# Truth to Death Star "single weakness" theory?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 5, 2012, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868 "2012-03-05T23:39:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@IQofshoesize](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IQofshoesize)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2012, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/1 "2012-03-05T23:39:57Z")
In Star Wars, the Death Star was destroyed by a well-placed shot at its sole, “weak” point. Other movies also reflect similar themes - objects, machines, etc, - that are eradicated by a well-timed or perfectly-placed shot to some structurally “weak” area.
Is there any truth to this theory in real life? Could I take down a submarine, car, plane, aircraft carrier, train, etc. if I placed/shot the \_\_\_ at exactly the right place?
---
### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2012, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/2 "2012-03-05T23:44:02Z")
Well, yes and no. There are a lot of things you could shoot, smash, or otherwise break which would completely disable almost any complex machine. You won’t get runaway explosions, though - not even on a nuclear submarine. Of course, the Death Star (and evidently big Star Wars vehicles in general) used a ludicrously energetic power plant, so given that it’s a Science Fiction movie, it’s not unreasonable.
---
### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/3 "2012-03-05T23:57:44Z")
Story tellers are stuck with this problem:
1. They want a hero of human-like abilities so the audience can relate to his struggles.
2. They want an opponent that’s much more powerful so the struggle against him is meaningful.
3. They want the hero to win mainly by his own efforts so his efforts are meaningful.
The solution is for the apparently overwhelming opponent to have a small vulnerability. This allows the hero to defeat the opponent with having to match him on equal terms or rely on factors beyond his control.
But the real world doesn’t have to comply with the rules of good story telling.
---
### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2012, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/4 "2012-03-05T23:59:28Z")
> [@IQofshoesize](#):
>
> Is there any truth to this theory in real life? Could I take down a submarine, car, plane, aircraft carrier, train, etc. if I placed/shot the \_\_\_ at exactly the right place?
Hell yeah.
I have it on good authority that a person with a rifle can take out a tank with a single shot. Tank shells have two fuses. One is armed by impact when the shell is fired, the other causes the shell to detonate when it hits a solid object. In theory, a single bullet fired down the barrel of a tank at exactly the right time can deliver enough force to arm the first fuse. The impact of firing the shell will then cause it to explode, inside the breach of the cannon, and that is more than enough to kill all occupants of the tank. In reality the chances of pulling off such a shot are so ridiculously low as to ensure that it never happens. Apparently you would need to fire the rifle from extremely close to the tank, while the barrel is pointed directly at you, while the shell is being loaded but before the breech is closed. It’s theoretically possible, but practically impossible.
In practice, [battleships](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck) have been taken out by a single torpedos launched by a light aircraft. In fact that event was reputedly the original inspiration for the “Star Wars” ending.
---
### Author:  [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/5 "2012-03-06T00:00:35Z")
Does the name HMS Hood mean anything to you?
---
### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/6 "2012-03-06T00:08:48Z")
HMS Hood didn’t have one weak spot that Bismarck just happened to precisely hit; HMS Hood WAS a weak spot. The ship was fundamentally flawed in that it was underarmored for combat against a capital ship, and it could have been torn apart from shots all over it.
---
### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/7 "2012-03-06T00:14:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> HMS Hood didn’t have one weak spot that Bismarck just happened to precisely hit; HMS Hood WAS a weak spot. The ship was fundamentally flawed in that it was underarmored for combat against a capital ship, and it could have been torn apart from shots all over it.
More importantly a battleship, with a crew of a thousand men, firing with three dozen guns, and scoring a multiple direct hits, is not in any sense an individual taking it down with a well-placed shot.
---
### Author:  [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/8 "2012-03-06T00:16:19Z")
It would have to be a pretty great shot though. I wouldn’t like to estimate the odds but they must be somewhere in the region of one in a million…
---
### Author:  [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/9 "2012-03-06T00:19:44Z")
They couldn’t hit an elephant from this distance…
---
### Author:  [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/10 "2012-03-06T00:32:39Z")
> [@Colophon](#):
>
> It would have to be a pretty great shot though. I wouldn’t like to estimate the odds but they must be somewhere in the region of one in a million…
Never tell me the odds!
