All Terrain Armored Transport/Legends

"We had the Battle of Gormen won, until the AT-ATs arrived. They came out of the fog and ripped apart the front lines. The locals ran in terror, but the experienced soldiers surrendered. We knew that you can't outrun an AT-AT."

- Major Bren Derlin, Rebel Alliance field commander

The All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT) walker was a major part of the Galactic Empire's army. It was one of the most heavily armored land vehicles in the Imperial Army, but was also known for its relatively slow speed.

Characteristics
"That armor's too strong for blasters!"

- Luke Skywalker during the Battle of Hoth



AT-ATs were large, quadrupedal machines resembling enormous mechanical beasts. Their primary purpose was transportation of more vulnerable units across the battlefield, but the Empire would also use them as weapons of terror. One of its few shortcomings was a weak point in its neck, which, when attacked, could bring easy destruction to the walker.

The AT-AT also lacked armor covering on its underbelly, leaving the spot vulnerable to mounted guns or portable missile launchers. To remedy this weakness, AT-STs were usually stationed around the feet of the walker to ensure nothing was given a clear shot at the AT-AT's weak underside.

Walkers were most useful in operations involving an assault on shield-protected emplacements, which could not be destroyed by orbital bombardment nor penetrated by repulsor-equipped landing craft.

They could carry either 40 or more Imperial stormtroopers and five speeder bikes, or two AT-ST units, which were carried disassembled, due to the otherwise prohibitive size of the AT-ST. The stormtroopers could be deployed via rappelling cable, but the heavier ordnance could only exit after the slow and comparatively awkward process of the AT-AT kneeling and extending its ramps.

AT-ATs and AT-STs were deployed from orbit by dropships like the Warlord and Y-85 Titan, both of which could carry a full platoon of four AT-ATs, or the smaller Theta-class barge, which could only carry a single 22.5 meter tall walker.

The arsenal of the AT-AT was also devastating, including two chin-mounted heavy laser cannons to destroy slow, bulky targets and two temple-mounted medium repeating blaster cannons which could engage lighter targets. The armor plating was too thick for most blasters to penetrate, and they could walk over&mdash;and thereby crush&mdash;people and equipment. Powering the walking system of the AT-AT was a fuel slug underneath the body of the vehicle.

History


AT-ATs were assembled by Kuat Drive Yards, and evolved from the AT-TE walkers first employed in the Battle of Geonosis. The first-generation AT-AT walkers saw their debut during the Battle of Jabiim, later on in the Clone Wars. During this battle, the overwhelmed Confederacy forces were annihilated in the beginning. Some managed to fall into the hands of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, through unknown means.

During the time of the Galactic Empire, Maximilian Veers resurrected the idea, bringing the AT-AT into full Imperial service, even in early campaigns like the one at Kashyyyk. The AT-AT was deployed on a wide array of worlds in the months following the Battle of Yavin, including Corellia, Chandrila, and Gormen. Nearly three years after the Battle of Yavin, Veers neared completion on a superior model of the walker on Zaloriis, nicknamed "Dune Cow". With the prototype Blizzard I, which was constructed in Camp Culroon, he assaulted the planet's capital when they declared affiliation with the Rebellion.



At the Battle of Hoth, the Empire used the Blizzard Force walkers to land beyond the limits of the Rebel Alliance's shield, although a few were lost to the treacherous terrain before the battle even began. General Maximilian Veers commanded the ground forces and advanced on the shield generator, decimating Rebel troopers in their trenches.

Faced with such forces, Luke Skywalker employed a strategy earlier devised by himself and strategist Beryl Chiffonage to disable the walkers: his team of snowspeeders would use their magnetic harpoons and tow cables to entangle the walkers' feet, causing them to fall. Wedge Antilles and his gunner Wes Janson managed to disable one walker this way. Luke destroyed a second by cutting a hole in it with his lightsaber and tossing in a concussion grenade, and a third was destroyed when a speeder crashed into it.

Despite these small successes, they were ultimately insufficient to turn the tide of the battle, and the Battle of Hoth was one of the most devastating losses for the Rebels in the entire Galactic Civil War. The AT-ATs succeeded in destroying the shield generator, thereby allowing the main Imperial force to land and attack Echo Base. The AT-ATs would go on to devastate the Rebel defenses.

The walkers later patrolled the garrison base on the forest moon of Endor, but were limited in their range by the dense foliage of the moon; as a result, smaller vehicles such as AT-STs saw far more use.



Sometime after the Battle of Endor, the Empire replaced the AT-AT's lasers and blasters with light turbolasers, easily capable of defeating many highly protected defensive weapons emplacements.

By 9 ABY, Nomad City on Nkllon was a mining operation owned by Lando Calrissian. The city was built from a Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser mounted on top of 40 captured AT-ATs to move the city constantly away from the day side of Nkllon and prevent it from being destroyed by intense radiation of Nkllon's daytime. However, the city was damaged and then abandoned, and Nomad City and its AT-ATs were destroyed by the intense radiation.

During the reborn Emperor Palpatine's insurgency in a clone body from 10 ABY to 11 ABY, the Empire developed a new variant of the AT-AT that was equipped with the most powerful Imperial turbolasers and the new X-80 power cells. These were deployed during an attack on New Alderaan. During the battle, they vaporized many buildings, gun emplacements, and starfighters.

Following the Galactic Civil War, AT-ATs were also used by the New Republic, the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, and various other governments. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, the Myrkr strike team found one of these vehicles on the Yuuzhan Vong Koros-strohna Baanu Raas in 27 ABY. AT-ATs were also deployed by the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances during the liberation of Coruscant in 30 ABY.

Behind the scenes

 * The name "AT-AT" is never spoken in any of the films. Instead, the machines are referred to as "Imperial walkers".


 * The AT-ATs used in The Empire Strikes Back and the brief appearance in Return of the Jedi were created with the use of stop-motion animation.


 * While Expanded Universe sources based on West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game list the AT-AT at a height of 15.5 meters, Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy uses different measurements to place it at a larger size of 22.5 meters.




 * Star Wars: Empire at War and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds both have a mission which describes the creation of the AT-ATs and their introduction to the service of the Empire. All this happens before the Battle of Hoth. However, there are several appearances of the AT-ATs in BBY sources, including the games Star Wars: Rebel Assault and Star Wars: X-wing. The first is S-canon; however, the latter is accepted as C-canon and shows them in the Battle of Orion IV. First-generation AT-AT walkers are featured in the story-arc Star Wars Republic: The Battle of Jabiim.


 * AT-AT is pronounced "at-at" in Star Wars: Force Commander, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. They are also called "A-T-A-T"s briefly in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader.


 * When there was a wrong leg animation with the AT-ATs, George Lucas would take that scene and make a turret shoot it in the leg. This supposedly happened twice.


 * George Lucas says he got the idea from the massive tripods from H.G. Well's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds.