Which is even stupider, because if they miss (which they obviously do!) they blow away somebody having a latte at the Starbucks on the other side of the trench.
Note–the Falcon has extensive ECM gear, according to the Owner’s Manual they published awhile back.
This might explain why the Falcon could get close.
Also, part of the attack plan was to degrade the defences around the area where they plan to enter the trench, which likely included sensors and suchlike.
And the other X-Wing was piloted by Wedge Antilles, whose ship had been damaged as Luke started his attack run, and was likely not in a condition to provide any further assistance.
I remember thinking that very thing as a 7 year old in 1977. If the turrets traverse even a little, they hit the side of the trench down the line.
In the very first “Star Wars” movie, we see that TIE fighters have targeting systems and appear to be quite capable of blowing the larger, more powerful X-wing to smithereens.
In deeper canon, the idea behind a TIE fighter is its engines are disproportionately powerful as compared to its size and weight, so it’s supposed to outrun and maneuver its way out of trouble. You could put a shield on it, but then it’s slower and easier to shoot.
Certainly memorable for his sweet, tangy BBQ: https://www.offworlddesigns.com/porkins-bbq/
Zero vs Hellcat reasoning! 
Thank You!
My question is why would you ever design a droid that couldn’t speak English.
and considering the size of the thing there should have been about 25,000 tie fighters flying around when it blew up with angry pilots who would have wiped out the rebel base before wondering how they were going to get home.
Dozo!
Yes but surely that’s like saying you could buy stuff off the shelf that could stop a awacs from seeing your cargo plane, which is basically what the falcon is.
I’ve got tons of electronic devices in my house, and none of them speak English.
Well, I guess my iPhone, technically.
Anyway, R2 droids are meant to be autonomous repair units. They’re not really meant to interact with humans at all - R2-D2 is an exception in the SW universe, not the rule.
This one doesn’t even require a fanwank. The movie includes a scene of the Imperial commander explicitly dismissing any threat posed by the Rebel fighters. The only reason there were any TIE fighters in the battle at all is Vader got bored sitting around and decided he wanted to shoot something. Which makes sense. They’ve got a space station the size of a moon, the Rebels have maybe three dozen single pilot fighters. You don’t launch every fighter on the station to take care of that. You launch enough to keep them from scratching the paint while you blow up their planet.
The Falcon’s been specifically modified to function as a smuggler’s ship, so I doubt there’s a whole lot of “off the shelf” mods involved. More like “highly illegal custom modifications.” Granted, in the real world, no amount of black market modifications can change a C-30 into a stealth bomber, but tech in the Star Wars universe is thousands of years ahead of ours, so who knows how their sensors and ECM work?
I tried to fanwank this as requiring specialized language ability, but then I realized that most droids appear to understand human speech.
Is there official canon on who flew the surviving Y-wing?
No, no, no. It’s a long time ago…
Alas, from the EU deleted canon.
In the SW game I ran for years, my fanwank was that they can easily speak Basic with a software patch, but Artoo doesn’t because he’s the droid equivalent of a Black Panther.
Or that culturally the society thinks that only specific models are worth communicating with, like 3P0. They just don’t see an astromech as worth having a conversation with.