Eclipse-class Star Destroyer

The Eclipse-class Star Destroyer was a class of Imperial warships used around six years after the Battle of Endor.

Operational History
The Eclipse-class was constructed by Kuat Drive Yards, like many Imperial starships. The first of this class, the Eclipse, became the reborn Emperor Palpatine's flagship, and the only other ship of the class, Eclipse II, assumed the same role after the original's destruction.

Approximately ten miles long on the keel, these two jet-black battleships were among the largest warships ever built, and among the most heavily armed ships of all time. Perhaps the most deadly weapon they carried was a keel-mounted superlaser cannon&mdash;although not as powerful as the superlaser on the Death Star, these weapons were capable of slashing through any planetary shield to crack open a planet's crust and sear an entire continental landmass; they could probably destroy almost any other warship with a single blast.

Additionally, these behemoths were armed with hundreds of heavy laser and turbolaser mountings and a suite of interdictor generators, along with 600 TIE Interceptors and 96 TIE Bombers, divided into 58 squadrons; for ground assault, they carried 150,000 Imperial soldiers, 100 AT-ATs, and five prefabricated bases. Each ship of the class was crewed by over 700,000 personnel, and Eclipse II also carried a compliment of Shadow Droid starfighters.



The Eclipse took almost as long to construct as either of the Empire's Death Star battlemoons, and for most of her career, she served as an orbital battlestation at Byss.

She was destroyed along with the reborn Emperor in 10 ABY, during an Imperial attack on Pinnacle Moon in the Da Soocha system, when Luke Skywalker and his sister Princess Leia managed to disrupt the Emperor's control of a titanic Force Storm, a massive conflagration of dark side energy that the Emperor had summoned in order to wipe out the massed New Republic fleet.

Afterwards, a second Eclipse-class ship, dubbed the Eclipse II, replaced the original. Above the planet Onderon, Lando Calrissian and Wedge Antilles led a small boarding party against the mighty battleship, and R2-D2 was able to override the Eclipse II's computer banks. The astromech droid then sent the Eclipse II hurtling through hyperspace on a collision course with the superweapon Galaxy Gun. The explosion destroyed the Eclipse II and the Galaxy Gun. One last projectile was pulled by Byss' gravity and hit the planet, destroying it.

Behind the Scenes

 * Terms used for the Eclipse in canonical sources are "Star Destroyer" and sometimes "Super Star Destroyer", although the latter term is often restricted to Executor-class ships - the most recent source calls the original Eclipse "the largest Star Destroyer ever built, dwarfing the Super Star Destroyers".
 * It's been suggested that due to the dimensions and firepower involved, the Eclipse-class could also be designated "Star Dreadnought", like several other powerful ship-classes before them. As the class lies in-between several other warships already noted as "dreadnoughts", this assumption is not that far-fetched. Nevertheless, the name used in this article is the main canonical one, connecting the Eclipse-class to the bigger "Star Destroyer" family of designs.


 * The Dark Empire Sourcebook states that Eclipse was 17.5 km long; this is seen by some fans as contradicting the description given in Dark Empire, where the ship is said to reach "ten miles from stem to stern". The author of the Dark Empire Sourcebook has apparently suggested that an additional mile was added to Palpatine's personal flagship, and that this length is indicative of customization and personalization, with the standard design being only 16 km long. Alternatively, "ten miles from stem to stern" might be merely a vague, rhetorical figure, or the discrepancy may be the result of the long and spasmodic construction period, or it may represent a difference between Eclipse and Eclipse II.


 * There is also an apparent contradiction in the information on for the Eclipse's construction. According to the Dark Empire Sourcebook, design work on the Eclipse was begun after the Battle of Hoth, while Byss and the Deep Core claims that she was under construction for as long as either Death Star, hinting a timeframe of decades. Byss and the Deep Core further hints that Eclipse was parked in orbit at Byss before the Battle of Endor, as it is only in this timeframe that she could have served as a rendezvous point for meetings of the Grand Admirals as claimed in the text; but the Essential Chronology says that she was built at Kuat and only moved to Byss four and a half years after the Battle of Endor, when she was stolen in a partially-completed state by Lira Wessex and her design-team, shortly before the shipyards surrendered to the New Republic.


 * There are several ways of explaining these discrepancies, but it is possible that, as with Executor and her twin sister-ship Lusankya (originally named Executor II), the Eclipse and Eclipse II were constructed simultaneously in two different shipyards, with the existence of each being kept secret from the people working on the other. The potential discrepancies in timeframe may be a matter of in-universe error, with the fictional authors who serve as the real-world writers' proxies being unaware of the true length of construction.


 * Some fans regard the stated power of the Eclipse's superlaser as paradoxical. It is described as not powerful enough to destroy a planet, but as capable of overpowering planetary shields and as 2/3rds the power of the Death Star's prime weapon; but some fan calculations suggest that a weapon of such power would be more than sufficient to destroy a planet, and some fans believe that planetary shields are actually harder to destroy than planets. Those who wish to reconcile these beliefs with the canon statements suggest that the "2/3rds" figure refers instead to the magnitude of the energy release as opposed to the total value; this would put the main weapon below the threshold necessary to destroy a planet. Alternatively, it may be that the fan-calculations are in error; we certainly do not understand the exact destructive mechanism of a hypermatter-fuelled superlaser.

Appearances

 * Dark Empire
 * Empire's End