Home One/Legends

Home One Home One was a Mon Calamari capital ship in the Rebel Alliance fleet famous for its role at the Battle of Endor and as the flagship of Admiral Ackbar.

Characteristics
A blue-gray plated wingless variety of Mon Calamari Star Cruiser, Home One was vaguely tapered conical 3,800 meter cylinder with bulbous stern covered with ten huge sublight thrusters.

Designed to serve as a command ship, carrier and battleship, Home One was heavily armed and protected by thick hull plating and advanced, redundant deflector shields. Weapons included twenty-nine heavy turbolaser emplacements, thirty-six ion cannons and six tractor beam projectors. While no two converted Mon Calamari cruisers were the same, the "standard" Alliance armament upgrade for an MC80a was 48 turbolasers, twenty ion batteries and six tractor beam projectors. It seems likely that Home One's weapon systems were reduced to make room for its large starfighter compliment. Home One carried ten squadrons of Alliance starfighters in twenty hangars that fed into three flank bays.

As with all early Mon Calamari cruisers, most ship bridge controls could not be modified for use by human hands, so the command crews were almost exclusively Mon Calamari. The remaining 5,156 crew members and 279 gunners were a mix of all Rebel species. The interior corridors, bridges and bulkheads of Home One were pristine white.

Operational History
As with most Alliance-era Mon Calamari warships, Home One began as a civilian vessel built at the shipyards of Dac. When the Mon Calamari began to support the Alliance in earnest, the ship became the flagship of the recently freed Ackbar. Home One became particularly important after the Alliance's defeat at the Battle of Hoth forced Alliance High Command to use it as a mobile base of operations. As the flagship of Admiral Ackbar, who was Supreme Commander of the Rebel Fleet, the vessel was considered one of the most important assets to the Rebellion.

Home One was one of the largest ship in the Alliance fleet at the Battle of Endor. Ackbar commanded the Alliance fleet from Home One's bridge. The vessel went on to serve as Ackbar’s flagship for the next five years, serving as the home base of the famed X-wing unit Rogue Squadron and participating in numerous key battles, including the First Battle of Coruscant and the Battle of Bilbringi. Ackbar’s flagship was constantly in use, due to the Supreme Commanders tendency to command important engagements personally. As a result, the vessel needed to be maintained at a constant state of readiness, which was achieved by repair yards in orbit over Coruscant.

As more advanced Mon Calamari starships were developed, such as the MC80B and MC90, Home One was rendered obsolete. Following the defeat of Grand Admiral Thrawn, the ship was decommissioned and replaced by Defiance as Ackbar's flagship.

Behind the scenes

 * Although the Home One design has often been portrayed as unique, there were several ships similar to it, including at least one other present at the Battle of Endor, Independence and another by the name of Defiance. A possible fourth ship was also portrayed on-screen as being the second vessel pulverized by the Death Star II's superlaser.
 * There has been some argument among fans about the weapons array aboard Home One. Some fans argue that 29 turbolasers and 36 ion cannons is a very light armament for a vessel of this cruiser's size and importance; it has been proposed that a more realistic armament would be attained by reversing the order of the number of weapons (i.e., 92 turbolasers and 63 ion cannons).


 * The confusion of referencing Home One as "Headquarters Frigate" in the novelization of Return of the Jedi has caused some to believe the the name "Home One" was merely a callsign for the ship (this is reinforced by the fact that the name's first appearance, in The Truce at Bakura, was not italicized, as a ship's proper name would be), but it was far too large to have been a mere frigate. This problem was compounded by the designation of Independence as Ackbar's flagship in the X-Wing computer game. Although this was later clarified on StarWars.com Questions & Answers, with Independence being a sister ship of Home One.


 * Scaling of Home One in Return of the Jedi shows it to be approximately 3,800 meters long, rather than the 1,200 meter length given by West End Games that was later used in the Expanded Universe. This would mean that Home One was not a MC80 Star Cruiser&mdash;which has consistently been stated to be 1,200 meters long&mdash;but its own larger class, of which at least three were present at the climactic battle over Endor. Other Mon Calamari ship types present at Endor have been scaled to around 1,200 meters, and would presumably be of the MC80 class.


 * Dr. Curtis Saxton, author of several Star Wars reference books, has popularized the 3,800 meter length for Home One on his fan website, Star Wars Technical Commentaries.


 * The size and classification of Home One has been debated by some fans who prefer the original WEG stats. This small segment of fans still maintains that the cruiser is 1200 meters in length and part of the MC80 class. As an argument, they point out that the hangar-exit is not the same on the outside as on the inside and therefore it can't be relied upon for scaling purposes. On closer inspection, the only continuity-error found is the wall-lights inside the hangar, which are different when seen from outside. Since they have no bearing on the dimensions of the hangar-entrance, this is not a valid argument.

Appearances

 * Empire at War
 * Star Wars Empire: "General" Skywalker
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Entrenched
 * Star Wars Manga: Return of the Jedi 3
 * X-wing Rogue Squadron: In the Empire's Service
 * X-wing Rogue Squadron: Masquerade
 * X-Wing: Rogue Squadron
 * X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble
 * X-Wing: Solo Command
 * The Last Command
 * I, Jedi