Tantive V (CR90 corvette)

"Da name of dis ship is Tantive V. It looksa exactly like da Tantive IV. Da ambassador beesa already long gone. Meesa job was to stall yousa. And it workeds, didn't it, Lord Vader?"

- Abso Bar Binks

The Tantive V was a CR90 corvette in the service of the Alliance to Restore the Republic during the Galactic Civil War. Just prior to the Battle of Yavin, in 0 BBY, the Tantive V acted as a decoy for the identical Rebel corvette Tantive IV, the consular vessel of Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, which was carrying stolen technical data of the Imperial Death Star battlestation. To buy time for Organa to escape with the Death Star plans, the Tantive V drew the pursuit of Darth Vader's Imperial Star Destroyer Devastator away from the Tantive IV. Believing the Tantive V to be the Princess's corvette, the Devastator captured and boarded the decoy vessel, only to find it carried an unarmed crew of Gungans, rather than the coveted Death Star plans. The ruse of the Tantive V briefly allowed Organa to slip past Vader's grasp with the Death Star readouts.

Description
The CR90 corvette named Tantive V was one of many Corellian Engineering Corporation blockade runners of the Rebel Alliance Fleet during the first years of the Galactic Civil War. The Tantive V, which resembled exactly its counterpart vessel, the Rebel corvette Tantive IV, measured 150 meters in length and was armed with turbolaser cannons.

History
"Lord Vader, what shall we do with them?''" "''Hmm&hellip; Leave them. They're not worth your blaster fire."

- Darth Vader spares the Gungan crew of the Tantive V

The Tantive V participated in Operation: Skyhook, the Rebel Alliance's concentrated effort in 0 BBY to secure stolen technical readouts of the Galactic Empire's first Death Star battlestation. During the operation, the Rebels succeeded in capturing and transmitting the Death Star data to Princess Leia Organa aboard the Alderaanian consular ship Tantive IV. As Organa and the Tantive IV raced home to the planet Alderaan to finalize the safe acquisition of the stolen data, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Devastator, flagship of the Dark Lord Darth Vader, pursued the Rebel corvette in an effort to capture Organa and recover the stolen plans.

As an exact lookalike of Organa's Tantive IV, the Tantive V provided the perfect diversion to stall the Devastator. At some point during the chase, the Tantive V, crewed only by a group of unarmed Gungans, drew the Devastator in pursuit of itself and away from the Tantive IV, thus buying time for Vader's true target to temporarily slip away with the plans. The Devastator, ignorant of the ruse, captured the Tantive V via tractor beam and drew the neutralized vessel into its main docking bay, where a stormtrooper force, led by Vader himself, prepared to board the corvette. Vader's stormtroopers covered each of the Tantive V hatches and jury-rigged open the corvette's main hatch, when the Rebel counterattack came. A hooded figure&mdash;in reality the Gungan Abso Bar Binks, son of former Imperial Senator Jar Jar Binks, personally tasked with stalling Vader&mdash;tossed two small boomas from inside the Tantive V breached hatch into the Devastator, creating an explosion and an effective smoke screen among the stormtroopers.

In the ensuing confusion, Binks slipped through the hatchway into the Devastator and began to attack the distracted stormtroopers, who refrained from firing on the hooded figure in fear that it might be Organa herself, whom they hoped to capture rather than kill. Upon eventually learning the identity&mdash;and ineptitude&mdash;of the hooded attacker, Vader quickly ordered his stormtroopers to board the Tantive V and bring him the Death Star plans. However, the stormtroopers soon reported to Vader that the sought-after data was nowhere to be found aboard the Tantive V, and all they had uncovered was the corvette's unarmed Gungan crew. At that moment Binks revealed the deception to Vader: the Tantive V had been a diversion all along, and he had single-handedly manufactured the opportunity that Organa and the Tantive IV needed to escape. The stormtroopers booted Binks back aboard the Tantive V, but Vader refrained from issuing the order to eliminate the Gungans, considering them too worthless on which to waste blasterfire.

The Devastator released the Tantive V back into free space and continued pursuit of Organa. Despite the Tantive V efforts, the Devastator caught up with and captured the Tantive IV an hour later over the planet Tatooine, but Vader failed to recover the Death Star plans, eventually leading to the battlestation's destruction at the Battle of Yavin.

Commanders and crew
"We can't find them anywhere! All we've found are unarmed Gungans."

- The Devastator stormtroopers discovered only the Tantive V Gungans, rather than the expected stolen Death Star plans

During the mission to delay Darth Vader's pursuit of Princess Leia Organa aboard the Tantive IV, the Tantive V was manned by a crew of unarmed Gungans, including Abso Bar Binks, the Rebel-affiliated son of Jar Jar Binks. Binks and his fellow Gungans fooled the Devastator crew into believing the Tantive V carried the Princess and the stolen Death Star plans.

Behind the scenes
The Tantive V appears only in the illustrated story Tantive IV, created by the artist known as Formalin and published in Tokyopop's October 2006 Star Wars Manga: Black trade paperback comic book. All stories from Star Wars Manga: Black are considered non-canon.

Appearances

 * Tantive IV