I love this post for thinking about the Battle of Hoth, where the Empire fails in all of its objectives. For me, the really confusing part of this battle is at the start, when Vader kills the Admiral for appearing out of hyperspace too close to the planet, losing the element of surprise. It would seem to me that appearing further out would be helpful perhaps for surrounding the planet, but would also be detected sooner since the fleet would then be crossing through the star system for a bit of time. This would give the Rebels more time to react, not less. Unless one assumes that the Rebels cannot detect a fleet in the neighborhood. I find that hard to believe, given the rest of the state of technology existing in that galaxy at that time.
So, anyone care to make sense of that for me?
3 comments:
One observation only: this bit of "strategy" brought to you by the same folks who wrote "did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs", suggesting that details were not their strong suit.
It could be that the *act* of emerging from hyperspace is the thing that triggers the Rebels' sensors; e.g., perhaps a ship emerging from hyperspace into normal space causes a ripple of gravitons or something, and this ripple is picked up by satellites, etc. (Just like sensors on Earth can feel an earthquake hundreds of miles away, but the effects of the earthquake would not be visible until one was much closer to the epicenter.)
But, I am not aware of any textual support in the canon for this.
I went through my various sourcebooks to see if this had been mentioned. The closest I found was a mention that there was more asteroid debris further out in the system to provide cover - and this makes sense when you recall that General Rieekan said that all of the meteors in the system would make it harder to detect incoming ships. The more sound strategy, it would appear, was for the fleet to drop out of hyperspace far enough into the system for the asteroid debris to mask their arrival. From there, they could have repositioned, confirmed the location of the base on the sixth planet, and then made a second micro-jump into high orbit, where they could have then bombarded the shield generator before the Rebels had a chance to raise the shields. With this in mind, I would take "too close to the planet" to mean too close to give them that chance, but not necessarily close enough to give them a chance to hit the Rebels with a surgical bombardment before the shield went up.
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