Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/July 14, 2010

The Super Star Destroyer Executor was the personal flagship of the Lord Darth Vader, the premier command ship of the Imperial Navy, and the first of the Executor-class Star Dreadnought line. Designed by starship engineer Lira Wessex as a successor to the original Imperial-class Star Destroyer, the Executor, at a monumental 19,000 meters in length, represented the largest traditional warship the galaxy had ever seen by the time of its completion. The Executor bristled with more than 5,000 weapon emplacements, enough firepower to blast any planetary surface to slag in hours, and a military complement capable of annihilating any ground installation. The Executor ' s presence alone, however, was enough to frighten an entire star system into submission.

Construction on the Executor began under complete secrecy in the secluded Scarl system, where Vader raised and trained Galen Marek, his secret dark side apprentice, in a failed plan to overthrow Emperor Palpatine as galactic ruler. By 0 ABY, the Executor was transferred to the Starship Yards of Fondor for the final stages of construction, under the overall direction of Admiral Amise Griff. At Fondor, the Executor became the failed target of internal sabotage by a group of traitorous Imperial admirals, who hoped to destroy Vader's project to prevent their own decline in power. Once completed, the Executor made for Yavin 4, site of the Rebel Alliance base. Vader hoped to crush the Rebellion once and for all with his new weapon, but the Executor failed to stop the Rebel evacuation from Yavin, and Griff died in the process.

For three years after Yavin, under the command of Admiral Kendal Ozzel, the Executor led Vader's Star Destroyer fleet, the Imperial Death Squadron, in the Empire's hunt for the Rebellion's secret headquarters as part of Vader's personal mission to locate his son, Luke Skywalker. In 3 ABY, the Executor led the Imperial victory at the Battle of Hoth, but due to the tactical blundering of Ozzel, Skywalker and the Rebellion leadership escaped, and Vader executed Ozzel for his failure. The Executor ' s admiralty immediately passed to Captain Firmus Piett, under whom the Executor chased the Millennium Falcon from Hoth to Bespin's Cloud City in continued pursuit of Skywalker. The Executor again failed to capture Skywalker at Bespin, however, and so Vader's search for his son continued.

For a time, with the search for Skywalker on hold, the Executor returned with Vader to Coruscant, where, in 3.5 ABY, tensions between Vader and Prince Xizor of the Black Sun crime syndicate came to a head. In orbit above the Imperial capital, the Executor obliterated Xizor's personal skyhook, killing Vader's nemesis and ending Black Sun's threatening influence on the Empire. Immediately afterward, the Executor was assigned to protect the construction site of the incomplete second Death Star in the remote Endor system.

In 4 ABY, the Executor ' s relatively short life came to a crashing end above the Forest Moon of Endor. During the Battle of Endor, the Executor led a massive Star Destroyer armada in trapping the Rebel Fleet between itself and the Death Star battlestation. However, the Rebels turned the tables on the Empire by attacking the Executor at point-blank range. A concentrated assault on the Executor at the climax of the battle brought down the massive Super Star Destroyer's bridge deflector shields, before a wayward A-wing starfighter, piloted by Arvel Crynyd, crashed into the Executor ' s command bridge. With navigation failing, the Executor was sucked into the gravity well of the Death Star and collided with the battlestation, disintegrating on impact.