Super Star Destroyer/Legends



Super Star Destroyer was a term used to refer to many Imperial warship classes larger than a Star Destroyer, from Star Cruisers up to Star Dreadnoughts, by both Rebel/New Republic and Imperial personnel.

Darth Vader's command ship, Executor, was one such vessel.

Form and function
The most famous Super Star Destroyer design, the 19-kilometer-long Executor-class Star Dreadnought, represented the apogee of Imperial warship design and military doctrine. Her basic design was based on that of the Star Destroyer-lines developed by Walex Blissex and Lira Wessex for the Republic's military during the Clone Wars, possibly inspired in turn by the hullforms of ancient warships like Leviathan and Ravager of the Jedi Civil War.

The arrowhead shape of the hull allowed the ship to focus most of her heavy weaponry into a single devastating salvo known as an "Alpha Strike", while a large hangar complex set on the underside of the hull gave her an impressive carrier/assault-ship capacity, with shuttle decks, starfighter hangars, deployment capabilities for whole legions of ground troops, and capture bays into which suspect vessels could be brought for interrogation. Command and control facilities, centered in the standardized bridge tower set atop the hull, allowed her to serve as a fleet flagship and her enormous amount of guns allowed her to retain the position as supreme battleship.

Because they were larger and more heavily armed than the smaller Imperial destroyers and frigates, the mission profile of most Super Star Destroyers differed to that of ships like the Imperial-class and Victory-class.

For instance, a single Executor-class Star Dreadnought had enough firepower to rival a fleet of Imperial-class Star Destroyers, or to lead the defense of a massive battlestation like the Death Star II.



Super Star Destroyers would also participate in high-priority planetary suppression missions, such as when Darth Vader brought Executor to Bespin in pursuit of Princess Leia Organa and the Rebel ship Millennium Falcon and when the reborn Emperor Palpatine sent out fleets in assault waves from the Deep Core during Operation Shadow Hand.

What set Super Star Destroyers apart from their design-cousins was primarily their scale: they were usually much larger than most other ships-of-the-line, capable of projecting power across entire Oversectors and serving as command-ships for Galaxy-spanning campaigns. In this, they could be seen as an expression of the Tarkin Doctrine, which argued that Galactic peace could be achieved by developing the ability to project overwhelming firepower against any enemy, rendering all resistance futile before it even began.

While Super Star Destroyers lacked the literally astronomical scale and casual planet-destroying ability of the Death Stars, the knowledge that the Imperial Navy could bring even one Executor-class ship to bear was enough to strike doubt and trepidation into any of the Empire's enemies across a vast region of space.

These leaps in scale in contrast to the smaller vessels, had thus resulted in different mission concepts for the various types of Super Star Destroyers. While the ISDs could and did act as flagships for various Imperial officers and even served as battleships in pacification campaigns of relatively "calm" sectors (where they were the largest vessels present), they reverted to an escort role when accompanied by larger vessels, supporting bigger cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships like the Executor-class during major campaigns.

Consider the Executor-class, with her more sophisticated systems, her command crew could coordinate vastly larger forces in direct combat.

For example, Executor directed a reinforced sector fleet at the Battle of Endor, with at least 40 odd Imperial vessels under her direct command along with the sector fleet's lesser vessels on the outskirts of the system. This massive coordination of up to a thousand warships, along with an unknown number of starfighters was at the moment beyond the capabilities of her smaller sisters, though Executor was aided by a communications ship through much of the battle. Along with her extremely strong shielding, Executor served exclusively as a command ship.

While any vessel with a working communications and sensor array could act as a command ship, Executor's dedicated communications and sensor arrays, which included multiple sensor globes in addition to the ones situated on top of the bridge, as well as the adequate space for multiple "fleet captains" to act as RTO and staff, gave her vastly improved abilities compared to smaller vessels.

Questions of classification
Still, there exist some minor confusion about the precise role and designation of the various Super Star Destroyers.

Executor was originally thought to be an abnormally large battlecruiser by Rebel forces, although its true role as a battleship has later been noted. In addition to her immense firepower, a prominent part of her role was to function as a mobile command and control center, from where a high-ranking Imperial officer (such as Lord Vader, a Grand Admiral, another warlord, or even Palpatine himself) could coordinate Imperial forces across the Galaxy.

