Here’s my pet theory:
Hoth is surrounded by an asteroid field, which would probably play havoc with the rebels sensors, since they're always recieving signals from large metallic objects. If the imperials had exited hyperspace outside of the rebels sensor range, they could have simply drifted in pretending to be asteroids. Instead they showed up within sensor range, setting off alarms in the rebels HQ of "New signal at bearing 3-0-Zulu.Well, Ozzel’s idea didn’t work. Iwonder what Ozzy would have done? Perhaps personally flown to the surface to bite all the rebels?
I’d have to re-watch the movie to double check, but IIRC the Rebels weren’t ready for the walkers, and the tow-line-entanglement trick was something Skywalker improvised in the heat of battle.
I’m guessing he would have sent Sharon. Nobody messes with her…
jayjay
You are correct, sir. Hell, in the EU material it’s mentioned that they weren’t even able to have all their snowspeeders ready in time to join the battle.
Something that plagued Imperial officers constantly was that they underestimated their opposition… they would often expect an enemy to either run or surrender just by showing up.
Remember when Luke said “Your overconfidence is your weakness”? That applied to the Empire as a whole (well, mostly).
Whoop, I was responding to Rjung with my first sentence up there. Consarnit, Jayjay, how dare you post when the Great and Malignant SPOOFE is typing his reply?!? 
It’s okay. I was correct, too. 
jayjay
Maybe they knew beforehand that the rebels had an ion cannon and that they had moved it to Hoth. Perhaps the probe that landed there was able to gather information on it.
Or maybe they just assumed that any halfway-decent group of rebel fighters could be expected to have a working ion cannon.
Or maybe they had no idea that they had an ion cannon. They sure weren’t ready for it when it fired…
No, Piett was made an Admiral because he was the most senior officer after Ozzel.
I like my reason better.
Hmmmm. Ok the sheilds were up as soon as the Probe was discovered. So whether the fleet popped out of Hyperspce close or far from the system the results were the same.
In fact, if the fleet were out of the system the transports would be more vunerable to attack as they entered the system and headed to Hoth.
Maybe then Ozzel was correct in not giving the Rebels a chance to set up a defence against the transports by giving the Ion cannon larger more obvious targets the Start Destroyers.
Had the probe not been discovered the Fleet could have lept into the system and bombarded the planet surface at will before the rebels could say “Did something just enter our sys…”
So who decided that sending large probes which broadcast on open frequencies making them easy to detect was a brilliant idea? According to the opening crawl it would be… Vader.
Vader was wrong and may be even more stupid than Ozzel! He gets to justify his own poor judgement by throwing out insults and killing the person how has a desenting opinion.
I’m sure if Ozzel had magical powers he could have countered with a witty magical groin pull on Vader.
Poor Ozzy Ozzel
Pray tell how, without the probe, the Imperials would have known to check out that icy rock in the middle of nowhere.
I still think they should have just built another Death Star and gradually blow up planet after planet until nothing was left. That’d show 'em.
Ahem…
I believe I mentioned the main problem with this probe is that it broadcast on an open channel which the Rebels could pick up.
Sure it’s encoded but as it wasn’t hidden and the Rebels were paranoid enough they would assume any transmitions that were not their own would be hostile.
If you want to find the rebels without announcing you are on your way:
Send a cloaked probe that doesn’t announce its arrival by slamming into the ground as hard as it can, or transmit over a frequency so wide that the locals can tune it in on their primative transistor radios.
Man come to think of it I’d hte to be on one of those backwater sparcly populated worlds the Imperials don’t give a hoot about. There you are trying to perfect your rock baning when suddenly in a flash your entire villiage is wiped out. Out ffrom the smoking hole comes this big black flying object (kinda looks like a bug) that makes as much noise as possible and even transmits information so loudly it’s deafening anyone standing fifteen feet from it.
Not to worry though, the Imperials put a great security device on it. anyone notices it and throws any form of weapon in its direction it blows up!
Hey it blew up nothing to worry about here. By the way did you hear that new song on the radio “buga bugga wadda wadle wadda” “Bugga bugga wadda wadle wadda”