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 heavy rockets, six orbital 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 original 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 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 shuttless, 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 heavy 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 was derived from the TIE Advanced x1, from which it adopted the "bent-wing" design, and the TIE/gt starfighter. The TIE/gt had 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.

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 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.

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 notably accomplishments was the destruction of Ali Tarrak's TIE Defender manufacturing facility.

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, it is likely that most important personnel usually use the Lambda shuttle. As the shuttle was not designed in time for The Empire Strikes Back, the TIE/sh may have been a stopgap. The boarding craft is shown in the depiction of the Star Destroyer Devastator for Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections.

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, though it did not feature in the following 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. One pilots the craft, while the other serves as an auxiliary gunner.

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.