The situation is complicated by the semantics of the term "Super Star Destroyer", which was often used in informal slang, much like "blockade runner" for CR90 corvettes. There has thus been some confusion and debate as to what the correct designation for the different ships of this type is, particularly for the Executor-class.

In design terms, some classes were considered massive up-scalings of the Star Destroyer concept, and the formal designation for Executor and her sister ships, as used by the New Republic's military recognition systems, appears to have been Executor-class Star Destroyer. Additionally, the Executor-class was referred to as "Super-class Star Destroyers".



All of these terms are easily explained as variations around slang-terms, as well as a means of connecting Super Star Destroyers to the highly influential Star Destroyer-design family, most prominently championed by Kuat Drive Yards and their enormous ship-catalogue which produced warships across the spectrum, from corvettes to battleships.

These variations appeared to stem from some uncertainty as to whether the term "Star Destroyer" was appropriate for ships which were much bigger and orders of magnitude more powerful and massive than the Imperial-class and Victory-class designs. Nevertheless, terms like "Executor-class Star Destroyer" and "Super Star Destroyer" immediately evoked the far greater scale and power of these much larger ships.

In addition, the direct classification of the Executor-class as Star Dreadnoughts, highlighted once again its battleship-role and brought to attention the high number of heavy turbolasers and massive armor covering Executor and her siblings.

The Executor design represented an up-scaling of the Star Destroyer-form from multi-purpose destroyers to fully-fledged battleships, and their role as primary warships remained constant, even in the often fluid and changing military situations. Later Imperial dreadnought designs, such as the Sovereign and Eclipse classes, represented further development of the battleship/commandship concept, and would also be described by the same terms as the Executor-class.

Other, less prominent classes, would see lesser confusion surrounding their roles, as most were described in more easily understandable naval terms. For instance, the heads of the mighty Kuat Drive Yards would refer to their different ships in terms of "destroyers, cruisers and battlecruisers" when considering the demands of the Imperial Navy. Ships with less armor than the Executor-class yet many times larger than the average Imperial-class vessel, would be described as either battlecruisers or Star Battlecruisers. Super Star Destroyers smaller than both these groups, were noted as Star Cruisers.

Specifications and capabilities
There is also some confusion about the firepower of Executor-class ships. What is certain is that they carried over 5000 weapons emplacements and multiple wings of TIE/ln starfighters, and that they were among the largest combat warships ever built. The sheer amount of guns available on on Executor was enough to rival entire fleets of lesser ships.



Even more advanced Super Star Destroyers, like the Eclipse-class, would be fitted with smaller superlasers capable of destroying most capital ships in a single blast and even penetrating the most powerful planetary shields.

As well as immense weapons batteries, Executor carried a large force of ground troops, and two prefabricated garrison bases were stored onboard for rapid deployment. Her shields were said to have been able to dissipate power output equal to a medium-sized star; during the siege of Yavin, Executor's shields protected her during a collision with three Imperial-class Star Destroyers as they left hyperspace at relativistic speed.

Service history
The most famous Super Star Destroyer, and the lead ship of its class, was Executor, constructed at the Fondor shipyards and commissioned soon after the Battle of Yavin as the flagship of Darth Vader's Death Squadron, charged with hunting down and destroying Rebel activity in the Outland Regions. Its size and firepower overshadowed even the Mandator-class Star Dreadnoughts of decades past.

Simultaneously, a sister-ship was built by Kuat Drive Yards: named Lusankya, she was secretly buried beneath the cityscape of Imperial Center, in a massive display of Palpatine's strength in the Force and the Empire's technological capabilities. Once hidden, she served as a high-security prison, secret Imperial headquarters, and ultimately, an emergency escape-craft.

Around the same time, the prototype for the Eclipse-class Star Dreadnoughts had also undergone construction, being fitted with a superlaser and gaining unwanted attention from the crimelord Tyber Zann, who had sent out spies to study the vessel.



