Star Dreadnought/Legends



Star Dreadnought, sometimes spelled Star Dreadnaught, was a formal designation for some of the largest and strongest battleships in the starfleets of regional and galactic governments.

The term "Super Star Destroyer" was also applied to some of these ships by the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the Galactic Empire, in colloquial use. In these cases, Star Dreadnoughts were noted as being the largest Super Star Destroyers. In turn, the lower-case term star dreadnought could be used to describe Super Star Destroyers in general.

Various classes of Star Dreadnoughts were known to have served in the Kuat Drive Yards defense fleets, the Republic Navy,  the Imperial Navy,  , the New Republic Defense Fleet and the Galactic Alliance Defense Fleet. Their sizes eclipsed most conventional warships, peaking with the Executor-class at 19 km in length, and the Eclipse-class, with its unequaled mass.

History


During the centuries leading up to the Clone Wars, important and rich galactic sectors were protected by private self-defense forces. The Kuat Sector had among its arsenal the Mandator-class Star Dreadnought. They were battleships equipped with heavy firepower but had a limited range on their hyperdrives. Mandators were primarily used to protect the valuable Kuat Drive Yards, as well as doing general sector defense.

As the Clone Wars raged, heavier warships were needed by the Galactic Republic, and the Star Battlecruisers and Star Dreadnoughts of Kuat became Republic Navy vessels, due to a centralization effort spearheaded by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who wanted tighter control over ship-assets within the Republic.

Following the end of the Clone Wars, the new Imperial Navy began the Sarlacc Project, to build a huge warship to serve as a flagship for the entire Navy. This Super Star Destroyer prototype was destroyed by early Rebel elements over Byss before its completion.

When the Galactic Civil War heated up years later, older Star Dreadnoughts were surpassed by new and radical designs. Skeptical of superweapons like the Death Star, the Imperial Navy worked hard to come up with reasonable alternatives that could hold their own in the face of massive centralization of power.

Among their achievements was the Executor-class. These ships gained notority as command ships in heated campaigns, with the lead vessel serving as Darth Vader's personal flagship. These ships were some of the largest in the galaxy, second only to battlestations like the Death Star. The Eclipse-class, which was designed around the time of the Executor, became dreadful weapons of terror, as each ship was equipped with a superlaser for penetrating planetary shields and pulverizing enemy ships.

Despite the imposing threat of these vessels, most were either destroyed by sabotage or in battle, or captured by the New Republic, leaving few rogue Star Dreadnoughts still active at the end of the Civil War.



Following the Black Fleet Crisis, the New Republic realized the need for bigger and stronger capital ships to deter would-be attackers. Running low on captured vessels of this size, new dreadnought classes were designed that were meant to be Republic counterparts to the Star Dreadnoughts.

The Corellian Strident-class and Mon Calamari Viscount-class Star Defenders were new directions for Republic ship-building, away from the compact designs of the New Class program. They were among the largest classes produced by the New Republic and saw heavy duty in the Yuuzhan Vong War, becoming part of the Galactic Alliance Navy, when the New Republic was reorganized into the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances.

It is unknown if the use of the term "Star Dreadnought" went out of fashion in the following decades. By 130 ABY, neither the re-emergent Galactic Empire nor the remainder of the Galactic Alliance appeared to use the term.

Known Star Dreadnought classes

 * Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought
 * Executor-class Star Dreadnought
 * Mandator I-class Star Dreadnought
 * Mandator II-class Star Dreadnought
 * Sovereign-class Star Dreadnought
 * Super Star Destroyer prototype

Star Dreadnought analogs

 * Admiral Giel's flagship
 * Eye of Palpatine
 * Strident-class Star Defender
 * Viscount-class Star Defender
 * Yuuzhan Vong Kor Chokk grand cruiser

Behind the scenes

 * The term "Star Dreadnought" (or "Star Dreadnaught") is disliked by some fans who prefer the term "Super Star Destroyer", which already referred to many different ships, from the 2.2km Allegiance to the 19km Executor.


