I asked for an X-Wing for Christmas as a kid in the early 80's. As they were sold out I got a Y-Wing. I loved it. Wish I still had it as it'd be worth a fortune now. I also had an original Millenium Falcon, too.
My favorite Y-Wing is EC Henry's unofficial idea for the Resistance Y-Wing. Henry reimagined the Y-Wing's role from being an assault bomber to a search and rescue craft. The new ship was longer, and had rudimentary living quarters. Its missions included reconnaissance patrols, search and rescue, and armed transport of high value individuals. Sadly, Lucasfilm was a bit less creative when they created their own Resistance Y-Wing. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2g9YfO55n1g.html
@@RadioFreeCoruscantIt's similar to a 4-seater Y-wing variant that was canon in Legends but I think may be canon in Disney's continuity from an appearance in a comic.
Y-wing is my favorite fighter, Great platform for many different configurations. Forget all the fancy dog fighting, just get in, hit the target and get out.
The Y-wing strikebomber has been my favorite since I first saw ANH on the big screen. Sure the X-Wing was snazzy and all, but the Y could handle itself in a dogfight and still drop the hammer on an ISD. I love the retro looks of the original and having an astromech slot as well as a fully functional turret were big pluses for me. And yet I also loved the A4's barebones looks that just screams badass, no-nonsense fighter craft. If I could gey my hands on one I'd swap out the twin chin-mounted turbo lasers for a rotory (gatling style) medium blaster. For purely personal protection reasons of course. 😁
6:44 Star Wars tends to have a funny relationship with ships. The X-Wing can be submerged in water for weeks and just pull the weeds out and off you go. But a ten year old starfighter… it’s off to the scrap yard. Meanwhile in the real world fighter jets are routinely used for 30 to 40 years (often going through retrofits and rebuilds to keep them technologically current and operational).
I just used a wing of Imperial Y-wings in 18 BBY, helping players to clear out some homing spider droids. And then your video comes out... an unexpected surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one!
Just discovered this channel. If you require any reference material, I've got digital copies. It's just as interesting to trace the history of the statistics behind the Y-Wing.
10:52 the more I learn about what the New Republic did to their own military capability the more stupid they seem to be. Force reduction made sense just considering how vast the Imperial military was but the NR swung way to far the other way too rapidly.
I think their desperation to distance themselves from the Empire is what doomed them. Someone with better political analysis skills than I could probably make a great video comparing it to real life though, as “moderates repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot to avoid looking like their opponents” is an all-too-familiar tale these days…
I think it was the politicians who saw both the CW the reign of the empire the galactic civil war and the warlord era where tired of war. But still stupid
Y-wing? Why not! It’s my favorite starfighter overall, with the TIE Bomber being my favorite TIE and the Assault Gunboat as my favorite non-tie imperial. I guess I have a thing bombers/assault fighters.
I'm torn between the prequel's og Y-wings with their aerodynamic lines (and fully functional turret) and the Rebel's A4 variant. Just got to love that stripped down all business look. If I could somehow manage a hybrid of the two...🤔 👍💙
Since we're on the subject of bombers, why not take a look at the h - Wing? It was more heavily armed and more heavily armored but was slower and more crew intensive than the why Y-wing
Oh, I knew there was a goofy one somewhere that I was missing! It’s not technically a Y-Wing, but it looks like two of them stuck together and would have been worth a mention!
I like the look of the BTA-NR2 variant. However, not allowing the Y-Wing to be exempted from the ban on proton torpedoes and ion cannons is really dumb on the part of both the writers and the in-universe New Republic. I have to go with BTL-A4 as my favorite just because the Y-Wings really need proton torpedoes and ion cannons.
The only source for the torpedo and ion cannon ban was the Reel Starfighters Oweners’ Workshop Manual, so take that with a grain of salt. It is canon, but I suspect that was just a bit of flavor text to explain why we don’t see it use any in the movie. I wouldn’t expect future stories to honor that but of lore.
In Empire at Wars: Fall of the Republic and possibly in Thrawn's Revenge, if i'm not mistaken, there's a BTL-S1 Y-wing, it looks like civil war era variants but is available during the clone wars era. Can someone tell me if they actually exist in any media, like novels, comics, sourcebooks ect.
13:40 You really think that the Star Fortress was a good bomber? I‘d rather call it a flying coffin... 😂 No seriously, the only role it might have been good for would have been planetary bombardment - not a tactic that the Rebellion used very often due to its potential for collateral damage. Their usage against a Star Destroyer or Dreadnaught was basically suicide, even with a fighter screen protecting them. I would reject to serve on those things in the first place... 🤨 Anyway, thanks for collecting all this lore around the Y-wing! 😄
Perhaps “good” is a stretch, but I think if the flew in a formation that didn’t allow shrapnel to hit the other bombers if one is destroyed they would be fine. Most of the damage in that battle is caused by them being too close together: a TIE rams and destroys the bomb magazine of one bomber, which explodes and sends the outboard engines flying through the next two. It’s a good enough bomber on paper, but the scene it’s in does it dirty.
@@RadioFreeCoruscant I agree with you that they were simply too close together. Certainly a mistake which led to the disaster we saw... But they are also slow like snails… even if better tactics had been applied, it would still be an inferior bomber compared to a group of Y-Wings - especially when it comes to survivability. I‘d rather fly a Lambda shuttle into battle, and that‘s a big target with its three wings
They actually do use our alphabet occasionally! It’s called the High Galactic alphabet, and it basically only exists to justify the names of the letter-wing starfighters and the few rare examples of English text you can see in-screen in the OT.
I shouldn't need to voice how stupid a "ban" on ion cannons and proton torps is. I ignore that whole new republic load of horse shit as presented by Disney. I tend to prefer the Clone Wars model but think/demand something faster than a Harrier AV-8B which is subsonic and slow. It's just ridiculous. I mean it would take around 2,500 hours (yes that's about 100 days) to get to the James Webb telescope. If that's acceleration it should be rated in G's (so say 2G acceleration) to give you a means of calculation for the time required to get to a speed which makes sense compared to the scale involved.
Proton torpedoes I can understand, since they’re an incredibly destructive device no bigger than a paperweight. You’d think they would make an exception for their own military, but whatever. The one that puzzles me is the ion cannons. You would think the New Republic would be all about taking prisoners rather than blowing people up. However, the only place that says they banned those websites is the Wookieepedia page for the BTA-NR2, which cites the Haynes Star Wars: Rebel Starfighters: Owners’ Workshop Manual book as the source for that law, so perhaps take it with a grain of salt since it’s probably just flavor text and not something future writers will take into account.