Over the next few years, a steady stream of Executor-class ships and smaller Super Star Destroyers left the Empire's shipyards. Many of these served as uniquely powerful flagships within designated areas&mdash;for instance, Reaper, the flagship of Oversector Outer under Tarkin's successor Grand Moff Kaine; Guardian, command ship for the twenty-four Imperial-class Star Destroyers of the Coruscant Sector Fleet; Terror, which was befitted with a cloaking shield and was commanded by Admiral Sarn, who oversaw the Empire's TIE Phantom project on Imdaar; or Iron Fist used by Admiral Zsinj.

It was rare to find Super Star Destroyers grouped into homogenous squadrons, but the strategic reserve forces of Black Sword Command appear to have included three of them.

After the Battle of Endor
Soon after the Battle of Endor, however, production of most warships bigger than ISDs seems to have all but stopped. As warlords seized control of elements of Imperial infrastructure, fleet elements were recalled to the Deep Core, and major industrial concerns such as Sienar Fleet Systems sought to negotiate an independent path between the Empire and the emergent New Republic.



In part, the abandonment of these massive ships may also have been due to their rather poor performance in fleet combat, particularly when faced with the sort of close, harrying attack favored by the Rebel Alliance and New Republic. Executor herself was destroyed due to the collision of an A-wing with her bridge at Endor. The damaged Iron Fist was brought down over Dathomir by the combined efforts of squadrons from the New Republic and Hapan navies. And Lusankya, after her dramatic breakout from Coruscant, was crippled and captured at the Battle of Thyferra by a group of rogues and irregulars equipped with a single Imperial-class Star Destroyer and some small craft and fighters.

The last Executor-class ship known to have been commissioned by legitimate Imperial forces was Razor's Kiss, destroyed by the New Republic soon after her launch from Kuat. Meanwhile, the number of Super Star Destroyers dwindled as the older ships left in service were either destroyed or captured. By the time that Grand Admiral Thrawn took command of the Empire five years after Endor, his naval forces lacked Executor-class ships alltogether.



On a side note, a Super Star Destroyer of unknown class, Vengeance, was under the command of the Dark Jedi Jerec. Vengeance was over 10 kilometers long, and had an unusual elongated sword shape instead of the usual dagger shape, but its current whereabouts are unknown. It is possible that she was one of the three Super Star Destroyers from Black Sword Command, and joined the remaining 21 ships in the Unknown Regions.

Final evolution of the type
In secret, however, the so-called "Dark Empire" based in the Deep Core and ruled by the Emperor's clones, had laid down a number of new Super Star Destroyers: the 15 kilometer long Sovereign-class and the 17.5 kilometer long Eclipse-class.

In keeping with a design trend observed in the ships of the "Dark Empire", both designs were bulkier than their predecessors, lacking open hangar-bays. They also carried superlasers similar to but much less powerful than the one carried aboard the Death Star. Two consecutive Eclipse-class ships, designated Eclipse and Eclipse II, were completed to serve as fleet flagships, but the four Sovereign-class ships seem never to have been finished.



Alongside these, the "Dark Empire" and the later Deep Core warlords also owned a number of warships larger than the Imperial-class design. These were also described as Super Star Destroyers. Many came from existing Imperial fleets and had been summoned to Byss to swear loyalty to the reborn Emperor. Ships representing a wide spectrum of classes in between Executors and Imperials formed an enormous procession in orbit above the throne-world.

Some of these intermediate scale vessels resembled beefed-up Imperial Star Destroyers, with approximately symmetrical dorsal and ventral hulls, three main engines, and a command tower carried well aft on a terraced superstructure. Examples included the 2.2 kilometer long Allegiance and Shockwave, size unknown, both of which served as command ships for respective fleets. Like the Star Destroyers at Endor, they blew up with alarming speed when unshielded, even if the opponents were numerically inferior. However, between the completion of Eclipse and Eclipse II, Executor Sedriss, acting as regent and Supreme Commander, coordinated Operation Shadow Hand from an Imperial-class destroyer, with the increasingly paranoid and delusional Palpatine keeping the heaviest fleet-elements constantly circling his secluded domain.

Perhaps the last Super Star Destroyer to be built was Knight Hammer, constructed by the warlord Superior General Delvardus and seized after his death by Admiral Daala: like Razor's Kiss, this was an Executor-class ship, modified with modern innovations like stealth armor and slave-rig circuits. She too was destroyed by New Republic forces soon after completion.



