TIE/ph phantom

TIE Phantom "Analysis of the flight recorder have identifed the attackers as modified V38 assault fighters."

- Admiral Ackbar

The TIE Phantom was a prototype TIE series starfighter, modified from a V38 assault fighter and equipped with a dangerous technology unseen in previous decades&mdash;a stygium cloaking device.

Characteristics
The cloaking device in the TIE Phantom, utilized stygium crystals and could be used to track other ships unseen until the moment of firing, thus getting the jump on their enemy. The Phantom was armed with three laser cannons mounted on its three wings, and two body-mounted laser cannons. It required two pilots for operation.



The TIE Phantom had slightly above normal firepower for a starfighter of its class. This stealth fighter could move through space neither spotted on sensors nor by any pilot until they were ready to strike. However, on a TIE Phantom's sensors, cloaked TIE Phantoms would show up as sensor anomalies.

The greatest advantage of that craft was that they had a built in mechanism that allowed the pilot to fire its lasers at any time, and have the device automatically shut off and turn back on after every volley. This in effect allowed the TIE Phantom to be virtually invisible 99 percent of the time.

The ships were typically sent in small, guerilla strike squads instead of large squadrons because groups of them would not be able to see each other. This hindered their production and overall usefulness in large-scale battles.

History
"Whoa! How did they get in front of us?"

- Ru Murleen

The TIE Phantom was the brainchild of Grand Admiral Martio Batch, after the development of the hibridium-based cloaking device. Wanting to recreate the successful stygium cloaking screen used in the Sith Infiltrator, he ordered the superlaser platform Tarkin to the planet Aeten II, whose mines, the only known source of the rare stygium crystal, had dried up long before. Batch used the Tarkin to shatter the planet, releasing thousands of the crystals to be used in Batch's new project.



The TIE Phantom was a heavily modified version of a stock V38 assault fighter&mdash;leading some to refer to the Phantom TIEs by this designation&mdash;and initial prototypes were tested near Dreighton. When preliminary tests were completed, Darth Vader took control of the project and ordered the full scale production of the Phantom. The first wave of those was Sigma Squadron.

The TIE Phantom was first deployed after the Rebel Alliance deployed the B-wing starfighter, and destroyed three X-wings in a demonstration. The YT-1300 light freighter Corellia Star was able to find out about the TIE Phantom project, but was captured on Dreighton trying to return to the Rebel Alliance Fleet.

Two B-wings were then sent to investigate, but the Phantoms appeared and shot Kirby, the leader, down. "Rookie One", however, survived. The TIE Phantom was deployed again when an Imperial mining facility in the Arah asteroid belt was destroyed. It destroyed two out of three Rascal Squadron X-wings, but Rookie One again survived.



The X-wing's flight recorder showed the capabilities of the TIE Phantom, and prompted Admiral Ackbar to launch an operation to destroy the Executor-class Star Dreadnought Terror under the command of Admiral Sarn, the production facility for the TIE Phantoms. Rookie One and Ru Murleen were able to steal a TIE Phantom and destroy Terror, as well as the research plant on Imdaar Alpha.

The stolen Phantom was taken back to the Rebel Fleet, but the designers had already predicted this: Each fighter had a self-destruct mechanism disabled by some Imperial code, so that should one fall in the hands of the Rebels, they wouldn't be able to replicate its technology. After the destruction of this short-lived fighter, its technology was lost forever.

Following the failure of the TIE Phantom project, Batch fled into hiding, where he was later executed by his first officer.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
 * Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire