TIE/sa bomber/Legends

TIE/sa bomber "When the TIE bombers first started shelling Yavin 4, I thought the planet would crack right open. Those egg layers leveled the jungle."

- Tigran Jamiro

The TIE/sa bomber, simply known as the TIE bomber, was a larger, less maneuverable TIE starfighter used for destroying large starships and pinpoint-precision bombing. The "sa" in the TIE bomber's designation stood for "surface assault."

Characteristics


The TIE bomber was capable of carrying one of the following payloads: eight heavy rockets, six orbital mines, eight proton torpedoes (normally modified to hold twelve), eight proton bombs, four space bombs, sixty-four thermal detonators, or thousands of propaganda pamphlets.

The bomber was slower and less maneuverable than the original TIE/ln starfighter though it did partly compensate by having a stronger hull. Despite its agility, its lack of shielding meant it had to be escorted to target by starfighters.

The TIE bomber had two hulls next to each other; one carried the pilot and the other carried a universal warhead launcher, enabling them to carry a variety of weapons tailored for the mission. The bomber was much more heavily built-up than the "fighter"-series of TIEs; it carried more sophisticated sensors to penetrate capital ship jamming and SFS P-s4 twin ion engines powered by a SFS I-a2b ionization reactor to allow a full payload to be carried at a reasonable speed.

Due to their distinctive shape, TIE bombers came to be referred to occasionally as "dupes" by enemy pilots.

History
"Watch out for those TIE bombers."

- Crix Madine during the Battle of Hoth

During the Battle of Hoth, several TIE bombers attempted to down escaping Rebel transports, but were thwarted by Rogue Squadron. Shortly afterwards, a group of these craft were used to bomb the asteroid in which Millennium Falcon was hiding.



During the Raid at Bakura, Wedge Antilles hijacked a TIE bomber from the prison facility to help save Derek Klivian, who crash-landed on the surface of the planet. The bomber was later used in various campaigns.

TIE bombers continued to see extensive use throughout the Galactic Civil War, where they often performed bombing runs on enemy forces, and even saw action in the early part of the Yuuzhan Vong War.

TIE/sh shuttle
A variant of the bomber replaced the warhead bay with a small cargo bay that could hold two passengers. This craft could ferry important personnel from one ship to another or from a ship to a planetary base. Captain Lorth Needa used a shuttle of this type to personally apologize to Darth Vader for losing track of Millennium Falcon.

TIE boarding craft


Another variant of the bomber featured an enlarged secondary pod with clamps and a hull-cutter. This could carry a stormtrooper raiding/boarding party for insertion into a captured or disabled enemy ship. It was used by Darth Vader and a team of stormtroopers to enter Princess Leia Organa's CR90 corvette, Tantive IV.

TIE Interdictor
The modular nature of TIE series technology allowed for expansion of the TIE bomber concept. This variant included two or four ordnance bays giving it two to four times more destructive capability than the standard TIE bomber, though they appear to have been fairly rare.

Gand Starfighter
Gand Starfighters were modified TIE bombers, with a hyperdrive motivator and navicomp, wings cut in Interceptor shape, six concussion missiles, shields, and presumably greater maneuverability.

Behind the scenes

 * While the designs for the bomber and boarding craft were made for A New Hope, the craft did not appear until the comic Star Wars 15: Star Duel, and did not make its first movie appearance until The Empire Strikes Back.


 * In Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and its sequel, Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, a TIE/sa is shown to possess the ability to hover in place. This stationary flight is unmentioned in other works save for Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns. This latter occurrence, however, is thought to owe to game mechanics.


 * In Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II, the TIE bomber can hold two people. One pilots the craft, while the other serves as the bomber.


 * While the TIE Bomber's reactor is listed as a Sienar Fleet Systems I-a2b Solar Ionization Reactor by the Star Wars: Complete Cross-Sections book and possibly the Stele Chronicles, this same reactor is stated in other sources to be the same that powers large captial ships including Imperial-class Star Destroyers, in which it takes up almost half of the vessel. It is described as a 'miniature sun', producing stellar-scale energy and most likely annihilating tens of thousands of tons of fuel per second. There is no known official explanation for this, but it is possible SFS produced multiple reactor sizes of the same model.