The Resistance owes a lot to the old Rebel Alliance, and uses a lot of their same ships. But not all of them have appeared on screen, which causes intrepid Star Wars fans to ask: Where’s the B-Wing?
And, of course, intrepid content creators are here to answer. EC Henry (whose videos I like) has a lot of fun mocking up designs for Star Wars vehicles that aren’t in the films, and this B-Wing is especially good, iterating on the little hints given in the official canon and adding in speculation about the bomber’s history, its role, and even how the politics of the New Republic might have shaped it.
What he comes up with is a powerful, neat-looking bomber that absolutely wouldn’t look out of place on the big screen. Now to pit it against a Star Destroyer.
Comments
13 responses to “If The New Star Wars Trilogy Had B-Wings, They’d Look Like This”
I wish the B Wing had made it into the movies, instead of whatever the hell those bombers were at the start of Last Jedi. I don’t care what in-universe justification they come up with; they clearly just wanted an excuse to have WW2-esque bombers in a sci fi movie.
All they had to say was ‘the bombs lock onto a target and fly at them…’ that’s all they had to say…
That’s all they had to say…
Or ‘the ship creates a gravitational well allowing the bombs to ‘drop” or some such crap.
But jeez… bloody hell. Like you said.
I thought the second excuse was actually the reason they came up with.. or maybe it was like magnets or something.
I don’t get why they couldn’t just bring back the B Wing, it’s not like the other fighters hadn’t been brought back.
I believe they said that it was a magnetic propulsion mechanism in the bomber.
Still stupid, though.
Why should they explain it? Un-necessary exposition just bogs things down. They never explained why there is seeming gravity inside the Falcon, or in the X-wing cockpits, or what powers the lasers, or a number of other things in that universe.
It leaves the viewer free to either accept it, or to argue it later with friends, which makes the world more rich. Are they on magnetic rails that launch them downwards? Are they homing bombs of some kind, are they… etc.
Also, they are not orbiting, so the gravity of the planet will be in force, and the bombs will fall.
If you don’t justify it, the fanboys lose a nut tearing it to shreds. Star Wars fanboys are at the extreme end of the crazy scale, so that would be multiplied.
Just look at the nuts lost when the metamucils… sorry, midichlorians were introduced to justify the Force.
Personally I’d say they needed to explain it or change it because something that occurs five minutes into the movie shouldn’t cause the audience to fixate on it. We easily accepted that lightsaber vs nightstick was a valid fight in The Force Awakens. In The Last Jedi every little thing that didn’t instantly make complete sense was jarring. I think the roots of that are in the bomber run. It seems like it actively fought suspension of disbelief.
Because…….stuff.
The B-wing is not a bomber…why would they use it to bomb? That’s like asking a F-22 to bomb something instead of a B-21.
It’s a light bomber, intended originally to replace the Y-Wing if it weren’t for the fact it had crappy manoeuvrability.
I assume this is some new BS that they’ve added since the Disney buyout? Back in my day, the B-wing was a heavy fighter and had no bombing capabilities.
Nah, this is EU stuff. It’s not technically canon any more, but hell if I’m going to let Disney eradicate all those books and comics.
There aren’t really many modern equivalents I can think of since the light bomber role basically doesn’t exist any more, but the closest might be something like the F-111 Aardvark, designed as a fighter-bomber but in practice rarely given a tactical loadout, more often focusing on bombs. The RAAF nicknamed it the Pig because its manoeuvrability sucked.
Even as far back as the very old technical guides, the B Wing always carried a heavy weapons set and was used to strike capital ships. It had 3 ion cannons, a laser cannon and two torpedo launchers making it one of the heavier armed fighters. It was used to take down mid to larger capital ships. The Y Wing was the oldest ‘heavy’ strike bomber and the BWing was meant to replace it, but sucked.
I believe the intention was basically to reflect the P-38’s intention to replace other fighters in WW2, which ended up being ineffective due to its lack of manoeuvrability.
Sounds like basically the B-wing is a space A-10, just with less durability.