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."

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

Characteristics


The TIE bomber had two hulls next to each other; one carried the pilot and the other carried a pair of general purpose warhead launchers, 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 solar ionization reactor to allow a full payload to be carried at a reasonable speed.

The TIE bomber was capable of carrying one of the following payloads: sixteen concussion missiles, twelve proton torpedoes, eight proton rockets, six space mines, four proton bombs, sixty-four thermal detonators, or thousands of propaganda pamphlets. Its fixed armament was two wing-mounted laser cannons.

The bomber was agile enough to deliver devastating strikes with surgical precision; as shown by a mission when a group of these craft destroyed a Rebel-occupied tower in the middle of a crowded city while leaving the surroundings untouched.

Nonetheless, the bomber was slower and less maneuverable than the TIE/ln starfighter. Like most mass-produced TIEs, it lacked shields, though it did partly compensate by having a stronger hull. Standard Imperial doctrine required that bombers be escorted to target by other starfighters.



While not expected to engage enemy fighters in dogfights due to their slower speed and agility, TIE Bombers could target them from a standoff distance with their large magazines of concussion missiles. During the conflict at Mylok IV, a squadron of Demetrius Zaarin's bombers held off large numbers of Nharwaak and Rebel Y-wings, allowing the Imperials to aid the Habeen in evacuating their base. Due to a shortage of TIE Interceptors during the pacification of the Pakuuni system, Maarek Stele thrust his bomber into the space superiority role against Rebel and pirates, once defending Thrawn's craft from an attack while he visited the newly completed outpost NL-1.

The TIE Bomber's lack of shields was crucially exposed during the Sepan Civil War. There, the Ripoblus conducted an attack on the Dimok Science Station Youst spearheaded by six Assault Transports. The station's defending fighters, consisting of Z-95 Headhunters and Delta-class JV-7 escort shuttles, quickly fell victim to the turrets of the ATR-6 that they were trying to attack. When Admiral Harkov's forces entered the area to repel the Ripoblus, they deployed TIE Bomber to take out the ATR-6s from a safe distance with proton torpedoes. Imperial pilots discovered that a full-strength ATR-6 could survive even three torpedo hits, with several Bombers lost trying to finish off the injured ATR-6 with laser cannon fire. Maarek Stele opted wisely to replace his payload with proton rockets, which required more careful aiming, but one of these devastating warheads was enough to quickly destroy an ATR-6. Near the end of the campaign, while covering the transfer of TIE Avengers, Stele distracted the gunners of the Dimok cruiser Ben Het so bombers could safely conduct their torpedo runs against it, resulting in its destruction.

History
"Watch out for those TIE bombers."

- Crix Madine during the Battle of Hoth



The TIE Bomber succeeded the TIE/gt starfighter as the Empire's primary ground assault craft in the TIE series. The TIE/gt being the first of the series to have its main pod elongated from a sphere to a cylindrical shape to accommodate a bomb bay. Backwater planets and lower priority capital ships had to initially make do with the TIE/gt, though the eventual widespread adaptation of the Bomber phased out the gt in areas such as the Dantooine system where "Deathfire" McDibs was known to pilot one. The TIE/sa Bomber adopted a longer, though similarly elongated pod to that of the TIE/gt for it's dual-pod design and used larger curved wings, with an increased surface area of solar ionisation paneling, providing higher power output to accommodate the increase in mass.

The TIE bomber came into service during the early years of the empire and was used to quell the Separatist holdouts still active at the time. Namely Gizor Dellso's fleet of former CIS naval starships and private droid army. During the Battle of Hoth, several TIE bomber squadrons attacked escaping Rebel transports trying to run the blockade, causing significant losses among them. Only the intervention of Rogue Squadron in holding off enough of the bombers allowed the greater part of the Rebels to escape. Shortly afterwards, a group of these craft were used to bomb the asteroid in which Millennium Falcon was hiding.

During the Raid on 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.

Successors


The TIE Bomber quickly supplanted the TIE/gt starfighter as the Imperial Navy's front line assault bomber. Despite its disadvantages, notably its lack of speed, shields, and hyperdrive, it endeared itself to bureaucracy as it could be mass-produced like other inexpensive TIEs.

Other warhead-carrying fighters such as the Assault Gunboat, TIE Avenger (despite its lower magazine capacity), TIE Defender, and Missile Boat, despite having shields and a hyperdrive, were far costlier and only found deployment in specific missions. The TIE Bomber thus remained the mainstay of the Imperial Navy's heavy fighters. One of its most notable accomplishments was the destruction of Ali Tarrak's TIE Defender manufacturing facility.

Around the time the Rebel Alliance surfaced, approximately 3 BBY The Sith Lord Darth Vader commissioned the development of the TIE Advanced x1 Starfighter, which incorporated the use of the wing design used on the TIE bomber, with a single spherical cockpit module, that had the advantage of an integrated hyperdrive and basic associated shielding, without the significant loss in performance that a TIE/ln starfighter would sacrifice with the added hardware. The project didn't see full production models assembled however, as the the TIE Interceptor assumed production as the Empire's superior model TIE starfighter due to it's agility and speed, with usable firepower.

Further development of the TIE Bomber paved the way for the more advanced Scimitar assault bomber, which was designed with the input of Bomber pilots from the elite "Scimitar" wing.

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 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. However, higher ranking officers usually used the Lambda shuttle.

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 lander
Using larger, vertically elongated wings than that of the bomber, this landing craft carried an additional, much larger, personnel pod on it's underside that carried ground troops for surface deployment. Shira Brie fictitiously recalls these craft landing on her homeworld as a child, as part of a convincing cover story to infiltrate the Rebel Alliance.

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 and shields.

Scimitar assault bomber
It was 8 meters long, and thus longer than the standard TIE/ln starfighter. Its weapons included two laser cannons, concussion missile launchers, and chutes for thermal detonators and proton grenades. However, instead of two ion engines, it only had one, thus the lack of the prefix TIE. It was designed to bomb planets into submission.

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 and had a brief appearance in Return of the Jedi. The boarding craft is shown in the depiction of the Star Destroyer Devastator for Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections.

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. In Battlefront it holds both the pilot and a bomb-aimer while in Battlefront II the pilot controls bombing while the passenger fires and manually-aims guided missiles.

While the TIE bomber's reactor is listed as a Sienar Fleet Systems I-a2b solar ionization reactor in Star Wars: Complete Cross-Sections, this same reactor is stated in both the same book and other sources to be the same reactor that powers large capital ships like the 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 that SFS produced multiple sizes of the reactor model.

In Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, the TIE Bomber was actually faster than the Y-wing.

Non-canon appearances

 * Tag & Bink Are Dead
 * Star Wars Infinities: The Empire Strikes Back
 * LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy