Eclipse-class dreadnought

Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought "The hyperspace tunnel opened and this black thing came crawling out from between the stars&hellip; We thought it was a ghost ship, until it opened fire."

- New Republic information officer Nara Dun

The Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought was a class of Imperial Star Dreadnought used around six years after the Battle of Endor.

Operational history
The Eclipse-class was constructed by Kuat Drive Yards, like many of the bigger Imperial warships. The first of this class, Eclipse, became the reborn Emperor Palpatine's flagship, and the only other ship of the class, Eclipse II, assumed the same role after the original's destruction. Approximately eleven miles long on the keel, these two jet-black battleships were among the largest warships ever built, and among the most heavily armed ships of all time. In terms of scale, they can be seen as successors to Eye of Palpatine and the Kuati Star Dreadnoughts that preceeded the New Republic era.

Perhaps the most deadly weapon carried by the Eclipse-class ships was a keel-mounted superlaser cannon&mdash;although not as powerful as the superlaser on the Death Star, these weapons were capable of slashing through any planetary shield to crack open a planet's crust and sear an entire continental landmass; they could probably destroy almost any other warship with a single blast. Additionally, these behemoths were armed with hundreds of heavy laser and turbolaser mountings and a suite of interdictor generators, along with 600 TIE Interceptors and 96 TIE Bombers, divided into 58 squadrons; for ground assault, they carried 150,000 Imperial soldiers, 100 AT-ATs, and five prefabricated bases. Each ship of the class was crewed by over 700,000 personnel, and Eclipse II also carried a compliment of Shadow Droid starfighters.

Eclipse took almost as long to construct as either of the Empire's Death Star battlemoons, and for most of her career, she served as an orbital battlestation at Byss.

She was destroyed along with the reborn Emperor in 10 ABY, during an Imperial attack on Pinnacle Moon in the Da Soocha system, when Luke Skywalker and his sister, Princess Leia Organa, managed to disrupt the Emperor's control of a titanic Force Storm, a massive conflagration of dark side energy that the Emperor had summoned in order to wipe out the massed New Republic fleet. Afterwards, a second Eclipse-class ship, dubbed Eclipse II, replaced the original. Above the planet Onderon, Lando Calrissian and Wedge Antilles led a small boarding party against the mighty battleship, and R2-D2 was able to override Eclipse II's computer banks. The astromech droid then sent Eclipse II hurtling through hyperspace on a collision course with the superweapon Galaxy Gun. The explosion destroyed Eclipse II and the Galaxy Gun. One last projectile was pulled by Byss' gravity and hit the planet, destroying it.

Behind the scenes



 * The Dark Empire Sourcebook states that Eclipse was 17.5 km long; this is seen by some fans as contradicting the description given in Dark Empire, where the ship is said to reach "ten miles from stem to stern". The author of the Dark Empire Sourcebook has apparently suggested that an additional 1.5 km was added to the first ship of this class. This is supposed to indicate that particular ship's customization and personalization, with the standard design being only 16 km long. Alternatively, "ten miles from stem to stern" might be merely a vague, rhetorical figure, or the discrepancy may be the result of the long and spasmodic construction period, or it may represent a difference between Eclipse and Eclipse II.


 * There is also an apparent contradiction in the information on for Eclipse's construction. According to the Dark Empire Sourcebook, design work on Eclipse was begun after the Battle of Hoth, while Byss and the Deep Core claims that she was under construction for as long as either Death Star, hinting a timeframe of decades. Byss and the Deep Core further hints that Eclipse was parked in orbit at Byss before the Battle of Endor, as it is only in this timeframe that she could have served as a rendezvous point for meetings of the Grand Admirals as claimed in the text; but the Essential Chronology says that she was built at Kuat and only moved to Byss four and a half years after the Battle of Endor, when she was stolen in a partially-completed state by Lira Wessex and her design-team, shortly before the shipyards surrendered to the New Republic.
 * There are several ways of explaining these discrepancies, but it is possible that, as with Executor and her twin sister-ship Lusankya (originally named Executor II), Eclipse and Eclipse II were constructed simultaneously in two different shipyards, with the existence of each being kept secret from the people working on the other. The potential discrepancies in timeframe may be a matter of in-universe error, with the fictional authors who serve as the real-world writers' proxies being unaware of the true length of construction.




 * Some fans regard the stated power of Eclipse's superlaser as paradoxical. It is described as not powerful enough to destroy a planet, but as capable of overpowering planetary shields and as 2/3rds the power of the Death Star's prime weapon; but some fan calculations suggest that a weapon of such power would be more than sufficient to destroy a planet, and some fans believe that planetary shields are actually harder to destroy than planets. Those who wish to reconcile these beliefs with the canon statements suggest that the "2/3rds" figure refers instead to the magnitude of the energy release as opposed to the total value; this would put the main weapon below the threshold necessary to destroy a planet. Another possibility, as the Death Star's superlaser consisted of eight (or, in the Death Star II, nine) individual beams which combined into a single larger beam after firing, is that the Eclipse-class' superlaser had 2/3rds the power of one of the Death Star superlaser's component beams. Alternatively, it may be that the fan-calculations are in error; we certainly do not understand the exact destructive mechanism of a hypermatter-fuelled superlaser.


 * Some fans dislike the description of Eclipse-class ships as Star Dreadnoughts, feeling that the term "Star Destroyer" adequately covers all types of dagger-shaped warships and question the necessity for any additional classifications (especially ones that fit into similar patterns of real navies). However, as many sources throughout the history of the Expanded Universe have shown, "Star Destroyer" is not the sole term available, and is often used interchangably with real-life terms.


 * Imperial "cruisers" and "battlecruisers" were mentioned in the Marvel Star Wars comic books, "Kuati destroyers, cruisers and battlecruisers" were mentioned by the people responsible for creating them (Slave Ship), and Imperial "battleships" were mentioned as being built by several different companies (The Illustrated Star Wars Universe). (This term was also applicable to the versatile Imperial-class, under certain operations). Even the Eye of Palpatine was described as an "enormous dreadnought" in Children of the Jedi.


 * Therefore, it is not surprising that these terms would also be presented in a more "space-age" form, with "Star Battlecruisers" and "Star Dreadnoughts" first mentioned in Attack of the Clones Incredible Cross-Sections and the addition of Imperial "Star Cruisers" in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy. This book also described how "Super Star Destroyer" (a term that has been interchangably used with "Super-class Star Destroyer") was used to cover many different types of warships bigger than "Star Destroyers", from "Star Cruisers to Star Dreadnoughts".
 * This both explained the extreme differences in various ships that have been called "Super Star Destroyers", as well as reaffirming earlier sources rather than contradicting them.


 * Critics would argue these terms and claim they do not apply to the Eclipse- nor to the Sovereign-class, even though both have been called "Super Star Destroyers" (Dark Empire Sourcebook), as well as being connected with and compared to the earlier Executor-class.


 * Accusations have been made about "possible contradictions" in SW continuity, even though the newer terms don't exclude any mention of the older terms by the Rebel Alliance/New Republic or the Galactic Empire. Likewise, the older references do not prohibit the concurrent use of the newer terms in any way, shape or form.


 * No canonical source has ever mentioned any difference between the use of "Super Star Destroyer" in the Rebellion era and the New Republic era; the official sources have made the largest Super Star Destroyers into Star Dreadnoughts and that is what this article follows, for better or for worse.

Appearances

 * Dark Empire
 * Empire's End