 * The term was first explicitly used in Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections for the Mandator-class, and the Executor-class was given the formal designation "Star Dreadnought" in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.


 * Inside the Worlds also stated that "Super Star Destroyer" was a term used in "Rebel slang"&mdash;though the passage does not show that the term's currency is limited to "Rebel slang" nor that it was invented by them. In other canon sources, it is used by Imperial officers and other non-Rebels.


 * Since the Expanded Universe renaissance introduced by West End Games specifically divided warships into different types depending on their size and power, some fans welcomed what they saw as a necessary additions to explain all the different Super Star Destroyers seen throughout decades of publishing. Others considered the various redesignations and redefinitions contradictory and unnecessary, either claiming all Super Star Destroyers were the same/were capable of the same tasks or had been poorly depicted and were meant to be Executor-class vessels only. Despite different naval nomenclature being used by various authors, Curtis Saxton was widely seen as responsible for the change in designations.


 * The word "Dreadnaught" (or "Dreadnought") had actually been in use since the era of the Marvel Star Wars comics and the original Del Rey novel contract, back in the late 1970s/early 80s, although it has been applied to an even wider range of warship classes than "Super Star Destroyer", or even the generic "Star Destroyer":


 * The 3,000-year-old Invincible-class Dreadnought seen in 1979's Han Solo at Stars' End was "over two kilometers long"&mdash;slightly longer on the keel than an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, but in a similar tonnage bracket. It can be compared with several other obsolescent battleship types, including the Kumari Battleship and the 3 km Cal-class warship from Cracken's Rebel Operatives (1994). Since these elder warships were constructed at a time when most craft were significantly weaker than CW/GCW-era ships, they would have followed the definition of 'Dreadnaught' more closely back then, rather than compared with modern SW vessels.


 * The 600-meter Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser was invented in 1987 by West End Games for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. Often referred to simply as a "Dreadnaught", and commonly described as the most potent capital ship of the Republic Navy before the Clone Wars, it is 32 times smaller than an Executor Star Dreadnought, although it is also known to have been deployed in fleets of several hundred ships.


 * The massive Imperial dreadnaught Eye of Palpatine appeared in 1995's Children of the Jedi: dating from the end of the Clone Wars, it was even larger than Executor and Eclipse.


 * The Imperial propulsion testbed EX-F, from 1996's Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy, is described as built on a "Dreadnaught hull", though her precise size is never given.


 * The Death Star battlestations were also noted as dreadnoughts in the old Marvel Comics film-adaptions.


 * As an aside to the whole dreadnought-issue, The Illustrated Star Wars Universe mentions in its Coruscant-article: "Spidery docking and starship repair yards ride high above the planet, providing reconditioning facilities for the largest of spaceliners. Spherical self-contained colony vessels, Imperial Star Destroyers, and huge luxury yachts are built in the space-dock centers. The Emperor has commandeered other, more sophisticated space construction centers in other systems, notably the Kuat Drive Yards and the Rendili and Loronar space construction facilities, for assembling his largest battleships and special weapons platforms." (p. 71)


 * This early reference to Imperial "battleships" larger than Star Destroyers fits in with the historic use of the word "dreadnought" to cover "battleships equipped with the heaviest guns and armor". On the other hand, the contrast between Imperial Star Destroyers and the "largest battleships" implies that ISDs are themselves "battleships," and they have been described as such in several sources. In these cases, they corresponded to a classification system similar to the one used by WEG, which was noted as working with a smaller scale.


 * Much of the criticism towards the term "Star Dreadnought" stemmed from the belief that the largest ships in the modern Star Wars era were cruisers, not battleships, and that only recent authors like Saxton applied real-life terminology to the larger warships, even though the sources above showed this to be unfounded. There also exists plenty of sources that reference Imperial warships just as real-life navies do, often interchangeably with "Star Destroyer".


 * In Naval terminology, dreadnought is generally synonymous with battleships constructed after and influenced by HMS Dreadnought.