---
### Author:  [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/11 "2012-03-06T00:33:13Z")
Two attempts were made on the World Trade Center. In the first they thought they had found the weak spot but not quite. In the second, we all saw what happened.
If you watch the documentary which was done by [I believe] the Discovery Channel about the architecture of the buildings, the weak spot was found.
---
### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/12 "2012-03-06T00:50:55Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> HMS Hood didn’t have one weak spot that Bismarck just happened to precisely hit; HMS Hood WAS a weak spot. . . .
Nicely put!
And the Bismarck itself was disabled by one guy in a biplane, slowing it sufficiently that the British fleet caught up with it and pounded it to hell.
Biplane, X-Wing, same thing, really?
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/13 "2012-03-06T01:02:34Z")
I’m sure there were such cases.
The Death Star Trench sequence in Star Wars undoubtedly owes a lot to the film **The Dam Busters** (some shots are obviously taken from it, as is some of the dialogue). The real-life situation of The Dam Busters did demand getting a bomb in the right spot, but it wasn’t just any bomb, and they actually got the bomb to the right place using a couple of low-tech “targeting computers” (NOT by turning them off). Have a look at my old Teemings column on this:
[http://teemings.net/series\_1/issue03/force.html](http://teemings.net/series_1/issue03/force.html)
---
### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/14 "2012-03-06T01:17:17Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> And the Bismarck itself was disabled by one guy in a biplane, slowing it sufficiently that the British fleet caught up with it and pounded it to hell.
>
> Biplane, X-Wing, same thing, really?
I wish I had said that. 😉
---
### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/15 "2012-03-06T01:29:37Z")
Design tradeoffs almost always make this kind of thing inevitable-in the battleship examples you couldn’t possible cover every square inch of the ship in thick armor, so you have to concentrate it in places where it would do the most good. That said, designers still made (and make) errors, such the Scharnhorst class BC’s and their vulnerable boilers which jutted above the armored belt. The early German Panther tanks had a “shot trap” on the front of the turret which would deflect incoming shells downward into the turret ring, often blowing the turret completely off (or at best disabling it).
---
### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/16 "2012-03-06T02:07:41Z")
It’s called a ‘golden BB’…and yeah, it happens in real life. The odds are long, but anything that humans make have flaws or weaknesses that could be exploited by a single, perfect, lucky shot.
-XT
---
### Author:  [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/17 "2012-03-06T02:44:21Z")
> [@R.P.McMurphy](#):
>
> Two attempts were made on the World Trade Center. In the first they thought they had found the weak spot but not quite. In the second, we all saw what happened.
>
> If you watch the documentary which was done by [I believe] the Discovery Channel about the architecture of the buildings, the weak spot was found.
It was my understanding that Al Qaeda’s leadership expected the airplanes to do some damage to the towers, and hoped it would be extensive, but were [surprised](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1364905/Bin-Laden-didnt-expect-New-York-towers-to-fall.html) that the towers had collapsed to the ground.
---
### Author:  [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/18 "2012-03-06T03:21:29Z")
> [@Blake](#):
>
> More importantly a battleship, with a crew of a thousand men, firing with three dozen guns, and scoring a multiple direct hits, is not in any sense an individual taking it down with a well-placed shot.
first off the Bismarck did not have three dozen main guns.
From the Wiki On the battle of the Denmark Straight
> [@](#):
>
> Less than 10 minutes after the British opened fire, a shell from Bismarck struck Hood near her aft ammunition magazines. Soon afterwards Hood exploded, and sank within three minutes with the loss of all but three of her crew.
Note the the term a shell. Not hours of battering that finally beat her to submission, but a shell, as in one.
The proverbial golden BB. A 15" diameter BB that weighed as much as a Volkswagen, but a golden BB nonetheless.
---
### Author:  [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/19 "2012-03-06T03:24:25Z")
> [@Blake](#):
>
> In theory, a single bullet fired down the barrel of a tank …
Why, that’s no bigger than a womp-rat.
---
### Author:  [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2012, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868/20 "2012-03-06T06:03:45Z")
> [@Colophon](#):
>
> It would have to be a pretty great shot though. I wouldn’t like to estimate the odds but they must be somewhere in the region of one in a million…
One in a million chances crop up nine times out of ten…
Si
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truth-to-death-star-single-weakness-theory/614868.md?page=2)