One as yet unidentified SSD was later observed in the fleet of the Imperial Remnant during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but there is no direct evidence that she was newly-constructed: as the later history of the Executor-class shows, even these behemoths could disappear for years in obscure corners of the Outer Rim.

The last Super Star Destroyers
After the destruction of Eclipse II and Razor's Kiss, the Imperial Remnant was able to return Reaper to front-line service, and to counter her, the New Republic retained Lusankya. The clash of Reaper and Lusankya at the Battle of Orinda was the only known ship-to-ship duel between Super Star Destroyers, but following Reaper's destruction the next year, Lusankya was taken out of service and scheduled for breaking up.



Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Galaxy at large, two more Super Star Destroyers had survived: Pride of Yevetha (ex-Intimidator) had become the flagship of the reclusive and xenophobic Duskhan League, while ex-Imperial warlord Gaen Drommel was still lurking on the Outer Rim with Guardian.

The Koornacht Crisis shocked the New Republic into action. Not only had the Yevetha used Intimidator as the centerpiece of their fleet, but she had been unexpectedly recaptured by Imperial forces at the end of the campaign, and remained at large along with Guardian. Two further Super Star Destroyers of unknown class from Black Sword Command were also apparently unaccounted for.

In response, Lusankya was returned to active service, while Guardian was captured, refitted and taken into the New Republic fleet. Intimidator herself disappeared into the Unknown Regions, and was discovered adrift in a battle-damaged derelict state several years later; it is possible that she may have been employed by the Empire of the Hand.

By the time of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the New Republic thus had at least two of the biggest Super Star Destroyers in commission. Lusankya was destroyed during the siege of Borleias, while Guardian survived the war, serving as the Supreme Commander's flagship and a mobile government HQ. Shortly after Lusankya's destruction, however, another Super Star Destroyer, apparently an Executor-class ship, was briefly observed as a guardship at Bastion, the capital of the Imperial Remnant. This ship's origins are unknown, and it is unclear if she survived the war, but she has been speculated by some to have been named Defiant.

During the events surrounding the Swarm War, Gilad Pellaeon would travel in Megador, a Super Star Destroyer equipped with sixteen engines. Whether this was an old Imperial design or built by the Galactic Alliance, is unknown.

Known classes

 * Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought
 * Executor-class Star Dreadnought
 * Gauntlet-class Star Cruiser
 * Giel's battleship (class unknown)
 * Imperial Communications Ship
 * Mandator-class Star Dreadnought
 * Praetor-class Star Battlecruiser
 * Procurator-class Star Battlecruiser
 * Sovereign-class Star Dreadnought
 * Super-class Star Destroyer
 * Super Star Destroyer (hunchbacked)
 * Super Star Destroyer (sleek)
 * Vengeance (class unknown)

Known examples

 * Aggressor
 * Allegiance
 * Autarch
 * Despot
 * Eclipse
 * Eclipse II
 * Executor
 * Guardian
 * Heresiarch
 * Intimidator
 * Iron Fist
 * Knight Hammer
 * Lusankya
 * Megador
 * Razor's Kiss
 * Reaper
 * Sovereign
 * Terror
 * Vengeance (Executor-class)
 * Vengeance
 * Whelm

Behind the scenes
The use of the term "Super Star Destroyer" may be somewhat similar to the use of slang made by real-life military personnel to describe various vehicles. Some examples include: large American aircraft carriers being called "supercarriers" and B-52 bomber crews calling their planes "BUFF" (acronym for "Big Ugly Fat Fucker"), both terms being non-technical and with no definite meaning.

Another possibility may be that the term is based on real-world modern terms "super battleship", "super dreadnought", and "super (aircraft) carrier" to denote larger-than-average ships of those respecitve classifications.

A similar IU military term is the use of the phrase "super battle droid" to denote the B2 super battle droid.

While some sources declare "Super Star Destroyer" to be "Rebel slang", Darth Vader also referred to his flagship Executor as a Star Destroyer. As such, it is possible that the term actually originated within the Imperial forces, or made its way into the Imperial military lingo.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
 * Classic Star Wars
 * Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Dark Empire
 * Dark Nest III: The Swarm War