Something that never made sense to me in the original Star Wars was how during the attack on the Death Star, the empire only sent what looked to be no more than a few dozen TIE fighters (and later Darth Vader) to stop the rebels.
Am I to believe that something as massive as the Death Star only had a few dozen fighters for protection? Why didn’t they just flood the entire area with hundreds or even thousands of Tie fighters? The reason the rebels give for using fighters for the attack (e.g. they are too small for the turbo laser batteries) doesn’t even make sense considering that the Empire should still have been able to just overwhelm them with a massive TIE swarm. So why didn’t they?
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Tarkin didn’t believe it was necessary. Vader disagreed, so he deployed his own personal squadron.
Because Tarkin didn’t think the Rebels would be able to do anything and would quickly be destroyed. It was Vader who launched his personal squadron of TIE’s out and took flight himself to speed up their destruction
Vader who had already looked at the plans and came up with a half dozen ways to destroy he station, most of them using snubfighters
“You know what, I think I’d rather be out there fighting rebels right now…back in a second.”
How do the plucky rebels with a barely functional military take on the massive galaxy warmachine?
You make the empire arrogant and stupid.
According to the old Xwing games, the empire had a 3:1 ratio. So 3 ties for every attacker. At that ratio, they already consider the odds in their favor.
Add in turbo laser emplacements, the unknown of the death star’s vulnerability, Tarkin sure would have felt things were covered and it was all being done by the book.
Add in the fact that support groups could have been called in, but they may have taken time to get to the fight. The Death Star was huge after all. If the next Tie hangar is a quarter of the way around the Death Star, they may have needed 10-15 to provide support.
So maybe more were in the way, they just didn’t get there in time.