate under Imperial occupation and eventually they defected to the rebellion most likely portions of all three of these origins stories make up the larger truth the MCAD and also the MC 75 Mon Cala Cruiser Sur probably amongst the most important ships in the entire rebellion the MCAD Cruiser was the only rebel ship that could actually go toe-to-toe with the Imperial Class Star Destroyer until relatively late in the Galactic Civil War when the MC 1 star Hawk was introduced by the New Republic the massive 1 mile long Mon Cala Cruiser usually liked the firepower that the Imperial class tartarus orders had but instead of utilizing one or two large shield generators had dozens of deflector shield generators placed across this ship this meant that the Mon Cala cruisers shields were incredibly hardened and had a lot of redundant generators attached them also with the generators spread across a ship it was almost impossible to completely disable the shields with just one strike and even if the enemy was able to pierce the shield well remember these ships were designed for the deep ocean where the pressure is insane most larger starships are designed for vacuum where at best atmospheric conditions the Mon Cala was basically one giant tank of a starship used as command ships these cruisers usually were found in the middle of rebel formations surrounded by escort frigates and Pickett ships generally speaking the rebel Admirals usually avoided exchanging broadsides with the imperial class Star Destroyers even with the Mon Cala cruisers defensive capabilities instead they relied on long-range Snyder's equipped with proton and ion torpedoes destroy the enemy's offensive capabilities before coming within fire range so guys that is our analysis of the Rebel Alliance fleet as you can see as the war went on the ships became larger and the Rebel Alliance was able to basically go toe-to-toe with the Imperial Navy if you guys enjoyed this episode over going to subscribe and hit that notification button so you don't miss out on the rest of this series we will be looking at other factions we'll be looking at starships maybe even ground vehicles and weapons we'll see anyway guys thanks for joining us today if you're watching this you are generations ech

Channel: Generation Tech

Views: 156,940

Rating: 4.9706273 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, rebel alliance, alliance to restore the republic, Rogue One, Battle of yavin, Battle of Endor, battle of scariff, Tantive IV, cr90 corvette, Corellian engineering Corporation, Hammerhead Cruiser, hammerhead corvette, Sphyrna-class corvette, mon cala cruiser, mc80, mc75, mc80 star cruiser, EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate, nebulon b escort frigate, GR75, GR-75 MEDIUM TRANSPORT, NEBULON B MEDICAL FRIGATE, BATTLE OF JAKKU, REBEL NAVY, BLOCKADE RUNNERS

Id: 1mZcGIRvtZk

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 04 2019