Re: Stormtroopers

Eric Foley wrote:

> In George Lucas' own novelization of the movie, he goes into a little
more
> detail about how Leia arrived at the conclusion, expressed but not
explained
> in the movie itself, that the Death Star commanders let them go when
they
> escaped in the Millenium Falcon:  they only sent four TIE fighters
after
> them.  In Leia's own words in that novel, "They could just as easily
have
> sent a hundred."  If sending four or a hundred fighters is all the
same to
> the Death Star commanders, it bears out, to a great degree, the WEG
spec
> that said that the Death Star possessed literally THOUSANDS of TIE
fighters.
> And it stands to strong reason that no amount of plot device can
explain how
> thirty fighters can successfully make their way through thousands of
> defenders... IF those thousands of defenders have, in fact, been
deployed to
> stop them.
>
> So yeah... when WEG's supplement postulates that Vader's own squadron
was
> the only part of the Death Star's fighter complement that actually was
> deployed to stop the Rebels, I tend to believe that this is most or
all of
> the actual case.
>

I think the strongest clue that the Death Star was destroyed by extreme
overconfidence (or gross dereliction of duty), is that if they did have
hundreds
of fighters, why was there no combat space patrol to intercept the
rebels before