Inside the Battle of Hoth

[Makalakumu]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/battle-of-hoth/

How did the Galactic Empire ever cement its hold on the Star Wars Universe? The war machine built by Emperor Palpatine and run by Darth Vader is a spectacularly bad fighting force, as evidenced by all of the pieces of Death Star littering space. But of all the Empire’s failures, none is a more spectacular military fiasco than the Battle of Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back.

This article is fantastic. I never thought about it like this before, but I suppose a military historian is going to talk some serious smack about Darth Vader.

The first comment on the bottom is fantastic!

Have you even served with the Imperial forces? Sure it's easy to take potshots from your military blog in some no-name star system while the fleet and its legions fight the rebel insurgents, but combined space/air/ground operations are a lot messier than any infographic could ever portray.
Even with the Empire's full spectrum dominance of the battlespace, you can't just leverage fleet assets which are optimized for ship-to-ship combat into a large scale ground invasion force. A Star Destroyer might have more firepower than the entire militaries of less advanced worlds but you still need a proper ground assault ship to support infantry landings.
Unfortunately, the do-nothing blowhards in Coruscant couldn't get funding for the promising alternative designs from Sienar Fleet Systems and we ended up (as usual) with Kuat Drive Yards' overpriced, overdue, and underperforming AT-AT mess.

 

[Big Don]

I knew one of you Star Wars geeks would post this. I expected it to be Bob...
:jediduel:

 

[Bob Hubbard]

1st time seeing this. too funny

 

[jks9199]

It's not really shocking that Darth Vader's battle plans would be lousy... Anakin Skywalker wasn't exactly known for reasoned, careful plans, y'know? Just letting luck and instincts carry him through...

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

It's not really shocking that Darth Vader's battle plans would be lousy... Anakin Skywalker wasn't exactly known for reasoned, careful plans, y'know? Just letting luck and instincts carry him through...

Especially since the force was waning from the sith/dark side and starting to lead towards the jedi/light side...following the force will no longer get him through amazing escapades that will go almost exactly how he wants

 

[Instructor]

This is a hoot! Thanks Mak!

 

[Instructor]

The old Republic was even more naive. Imagine sending out mystical Jedi warriors with lightsabers hundreds of years after the blaster was invented. What were they thinking?

 

[punisher73]

As a Star Wars geek, I must point out that the article misses the whole point of the Battle of Hoth. Darth Vader was looking for his son and was trying to capture him alive. He was NOT trying to annihilate everyone at the base.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I knew one of you Star Wars geeks would post this. I expected it to be Bob...
:jediduel:

Star wars geek huh....:hmm: and yet...you appear to have known about this already :uhyeah:

 

[Instructor]

Y'all crack me up.

 

[Makalakumu]

As a Star Wars geek, I must point out that the article misses the whole point of the Battle of Hoth. Darth Vader was looking for his son and was trying to capture him alive. He was NOT trying to annihilate everyone at the base.

Still, the battle was an unmitigated tactical mess. Vader would have had much more success dominating the situation from space, demanding a rebel surrender, and processing prisoners. Vader could have turned Hoth into a military prison and simply used the ground troops to prevent escape over land.

 

[Steve]

Still, the battle was an unmitigated tactical mess. Vader would have had much more success dominating the situation from space, demanding a rebel surrender, and processing prisoners. Vader could have turned Hoth into a military prison and simply used the ground troops to prevent escape over land.

Wait... hold on. The AT/AT Walkers and the rest of the ground crew were there for two reasons. While finding Luke and taking him alive was the primary objective, in order to do that the Empire had to disable the V-150 Anti Orbital cannons that the rebels had at their disposal. The dominance from space wasn't possible until those cannons were destroyed, as they posed a legitimate threat to any of the star destroyers in the area.

As it was, they came close, but the rebels used shots from the cannons to cover the escape of the shuttles.

And don't forget that there was no reason to believe that the rebels would have their speeders adapted to the rigorous conditions on Hoth. The T-47 snowspeeders were likely a huge surprise to the Empire, who were likely expecting taun-tauns and ground forces which would have been easily overwhelmed.

Just saying.