Actually, the Red leader puts Luke in charge of guarding the trench while he makes an unsuccessful run at the exhaust port. Shortly after that (“negative, negative…it didn’t go in…”) he loses his starboard engine. Because of this, he tells Luke to “get set up for your attack run…” So, he had Luke make the run for two possible reasons: 1. Red Leader’s ship was damaged, and 2. He used up his proton torpedoes in the previous run, so another attempt was pointless. Then, of course, Vader shoots Red Leader down, and Luke, Biggs & Wedge are the only ones left.
I believe that you are on the nose there. They also had R2-D2 with black trim instead of blue for the scenes where he is plugged in the back of the X-Wing. They went to green screen for Empire and Return of the Jedi and were able to make R2 blue again.
The Last Jedi makes it clear that there are amoral arms dealers who will happily sell ships both to the Alliance and to the Empire.
The other key difference is that X-Wings have shields, while TIE fighters don’t. If a TIE gets hit, the pilot’s dead, and the Empire doesn’t give a damn. But the Alliance values the lives of their people, and so invest more in preserving them.
TIE fighters are much better at evading fire, though. They’re meant to be quick little things that you can’t hit at all. As a design concept it makes a lot of sense, like attacking someone with a swarm of bees.
Sure, but he directs that order specifically at Luke: “Luke, take Reds Two and Three [that’s Wedge and Biggs]. Hold up here and wait for my signal to start your run.”
He’s putting Luke in charge of that little group. When it comes to the actual attack, Luke is in the lead, the other two are his wingmen. Why not put Biggs or Wedge, both of whom had more experience, in the lead position? Surely that would be more natural?*
Red Leader was probably kind of star-struck from having met Anakin that one time.
*Actually, the most experienced is probably Wedge. Remember that Biggs himself is still relatively new to the Rebellion, having only jumped ship right around the beginning of the movie.
Thanks for the explanation on why Luke was Red 5 - they assigned him the open Red 5 slot with a spare X-wing they had.
As for why they let Luke fly at all, obviously it’s because they are hurting for pilots. I mean, they have a spare X-wing and an open call slot. Yeah, someone died to make the open slot, but they have a spare X-wing. And they only send 30 small ships on that run. Yeah, I can see giving Luke a ship based on Leia and Biggs vouching for him.
I also wondered about that.
Yes, that’s my question. Why assign Luke command of the final run? Did the others already expend their proton torpedoes? I didn’t trace the battle closely enough to check.
There’s also something fatalistic about their defense strategy against the TIE fighters. They basically form a trio and let the two back X-wings get shot to keep the TIE fighters from shooting the one making the run. It’s not like the X-wing guns point backwards. Shouldn’t the ones covering him try some maneuvers to actually shoot at the attacking ships?
As for Luke being the newest pilot, he literally showed up 15 minutes before the briefing. He’s the only pilot in the room wearing civvies - the rest are in pilot gear.
Luke has been subconsciously using the Force all his life. He never realizes that’s how he does things. It actually is damn near impossible to “bulls eye womp rats”, but Like has no basis for comparison. He does it, therefore it can’t be that hard.
Like Annikin in TPM, he just is a “lucky” pilot, but luck’s got nothing to do with it.
But “leader” in this case seems to be “person who’s taking the shot.” So if Luke was considered to be the most accurate.
Possibly some sort of simulator run offscreen could be fanwanked, but even if not, Luke believed he could make the shot, Wedge said in the briefing that he believed it was an impossible shot, and presumably Biggs knew Luke was a better shot.
So at that point, Luke’s the bomber, and Wedge and Biggs are escorts.
I wonder also at what point did Luke consider the X-wing “his”. It belonged to the rebellion and he was it’s pilot but suddenly he takes off with the thing after evacuating Hoth.
The Rebel leaders never asked “hey, where is Skywalker going with our ship?” or considered him awol.
He’s the only Jedi they have - I think he can commandeer an X-Wing if he wants to.
According to what I remember from the EU, you had to be careful about keeping the same astromech droid paired with an X-Wing, because they would synch so closely that the fighter wouldn’t work with any other droid. Given Luke’s attachment to R2D2, he probably left him plugged in so long that the fighter was useless to the Rebellion.
Now, y’see, I did say I know nothing about Star Wars. I assumed the question originated in the latest movie. (OK, almost nothing - I do know there has been something recent).
It’s too dark to see it on-screen, it’s only really clear in model kits. And in fact, it’s possible it isn’t on screen and was a retro-fix, just like how every pilot has different patterns on their helmets but the most commonly seen one, on Luke’s, became the symbol for the Rebel Alliance ever afterward.
Several other helmets have the same symbol as Luke’s. My guess would be that the default helmet carries the Alliance insignia, but that it’s the fashion for some pilots to paint over it with their own designs (sort of like nose art, in our world). Luke, of course, hasn’t had the chance to yet.
