Question about squadrons and wings

[Gathur]

For some time I have enjoyed reading more or less everything posted at the pit. It has helped both my players and myself when role playing star wars.

Some time ago a question about squadrons came up, namely how many star fighters makes up a squadron. From Imperial Sourcebook page 57 you get the following information “Victory II Destroyers are designed with hangar bays large enough for two squadrons of TIE fighters.”, but how many TIE fighters are two squadrons. Somewhere I read about TIE wing but I have no idea how many TIE squadrons that is.
Hopefully someone at the pit might help a fellow gamer out.

Cheers
Gathur

[Raven Redstar]

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Squadron

According to the mighty Wookieepedia, a squadron consisted of no more than 12 ships.

I know that a wing of TIE fighters is usually 3 or 4 fighters. I think it's the same for Republic fighter wings.
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[vong]

[vanir]

As analoguous to real fighter deployments, organisation is a tactical expression.

The 3-ship flight is the old WW1 and interwar era doctrine which used slipstream so that only the leader ran at high throttle, the other two birds could use slipstreaming to throttle back and maintain speed, you periodically switched lead and it helped conserve fuel overall for ranged cruise back in the days when the only engine management was a throttle and mixture controls.

This was updated in the interwar period to the "finger four" formation of four ship flight, engine management had become a lot more controllable and special economy settings could be used by every bird in the flight to conserve fuel. This formation is designed to coordinate pilot view in a box/lead formation so that every part of the sky is being scanned by one pilot or another in the flight, at all times.

Bomber squadrons maintained the 3-ship flight however, and box/lead formation is used at the squadron level, but a squadron is 3-6 rather than 12 bombers (because crew/support personnel are so much greater in number so it's an organisational and logistical expression).

Traditionally fighter squadrons are 10 or 12 ship formations, typically 12 but this includes the staff designations (eg. technical officer, squadron leader, adjutant), who fly with the group at the squadron level but not at the group level (flying hours goes down as rank goes up). Carrier air groups are often smaller serviceable squadrons, they rotate the birds for maintenance since they don't have reserves so unless doing intensive war operations they'll often be at half strength serviceable and the CAG rarely flies day to day missions. At full strength it's not uncommon to be a couple of birds down, so a carrier based squadron is often 8-10 birds even at full strength.

Where things get confusing in SWU is they switch to the Luftwaffe organisation rather than US organisation at the air group level. The Germans call an air wing an air group or gruppe, and an air group an air wing or geschwader. Squadrons or staffeln are the same. But it is US carrier air group conventions being used for boarded craft in SWU, renamed from group to wing.

All up then, I find it works out easiest to use the Luftwaffe designations. Squadron, Group, Wing, Flotilla and Air Command, rather than US system of Squadron, Wing, Group, Air Command and Service Arm, because in SWU they're calling the Air Groups a Starfighter Wing. I'm not even that up on US organisation so prefer euro anyway.

If you look up aircraft formations and tactics in the real world, on the web you can adapt these easily to suit your campaign.

Nations all have their own takes however. The British have theirs, the Russians another, the Germans, then the US. You can mix and match and tailor them for the game.

[nuclearwookiee]

As others have mentioned, "squadron" usually means 12 in WEG material. "Wing" is variable. For a Star Destroyer, it means 72 TIEs. For a Mon Cal Cruiser, it only means 36.

[Raven Redstar]

Where did you find the 72 TIE number?
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[Fallon Kell]

[nuclearwookiee]

Fallon Kell, I have no doubt that a wing is described in more detail somewhere else in the EU, especially in books like the X-Wing series that dealt more specifically with that sort of thing. My point is that "wing," as used in WEG material, is usually more of a designation for a combat grouping of a number of starfighter squadrons than it is a notation for a specific number of fighters.

The Wookieepedia entry for the MC80 Liberty Type Cruiser supports this as it describes the ship's fighter compliment as a "three squadron wing."

Further, p. 58 of the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook fully details the fighter compliment for an MC80. "One wing on each cruiser" consisting of three squadrons in each wing, three flights in each squadron, two elements in each flight, and each element consisting of a leader and his wingman.

[nuclearwookiee]

Raven Redstar, the 72 TIEs in a wing also comes from the 2E and 2ERE books.

[Darth Ginzain]

Page 27 the d6 sourcebook has a breakdown of an Imperial Wing based on a Star Destroyer.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0874312116/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

[Raven Redstar]

Thanks for the info guys!
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RR
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[Fallon Kell]

[garhkal]

To make it easy for players i break it down thusly

Imperial

Fightere - one ship
Element - 2 fighters
Flight - 2 elements
squadron - 3 flights (12 fighters)
wing - 6 squadrons

Rebel, same for all up to wing - 3 squadrons.
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[nuclearwookiee]

[Bren]

What garhkal said. Rebel wings are 3 squadrons. Imperial wings are 6 squadrons.

Basically 'cause the Imps like to bulk up fungible units. IIR the Imperial Soucebook mentions they increased the size of army units and want to do the same with the fleet - but haven't succeeded yet.